As part of our mission to highlight developers big and small, I sat down with Klemen Lozar, CEO of Tuatara Games to chat about all things Let Them Come: Onslaught, a new bullet-hell game coming to Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC in 2025.
In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about the teams early beginnings, their previous games and the challenge in bringing new games to market in a turbulent industry. We also dive into Let Them Come: Onslaught‘s take on the genre, its art-style and more!
Below is lightly edited transcript of some of the highlights, but for the full feature, please do check out the video interview over on our YouTube channel.
Jon: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of XboxEra 1V1! Today I am joined by Klemen Lozar from Tuatara games. They are based in Vancouver and they’re working on an upcoming release coming to Xbox, PlayStation, PC of let them come onslaught well. Klemen, nice to have you here.
Klemen: Thank you. Great to be here and thanks for having me.
On Let Them Come: Onslaught
Jon: To educate folks that are are perhaps watching or listening or reading the article, let’s talk about “Let Them Come: Onslaught“. A ‘Bullet-Hell’ game where you’re defending yourself against an ever increasing every difficult onslaught of alien beasties. How long have you guys been working on this one?
Klemen: Yeah, we’ve been working for it on it for about 2 1/2 years now for sure. You know, you always start developing such a game with the expectations that ohh, maybe we’re gonna turn it around quick. But then, you know, we’re we’re sticklers for polish and game feeling all of that high production value. So yeah, it’s been a while, but now we have a, let’s say – complete plan in place and we’re just like chipping away at the content and the games in a place now where we’re not figuring out this big systems anymore. We’re just kind of tying knots and finishing up. Yeah, heading towards the finish line.
Jon: I think it’s fair to say the genre definitely exploded a little bit with with Vampire Survivors and I’ve seen similar success with games like Brotato. The variety of systems in these games always seems crazily complex to me, because you’ve got the very nature of the shooting being taken away from the player. That’s the premise, right? You are now the bullet hell. But you’ve got all of these layers of different weapon types, different combinations of power – How do you even begin to balance something like that from a a game design perspective? Like where does that journey start?
Klemen: Right. Yeah, it’s definitely tricky. And you’re absolutely right. Like for us, Vampire Survivors was like perhaps the catalyst in us considering this because our, uh, you know, we’ve worked on a lead and con type game previously. So we we have this franchise and we just immediately saw a good fit. For this genre, you know, people call it like a survival, like it’s it’s own genre now? And yeah, you’re right. So you have to, you know, it’s always nice to develop for me, you know, being constrained in some way. And in this way, you’re constrained by, you know, the player is not like you implied already, directly shooting and targeting weapons. So that good, because it helps you, you know, figure out interesting new design concepts when you have one hand right behind your back.
So our focus has been, as I’m sure a lot of other interests in these genres on player positioning, timing and strategic choices. And yeah, you’re right, it does get complex. You know, like we have a whole host of host of weapons and each has like 8 levels per special prototype variant. We have multiple playable characters, different enemies, and quite a few of them have their different gameplay abilities. Different levels and of course the sequence evolves – It’s 20 minutes, right? So within that, there’s just there’s, there’s a lot of fine tuning. Basically we’re all playing the game a lot, but that’s what makes it fun as well, like during development, you know? Pretty much we have these weeklies where we we then report back, you know what we’re finding and in the background, we’re fine tuning stuff. So it’s just it’s almost like an endless process. You could do this ad nauseam then, but at some point you stop and you’re like – okay, we’re happy with this.
On a New Angle…
Jon: Typically, these sorts of games take a ‘top-down-ish’ approach and usually have more simplified art, be it pixel art or or or you know, more cartoony. You guys have gone for a almost a pseudo-3D look where the camera is not so much top-down, but angled. The the very notion of being in 3D means that the positioning element becomes a little bit more complex to kind of juggle because you haven’t got a very clear defined top-down view. You have to really think about where you’re at as you’re playing. Was the approach and the more advanced graphical features planned from the start or was that something that kind of came along through the design process?
