Text/Lin Zhi & Thomas's Skull

Recently, Grape Jun noticed a game with a healing art style, Island and Leviathan. The game was recently released for PV, and a demo is expected to be released on the Steam store in 2025.

The production team has been developing the diary for more than two years at Station B, and so far, they seem to have always wanted to make a game that leads players to explore the empty island and the sea.

The sea is crystal clear and the water is gentle in the sun.

At dusk, creatures swim in the sky and sail towards floating islands.

As the player moves through the withered scene, the gray vegetation comes back to life, and flowers fly like dandelions all over the mountain.

Many of the anemone-like and coral-like tentacles will also glow when the player approaches, and even lift and wrap the player, as if the whole world is catering to the player's arrival.

The game's visuals are very stylized, and the production team reveals their insights into the industry from time to time in the development diary, so I can't help but wonder what kind of people are behind it.

Some time ago, I chatted with Zhang Dawei, the producer of "Island and Leviathan", and Shen Li, the CEO of Re³ Lab, their latest round of investors, and found their stories to be very unusual as well.

David told me that in fact, when he was the only one making the game, and the demo was not yet available, he had already received angel investment from another INDIE fund.

Now there are three team members and they are working together online. They have an average of 15 years of experience in the industry, including Tencent NetEase, the main United States, and the front and back end of the main process.

David said that they are a group of "old men" who have worked for a long time, and they have reached a certain stage of their careers: either they continue to get a high salary in a big factory, but they do projects that they don't necessarily like, and they have to worry about layoffs; Or choose to really show your ability and give it a personal imprint now, although the income will drop a lot, but the value gained in the process is enough to offset the loss of money.

Shen Li believes that the opportunity for this game lies in the fact that it is expected to be a work similar to a life experience.

In the past, most games emphasized goal-oriented and efficiency, but now that everyone's life is very stressful, more and more people are beginning to value "process experience". If you can make players want to stay in this environment through clever guidance and easy driving force in the game, maybe the product has a chance.

Their development process is also close to this process experience.

In the logic of commercial vendors, there is generally a clear path dependency: know what to benchmark and which models are effective, and follow them.

However, unlike the common choices of large manufacturers, they have adopted an almost plant-growing, "heuristic" development model: first think from the player's point of view, "what do I expect to see after entering the game, what do I expect to associate with it, and what do I expect to experience", and then step by step add or eliminate elements to keep the parts that can really bring fun.

In the view of Zhang Dawei and Shen Li, this method of "discovering while doing" may be closer to the needs of players while retaining the creative potential than simply following the existing successful model.

The following is a summary of the dialogue, and the content has been adjusted for ease of reading.

01

Make a game with a human touch

Grape Jun: What did you do at Tencent before?

David: When I was at NExT Studios, I was part of a group called the Workshop, which was a really pure, bottom-up place to incubate projects.

There weren't a lot of people at that meeting, but if you have any good ideas, you will volunteer to team up and start some projects. It took me about a year to make a dozen different prototypes and some things that we thought were interesting.

If there is an opportunity in the future, there is a good chance that these prototypes will be further developed. However, under the system of large manufacturers, if some types or gameplay have not been verified and the ceiling is high enough, it will be difficult for the project to pass.

But entrepreneurship is different. With a small-scale, low-cost independent development form, as long as the sales volume and user volume are good, it is enough to support a team virtuous circle.

Grape: So that's why you decided to go it alone?

David: That's right. One of my observations is that a lot of the time the big players still use gameplay mechanics or defined genres as the starting point. Now that the game genre is very comprehensive, and it has entered the fusion stage of "type A + type B", there is not much room to explore.

Under this premise, content has gradually become an important breakthrough. The market is looking forward to author-oriented projects that are close to players and have a human flavor. These projects give a sense of the creator's personal decisions, emotions, and experiences.

However, due to the large project team and multi-level decision-making process, large factories often polish the project very well, and the overall quality is very high, but it is difficult to retain the human flavor.

Grape-kun: Have you ever played any games before?

David: I started my own indie game business very early, about 10 years ago, I was a relatively early group of developers, and there was no concept of "indie games" at that time. However, due to reasons such as funding, ability, experience, and direction selection, the game that was later made was not successful, and the team was disbanded.

At that stage, I launched two products, "The Journey of Life" and "The Shape of the Heart".

