Astro Bot director Nicolas Doucet has discussed how the game succeeded based on smart AA-sized ambition and that, in this year especially following industry layoffs, it’s “OK to make a small game”.
Doucet gave a “making of” talk on the celebrated PS5 exclusive at this year’s Game Developer Conference (GDC), which also took home two prizes at the conference’s awards: Best Audio and Best Technology.
During the talk he discussed the game’s scope, why the team didn’t name the cameo bots properly, and how originally the game had a different ending the developers found too upsetting.
“From the start, we were in the mindset that it’s OK to make a compact game, and I think it’s really important – especially going into this year – it’s OK to make a small game,” said Doucet.
“In order to exist in this very busy world, I think it’s sometimes better to settle for a good spot in the second week rather than a bad spot in the first week,” he continued later. “A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter. We could still make something that gets people really happy.”