Klemen: Yeah, we knew right away that one of the ways we’re going to try to stand out was by making the experience very cinematic and like higher production values and focus on the theme and visuals, like huge inspiration for let them kind of has always been Aliens, right? And I’m, I’m I’m happy to see that comes through. Like players report that. Also games like StarCraft 2 in terms of just, you know, killing these hordes of enemies, you know, alien creatures. So that was from the onset, like a decision – Let’s make it 3D. Let’s take that perspective.
And there were a lot of interesting challenges right from the start, you know, like a lot of things change. Change like you don’t have the same equal spacing left, right, up and down. If you have an orthographic view right? So yeah, some interesting challenges there. You can see further and also you’re absolutely right, some of the gauging of distance, especially depth is more difficult, but we’ve we’ve added some subtle elements to help that. We were we were finding interesting design challenges that we’ve had to solve along the the way for multiple things, but one of them was basically perspective, yeah like handle that while keeping the same you know, hide gameplay and you know. So the players can still judge and react to things and not get frustrated.
On The Franchise for “Let Them Come”…
Jon: This is the second game in the now ‘franchise’ I suppose, the first being the original “Let Them Come“. That was more pixel-art based, so you can definitely see the the crossover in theme, but was that your first step in development for the studio?
Klemen: Yeah, that’s a funny story, actually. I solo developed that game by myself while I was, yeah, while I was an employee at Microsoft, working on another, bought another famous Xbox game, Gears of War.
Jon: No way. Wow.
Klemen: And in my spare time in evenings mostly I was chipping away at Let Them Come. Total passion project, you know? And it was it was crazy too, because it’s by myself, and I ported it to every platform imaginable, you know, PC, Mac, even mobile iOS, Android, Xbox, PlayStation. It was a crazy amount of work, but I don’t know. I was a younger man back then. That’s part of the reason why we did, you know, we brought it (for the sequel). We considered it for a survivor game because the premises, you know, you’re by yourself, all of your team has died, but you’re not gonna go down without a fight, right? So it’s like that’s in the title. “Let them come”. Right. I’m ready. And yeah, you’re, uh, you’re just a soldier there defending the corridor, sort of like a last stand situation. It’s similar to those, you know, old school arcade games where you’re driving a ship, but in this case you’re stationary and the environment is coming towards you. The enemies. It’s just, you know, bullet-hell onslaught. And yeah, you’re you’re jamming to, you know, to some nice retro wave tunes
Jon: You solo developed that, so we’re talking art, sounds, art, everything?
Klemen: Music I commissioned and licenced different artists. I approached and I had some help in the art space for some of the cinematic moments, but everything else, yeah, like 99% of the art and code was solo by me.
Jon: Wow.
Klemen: Was insane.
On Tuatara Games…
Jon: Tuatara Games – you guys are all remotely based all over the world, right?
Klemen: Yeah, that’s another interesting aspect about our studio we’re primarily an external development studio of about 50 people, we’re pretty big and we work on games large and small and we specialise on visual effects. That’s our specialty. We make, you know, visual effects for very famous studios, games and really great indie projects as well. And the way this helps us like we’re we’re basically we can be self funded. You know, we have a small skeleton crew like 6-7 people working on our internal games and gives us complete creative control. And yeah that was one of the things we were just like, we saw the survivors genre and the the the hype around that we were all playing it as well and immediately I thought, man, this game would be really well suited for like another “Let Them Come”. And here we are, a couple a couple of years later, now very exciting for us to release this demo that’s been well received.
Jon: Yeah, it’s interesting. Actually, you’re mentioning about the the kind of setup for for yourselves, yeah, I spent some time out at DICE and at GDC last month, and what particularly surprised me was the number of folks I met from studios that were enormous that I’d never heard of from a from a, I guess more ‘consumer perspective’ that work on some of the biggest games in the industry. And they’re the studios you see at the end of the credits. They don’t get to reap any of the glory, but they are the ones that are arguably in so many ways, the backbone of the industry in terms of actually getting games to play.
On Self-publishing and Partnerships…
Jon: I am curious though, like you mentioned you self published and effectively self coded the first “let them come “Let Them Come.” Is that the case again? That you’re going out there on your own and self-publishing or have you have you partnered with people? What’s the story there?