At that time, there were already some single-player buyout games in China, but they didn't have much experience in publishing, and many things were in the exploration period. The release of The Shape of the Heart is also the first time to do this. I feel that it was still difficult to really come out in that era, and it was quite a matter of luck to make money.

Grape: And how did "Island and Leviathan" begin?

David: I used to work in a big factory, I was a workaholic, and I always wanted to do everything better than the team asked me to do. Even though the company I went to didn't have particularly strict working hours and almost no overtime requirements, I often didn't go home two days a week and slept at the office.

I actually hate the attitude of "do as much as you want", whether it is a part-time job or starting a business, I think that as long as the things I put into can be rewarding for me, I will spare no effort.

After leaving the company, I took a break for about half a year. At that time, I was thinking about taking a break for a while, making a demo, and maybe going back to work in the factory when I had the right opportunity.

Later, I chatted with my friends, and some people said that since you made this thing, everyone thinks it is good, and it also gives people a comfortable sensory experience, why not continue to develop it? I even had a friend who I had known for more than 10 years who said that he could help me find a financier, which prompted me to decide to continue doing it.

But in reality, I didn't have a clear plan at that time, and I didn't even know what I was going to do.

Grape: How did a game that didn't know what to do, how did it get so much support?

David: My original intention was not to make it directly into a game, but to think about how to make the experience comfortable and enjoyable in such a small space and small landscape.

That demo is a sea area with many delicate interactions that players can interact with at will. I avoided the framework of mechanics and gameplay, and focused on digging into the experience level and the feeling of the scene, trying to convey more emotional value.

In my opinion, this kind of emotional value is no weaker than the experience of fighting monsters and exploding equipment. Many times we don't necessarily need to follow the traditional game design logic, such as setting obstacles, mastering skills, overcoming difficulties, and getting rewards. Such a design is not a panacea.

Players may find pleasure in some small, non-utilitarian points, and the experience tends to be more pure.

Grape King: What is your preset player experience like?

David: I would describe it as a cross between Dave the Diver and Animal Crossing, but with a more diverse and personal touch. We want players who just want to relax after work and don't even want to do anything can enjoy the decompression and comfort that the game brings - you don't have to fight monsters to play games.

It's not easy to build such an environment. Even in fantasy worlds, attention to detail and immersion is needed to make players feel believable and comfortable.

The goal is for players to be able to sit in the tank and watch the fish chase in the tank, or park their boat on the edge of the island to fish and interact with their surroundings in a simple way.

Grape King: Why such a theme?

David: I had a project or concept about 10 years ago called "Island Drifting", which was inspired by the movie "Desert Island Survivors".

I was fascinated by the story of the protagonist who drifted to an uninhabited island after a plane crash, and I wanted to give players a similar experience: in the process of drifting and exploring, because of loneliness, and calm down to feel the subtle and profound details around them.

There are currently two cores in the game's theme, one is the ocean and the other is the island.

The beauty of the ocean lies in the nature of the water: it can see through it, but it is constantly dynamic in response to environmental and physical factors. If you put enough effort into it and perform it well, the rewards will be well worth it.

The importance of the island lies in providing a sense of security for the player. We've tried to make the ocean completely open, but players tend to get disoriented, and it can trigger deep-sea fears, which can lead to tension rather than relaxation.

Islands and oceans are two relative concepts: the farther away from the island, the greater the sense of danger and insecurity; When you get close to the islands, the sea feels less dangerous.

The name of the game "Island and Leviathan" has its own saying, and each island is actually a Leviathan. As the player explores the island, they will interact with these Leviathans.

Players who venture on its back may think it's an ordinary island, only to find out later that it's a living creature.

02

Heuristic development process

Grape Jun: You said on Bilibili that the development idea of this game is different from that of traditional teams.

David: The whole development process is more like a heuristic exploration. I'm not sure what it will become, but I gradually add the necessary elements in the production based on feelings and experiences. These elements, in turn, inspired me to form a mutually guiding relationship, and as the foliage grew, so did the overall complexity.

We imagine ourselves as a player, and when we enter the game, what kind of content makes me feel strongly anticipated? What do I want to see in the game and how do I feel?

Based on this thinking, it is necessary to deduce what kind of function, gameplay, or design that includes visuals and content that can contribute to these feelings and conform to the overall structure without destroying it. In this way, the content that serves the player's experience is validated and preserved over time.

Grape: How did you determine the core gameplay of the game?

