func_podcast – Episode 3

Published
// Reading Time: 2 minutes

We’ve made it to a third episode; now with improved audio, and more focus on topics!

This time around we open by talking a little about my Super Mario Bros. homage, “The Super 1-1 Challenge“, Bradley’s Half-Life 2 mod, “Inhuman” and discuss the complicated world of fan games.

For the real meat of the podcast, we dig into the level design process and workflow for Gears Tactics, as well as applying narrative and themes to level design. For those interested, I have also written a little about this in the past.

After Bradley outlines a time management technique in the form of the “Pomodoro Technique”, we close by following up on last month’s Steam Next Fest demos, and talking a little about toxicity within the indie game development scene. We are quite conscious about getting too caught up in “hot button topics”, but from time to time we’ll share our thoughts.

Episode 3 – Level Design Process

The podcast is available on YouTube and can be viewed below. An audio only version is also available on Spotify or downloadable here.

Subjects discussed…

  • The legality of fan games and potentially “how to get away with it”
  • Level design process and workflow discussion
  • Narrative in level design
  • Time management using the Pomodoro Technique
  • Steam Next Fest demos
  • Indie game studio toxicity

Games discussed: Turbo Overkill, My Friendly Neighborhood, Hollowsk 1999, Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm, Gears Tactics and The Super 1-1 Challenge

I’m feeling that we’re getting better at this each episode. We were a lot tighter this time around and managed to record much cleaner audio. I’m hoping listeners appreciate the time that goes into editing and clean up!

In the last podcast update I mentioned wanting to put a little more time into the video side of the podcast, however whilst editing this latest episode I found it simply too time-consuming. I’m still interested in the idea, but perhaps for shorter, more focused one shot conversations in the future.

Whilst we’ve not received a tonne of feedback, there have been some requests to stick to a single topic. I think that’s a great idea and useful from an evergreen-content angle, I just don’t want that to get in the way of the natural flow of conversation. However, the plan is for our next episode to be an interview with the developers of Sprawl – so we’ll see how that goes!

More episodes…