Klemen: Yeah. Now actually, the first game was I started by myself, but then I partnered with a publisher called Versus Evil and it’s actually the same team we’re working with now on the new game, but under a different name. So that’s how the story started. And then we did another game called Bear Butt Boxing, also an interesting game. Self published that one, but we found the self-publishing journey incredibly difficult. You know, it takes such an expertise. You know, decades of experience, a good publisher can bring that to the table that makes all the difference in trying to sell a product in a very saturated market. So for “Let Them Come: Onslaught” we were very lucky to partner again with the same crew, now called Digital Banditos. They’re they’re publishing on, you know, PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. So that’s another thing that both games have in common, you know, being multi platform which is another thing we’re very excited about. We want to just be able to reach as many players as possible. I think that’s really sick that you can play it on, you know, like switch for example. It’s a pretty old system, right? For all intents and purposes it’s like a 7-8 year old Android device. That was actually a big focus of work on the game, making it run really well and our did our team did fantastic in that respect. The game runs well on very old devices.
On the Industry, Subscription Services and more…
Jon: I guess there’s definitely been a a reckoning for the industry over the last sort of 18 months. There’s many doors we could go down now in terms of topics of discussion, I mean in terms of multi platform releases, we’ve obviously seen Microsoft over the last 18 months taking a much more broader stance of “let’s let’s not try and shoehorn players anymore into playing on this specific box” and it goes against thirty plus years of console war mentality. So there’s there’s a certain contingent of folks that are really struggling with the idea. I don’t think any developer wants less people to play their games. Would that be a fair assumption?
Klemen: Yeah, absolutely. But of course, you know, sometimes those exclusivity deals would come with big financial incentives that as an indie studio, you would be, you know, a fool to say no to. But of course, yeah. That really motivates us as developers, you know, we want to share what we make, so you know, reaching a widest player base as possible would be ideal, of course.
Jon: The big thing nowadays in the games industry is subscription services like PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass. Is there hope to see “Let Them Come: Onslaught” on those at some point in the future?
Klemen: Yeah, of course. We have a stance that we wouldn’t say no to anything like that. You know, we’d be happy to to consider any opportunity like that. And I’m sure like our partner Digital Banditos, they’re gonna be exploring that space a lot, and we’re gonna take their recommendation.
Jon: You’ve obviously got a great partner with Digital Banditos. You’re bringing the game out on multiple platforms. Not everybody has that kind of luck, and that partnership. Would you say that the industry is on a on a little bit of a road to recovery now as people kind of get back into the swing of things post-pandemic or do you think there’s more turbulent times still to come?
Klemen: Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, the way I see it, the industry is so massive and from our perspective, you know also as an external developer, the need for work is certainly still out there. You know, studios are making these massive games, you know big and small. So I think the demand is there. There is just that. Yeah, perhaps there’s been a bit of a restructuring. A lot of a lot of big companies laid off their permanent, you know, employed staff, but perhaps maybe, you know, hopefully we’re coming towards the end of the tumultuous last couple of years because I know that’s not a nice place to exist as a developer. You know, this unknown territory. “Am I gonna keep my job next year or or not”, right? So hopefully things are improving, but certainly from what I can tell, the demand is still there, you know. The the players are insatiable, right? So gotta make those games!
Let Them Come: Onslaught’s “Elevator Pitch”…
Jon: If you had to pitch this game to your audience, what would you say? How would you get folks interested, beyond trying the demo that’s available on Steam right now?
Klemen: I really don’t have a like a really nice succinct pitch prepared. But I would say, you know, if you’re familiar with the genre, we’re not doing it anything crazy innovative. You know, we’re not smashing genres together, but I think what we, well, I think you will find us stand out in this visceral feeling and good game feel and jamming to great music. And especially if you’re familiar and skilled at the genre, you’ll find a nice level of skill in our game where we’re trying to, you know, find the sweet spot of not making the game too difficult for new players, but also offer like a bit of a challenge for veterans of their genre at this point. And yeah, I think that’s my spiel. I think we’re doing a lot of stuff really great and you’ll like the cinematic experience. I think it’s gonna do a good job of engrossing you into our characters and the world.
And that’s it for now! Be sure to keep an eye on XboxEra.com for more coverage on Let Them Come: Onslaught.