David: Initially, when we weren't particularly sure about the core gameplay, we tried the direction of "exploration" first.

When I first started developing, I was mostly doing it alone, and players could paddle or swim to new areas and the underwater environment changed accordingly. This version has come to make it clear that exploration is at the heart of the game: players are constantly discovering new areas, encountering different biomes and fish, and satisfying their curiosity about the unknown.

When I first started the demo, fishing was established as an early way to play. A game related to the ocean and water is really unacceptable without a fishing system.

I personally have my own ideas about fishing, so I made it more in-depth. It integrates multiple dimensions such as ecology, biological habits, and bait making, and also has a certain sense of game, like the balance of physical exertion and confrontation in battle.

We've even designed larger boss creatures to make it more challenging and layered with the fishing system.

To make exploration more meaningful, we've also added a collection mechanic.

Players should be rewarded for their actions in each area, whether it be resources or pieces of information that piece together the worldview, giving players more room for imagination. We hope that collecting is not just about getting items, but also about making players curious and looking forward to the various elements in the setting.

Next up is the building system, which allows players to stay with what they explore, rather than just grow stats.

Players can place the collected items on their own island. Players can not only build landscapes, but also add dynamic content such as creature cultivation.

As long as the content left over is interesting enough, it can form a cycle that reinforces with adventure and ecological mechanisms. In this way, players will be more invested in their own gains and the interaction with the world.

The building system also leads to the social part of the game. Players can invite other players to visit their islands through a sharing mechanism, such as connecting to each other in a form similar to a Drifting Bottle.

Players can also travel to other players' islands through Bottle Drift to explore different ecological rules and mechanics. These rules are closely tied to external adventures and exploration, and the more knowledge a player has externally, the better they will be able to optimize their island building.

But complete loneliness is not acceptable to all players, so we refer to the asynchronous socialization of souls-like games, so that players can occasionally see the traces left by others during their adventures, so that they can feel the presence of others and avoid an overcrowded social environment. This can in turn make people have a stronger social appeal.

Grape: Looking back, what do you think are the pros and cons of this heuristic development process?

David: The period of preparation becomes very long. But from a fundamentalist point of view, game development should have been long enough to be derivative upfront. Just like some directors may spend more than ten years conceiving the script and pondering it repeatedly before finally making a movie. It's the same with games.

In the logic of commercial vendors, there is generally a clear path dependency: know what to benchmark and which models are effective, and follow them.

But when you want to make creative games, you have to face a challenge: you have to spend enough time upfront to figure out "what I'm going to do". Otherwise, no matter which development philosophy you adopt, the same question arises – what is the basis for your decision?

The good thing about this process is that it gives a very clear direction. Starting from the end goal of user experience, we first imagine what the user can achieve in the end.

Even if some users do not accept this direction, at least it is reasonable as a criterion. Every decision we make is not a pat on the head, but a look at whether we can contribute enough to the ultimate experience goal.

Grape: And how do you get players to want to play?

David: We have adopted the idea of "spontaneous exploration + instant feedback" in the guidance.

The main line of the game is that the player plays as a cat, in the process of taking a cardboard spaceship to perform a mission, crashing into a shark star full of empty islands, can only look for the beacons launched by the spaceship to various parts of the planet to obtain their mission information to the planet, complete the mission, repair the spaceship and return home.

We encourage spontaneous exploration, but that doesn't mean there's no guidance.

The game simply advocates soft bootstrapping, not like a can stuffed with question marks. We want players to explore new areas and new ways to play naturally through quest hints or visual cues. Because it's not a large open world, it's easy to figure out which places you can't go to right now, and which roads are temporarily inaccessible, so you don't have a clue to run around.

At the same time, we incorporated a lot of "mimic" and "hidden" designs into the environment to guide players' interest with a sense of surprise.

For example, coral and sea anemones, which usually look ordinary, show a silky gliding touch when touched, making people feel as if their fingers are wrapped in soft silk.

Players swimming through coral reefs may suddenly startle small fish hiding inside; If a big fish approaches, the small fish will spread out instantly. There are also seaweeds that suddenly turn into snakes, or what appears to be just a stone suddenly stands up and turns into giant mimic crabs and crawls away.

These elements break the player's expectations, keeping the exploration fresh and surprising. Even if you just swim around, you may encounter hidden creatures or sudden changes. For players, this new discovery of the unknown is a pleasure and reward in itself, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a direct resource or numerical gain.

In addition, all the player's exploration process is shown in the form of a live broadcast to the hometown audience. Viewers will interact with players through bullet barrage and gifts: when you catch a big fish or encounter danger, there may be people cheering, suggesting or complaining about it, and there may even be spoofs and spoofing content.

This kind of live-streamed barrage does not require a rigorous worldview like NPC dialogue, and it brings a more realistic sense of companionship. In the future, we are also considering using AI-generated barrages to provide players with more varied and interesting interactions.

Grape-kun: In addition to the gameplay, your art is also very stylized, how do you confirm this?

Dawei: The stylization of the picture may also have something to do with my personal color weakness.

I haven't ever passed a single color check since I was a kid, and I'm not even sure if the picture you're seeing is good. But I've always felt that even with color cognitive physiology defects, it's possible to create good-looking game graphics.

Historically, there have been deaf and mute people who are good at piano playing, and there are such cases in reality. I've heard of amputees hitting street fighters with their mouths, or visually impaired people making it to the finals of a competition using their hearing alone.

What's more, what we want to do is to decompress casually, even if the player doesn't do anything, they can feel comfortable. Therefore, it is easy to jump out visually, and the anthropomorphism of animals can avoid the seriousness of realistic substitution.

We've referred to stylized works like "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" and "Love Death", but those require a big team and a high cost. We use PBR rendering with brushstroke texture to avoid realism, highlight the Q elasticity, and better retain our own labels.

If you follow the trend of realism, you will fall into homogeneity, which does not conform to the stylized direction of independent games. We wanted to be instantly recognizable as our game, so we kept the amount of information under control, and there were some small grains in the graphics that didn't put too much pressure, but there were details to be appreciated when you looked closely.

Grape: Have you lowered or increased the technical difficulty by doing this?

David: Actually, it's harder. We take advantage of existing mature or cutting-edge technologies and use them in relatively uncommon ways.

For example, at the level of interaction, the interaction of anemones is rarely seen by a team that can achieve such a level of delicacy as ours.

There are many coral, anemone-like tentacles, and once the character or player comes into contact with them, they will have a wide range of natural swings and feedback, not only limited to the protagonist, but also affected by the surrounding environment and creatures.

This kind of global interaction is a performance drain, and if the hardware conditions are good enough, it can support more complex interactions.

Grape: Why aren't other teams doing these interactions?

David: I guess most teams are either concerned about performance or don't have a particularly good opportunity to use it. Because we were doing the ocean theme, we felt that there should be this kind of interaction everywhere, so we delved into it.

We wanted all of the environments to be "pandering" to the player: many of the scenes were initially withered, but once the player walked through them, the Leviathan that resides in the protagonist's body brought the ecology to life.

Other teams don't necessarily have the ability to do it, they just don't have the design philosophy to drive these kinds of details. We identify the experience we want to convey before we figure out why we want to do those interactions.

Also, a lot of teams also think about cost performance, and I would argue against cost performance in some places - if it helps the experience, I will do it to the extreme, although the cost is high, but it can bring irreplaceable value.

Grape Jun: After so many anti-routine attempts, do you worry that this project is not safe enough?

David: The experience framework and gameplay framework of our game have actually been confirmed by the market before, and this experience has a large enough player base. But the challenge is how many of these groups are able to recognize the innovations we make.

In the development process, we will also consider the market space, but we prefer to be the one who eats crabs and try some options that do not have too many similar options on the market.

If more players recognize us in the future, then our barriers in technology landing and design ideas are actually not easy to copy.

Shen Li: Most games are goal-oriented, but I feel that many people nowadays are paying more and more attention to "process experience", which is like two ways of consumption in real life.

One is very goal-oriented, such as taking your child to cram school on the weekend, and you only care about whether the cram school is good or not; The other is experience-oriented, such as going to Xintiandi (a pedestrian street in the heart of Shanghai that has been renovated from Shikumen buildings), not necessarily about buying or doing anything, but more about enjoying the atmosphere.

Most of the games I usually play are about winning or progressing the process, but games like Animal Crossing are more like a way of life, where you can get into a relaxed environment at any time, make small goals, and not be anxious about the setting of repaying the loan.

The feeling I get from this project is that it has the opportunity to become a life experience game, just like Xintiandi has a good environment for people to stay at any time, but it must also have some gameplay to support it. There is only the environment and there is no way to play, and players will not come back after experiencing it once.

Even just lying on a small boat at sea to empty is relaxing. Coupled with a few small loops like Animal Crossing, it can provide players with easy motivation and don't require too much guidance. Nowadays, real life is very stressful, and more and more people are pursuing process experience or life experience relaxation content, and I think there is an opportunity for such games.

03

A high salary is no substitute for the process experience

Grape Jun: I think your team members are all industry elites and have been in the industry for a long time, how did you attract them?

Dawei: In fact, in the team, there are some old men who have worked for a long time, and they have reached a stage of their careers, and there are not many opportunities. At this time, you either continue to get a high salary in a large factory, but do projects that you don't necessarily like, and you have to worry about layoffs; Or take advantage of the time to do something that really shows what you are capable of and gives it a personal imprint. Although the revenue will drop a lot, the value gained in the process will more than offset the loss of income.

At this stage, self-satisfaction becomes more and more difficult to achieve through regular work. If there is an interesting and interesting project, it can bring a higher sense of psychological well-being. So, when the team is under financial pressure, everyone would rather take a pay cut than continue to do it.

Because once you really dedicate yourself to it, the personal feelings and expectations for the future are far beyond what you imagined.

Even if there is a shortage of funds in the future, they are willing to persevere, believing that the project will not be completely dead.

The facts have gradually verified this: although we have not officially released it to the public, and only released some videos at random in the development log, most of the publishers or investors approached took the initiative to find them, affirm the project, and put forward investment or cooperation intentions.

There were even a few players who saw my dev post and came to me saying they wanted to invest in us. I said that making high-quality games is very expensive, and it may not be something that a person can afford, and one player said that there is no shortage at home, and it is no problem to take a few million to play for him, and I was confused.

But I still politely refused, I said that I can't accept an individual to invest my parents' money, whether it is moral or rational judgment, I can't accept this form of investment, if it is your own money, I think you can talk about it.

Grape Jun: Do you regret that there has not been a successful project in the strict sense of the word over the years? Do you want to succeed more?

David: It's a regret indeed, but it also makes me reflect more on the industry and products.

Failure brings with it a lot of lessons, and if you succeed at the time, you may end up being lost. Success is often not replicable, and it is easy to generate path dependence, and the next time you do it, you will feel that it is not enough. It didn't work out, but it made me think, "What kind of game are you going to play?" What do players really want? ”

Many things are ultimately left to fate, but I remain optimistic, even if I don't succeed now, the accumulated experience and thinking will always lead me to success.

And in the process of doing this project, I have gained a lot of positive experiences.

Grape Jun: What kind of positive experience?

David: I've been working in the game industry for 20 years, and I've seen a lot of people leave or have a hard time, and some people get a high salary in a big company, but I care more about creative space and happiness, and I don't want to pursue a high salary in a big city. Although I don't have a lot of money, I can maintain a comfortable creative environment and not make decisions in a panic due to objective factors, which I never had when I started my business before.

The gaming industry is brutal, and if it's not the first, almost no one will remember you. We have limited resources and we have to be the best to have a chance of success. I'm very grateful for the way we work now, like the team of Ori and the Dark Forest, which is distributed and collaborative, which reduces administrative costs and allows everyone to spend more time with their families. On the one hand, it improves efficiency, and on the other hand, it retains the freedom of creation.

This program has given me a lot of positive value, which cannot be replaced by a high salary. For example, my son likes games very much, and he writes "I want to make games like my father" in his essays, and even dubs the video for our development log. For me, having such a good creative space and state is the biggest reward.

Grape Jun: I would also like to ask Uncle Li, from an investment point of view, if a team has not achieved particularly great success, what qualities will you value more in them？

Shen Li: First of all, look at the team's mood. Do they still have the desire to do something new, rather than retracting into something safe and conservative after a few failures? Because in the current market, there are often fewer opportunities for a safe, conservative direction.

From an investment perspective, insecurity means less certainty, but it also represents higher potential. After all, investment is not just a bet on one project, but a lot of projects to cultivate, so I will be more inclined to be a team that is willing to be a breakthrough and willing to try new things.

It's rare to have the perfect combination of cheap, successful background, and everything, which goes against the laws of the market. So I pay more attention to the team's longboard, and this longboard can move me on an emotional level.

For me, a lot of the time it's rational analysis, emotional decision-making – teams aren't necessarily perfect, but they have a point that really appeals and that's what makes the investment worthwhile.

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