As part of our ongoing mission to highlight developers big and small, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Game Director Filip Coulianos at Keepsake Games to chat about Jump Space, which releases tomorrow into Early Access on Steam and Game Preview on Xbox Series X|S.
Please note this interview has been lightly edited for clarity, but you can watch the full thing over on YouTube.
Jon: Jump Space! It’s launching on September 19th. And it’s been a journey for you guys. You’ve been running beta tests, Steam Next-Fest demos. How are the team at Keepsake Games feeling?
Filip: The energy is through the roof right now. I think ever since we did the demo, so we had an open demo that anybody could download during Steam Next Fest a couple of months ago. And of course, that was nerve-wracking. It was the first time we just let the floodgates open. And since then, I can just sit and feel the energy in the office. I have this thing usually where I’ve been in lead positions for quite some time in different projects. And then usually I kind of just lean back and I just listen to the conversations and the tapping of the keyboards every now and then just to feel the mood. And actually, if you do that consistently over the years, you can tell that the energy right now is very, very good – just the ambience of what’s happening. And the last couple of months, what we’ve, the team has put together, adding to what already was, a pretty positive experience in the demo has been absolutely incredible. So people are at the studio are really hyped for sure.
Jon: Keepsake Games, from a team perspective – this your first title, right? How did the team come together?
Filip: That’s an interesting story, actually. So we were actually old university pals back in 2006. That’s when we met for the first time. So we started game development in different, you know, programming design arts in the University of in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. And we had an amazing time together there for three years until we all graduated. And then, we kept in touch. And back in those days, so this was around 2010, roughly, when our studies were over, everybody goes to Stockholm, because that’s where all the studios were back then. It’s a hub, yeah. So, you know, we stay in the same city and kept in touch, but did different projects, different studios. And then since then, every now and then, we kind of, if I’ve been on situations where, we need an artist, I know who to call, or, I need a designer, I know who to call. So we kind of worked together on and off on a series of projects and kind of wanted to do something together for many, many years. And when we founded Keepsake Games, so that was 4 1/2 years ago, must have been, yeah, 2021. We were at this juncture where all of us were kind of finishing projects or like, we’re ready to move on to something new. We just happened to be in that situation, all of us. And we kind of agreed on like, let’s finally pick up the red phone and sort of make the call and sort of make this happen. So that’s why it happened back then. And since then, you know, we were five founders, all with sort of different skill sets and backgrounds when it comes to what companies we worked on. But since then, we’ve grown the studio from 5 people up to 16, who we are today. And little by little, we’ve been growing, trying not to grow too big. I think we said we’re never going to be bigger than 12. We kind of breached the value a little bit. Yeah, it’s very important, actually, for us to kind of stay agile and then not, you know, I’ve seen a lot of companies growing very, very big without really knowing what they want to do. And then that’s been very detrimental. So yeah, it’s something small.
Jon: Jump Space is out tomorrow. I’ve played around 20 hours in Early Access, and folks can dig into my review-in-progress now. How did the idea of Jump Space come about? What was the motivation to make the game?
Filip: Right, so then we have to wind back the clock quite a lot of years actually. So when I had my first job, this was 2012, 2013. I was new in the industry. I thought everything was super cool, super amazing. I thought everything was fantastic. So I certainly didn’t feel like, you know, working 8 hours per day, making, you know, I was a level designer building cool levels. was enough for me. I wanted to understand all the different disciplines, learning programming, learning art, all these things. So I was constantly looking for things to do, hobby projects on my own. And that’s when I came across a game called Artemis Bridge Simulator. It’s a very niche title where there are like four or five people and each and every one of you plays as the crew of a Star Trek type ship. So one person has a screen with helms, one person has a screen with, the engines, engineering and stuff like that. And it’s all just numbers and sliders. You don’t have any graphics really.
Filip: But the magic happened between the players, right? Like it was almost like a tool for role-playing. And the community was really strong and I thought, this is amazing. However, there were like, you know, a lot of obvious design flaws in that title where, for example, you know, you could, if you were in charge of comms, and you were in combat, there was nothing for you to do. You could just ask them to give up like every five seconds. And I thought, there is an opportunity here. Like the fantasy is amazing. There seems to be a community. People did their own trailers for the game, you know, dressing up, filming themselves in the rooms. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. So I just basically thought, you know, I can probably do something more interesting than this. I just have to learn how to code and learn how to do network. No easy task. Well, it’s not, yeah, it’s more about time and commitment, I think. So that’s what I did. I committed a hell of a lot of time learning all these things and sort of visualizing what a game like that would be from a first-person perspective and kind of have this fluid thing of like, okay, if comms is not interesting, then I can just leave comms and do something else. So the concept was there from the very beginning. And then I and all my friends were really excited, always asking how things were going, because, I had to work almost every day, hours every day for years and years and years. And it started looking like a proper game. It was not just boxes and stuff. And then I decided to make a trailer. This was around 2019.
Filip: I just made like a small video [of Hyperspace: Pirates of Atira]. explaining the game, having some cool shots, I guess, and it blew up on Reddit. So suddenly I had, I had a Discord channel with 10 people. It was just me and my buddies and suddenly it was thousands of people flowing in. This was Sunday evening and I’m like, I have to go to bed because I had to work tomorrow. And people were, thought it was, a company. making a professional idol. And it was just me. And I’m like, I don’t even know what Discord works. Like, how do I, how do I manage this? So I had to like call a friend, like, can you do something? Yeah. And I grabbed a few people right there and then on different time zones just to help out. I had to trust someone. I’m going to trust you guys. Yeah, Keep the channel in check while I go to work. And then it was a bit crazy, actually. The response was way more than I thought. I just posted a video and that was it, right?
So anyway, that game, there were some articles written about it and stuff like that. And then I thought, okay, there is some interest here. There’s some genuine interest in this fantasy. You know, maybe this is it, you know. And that sparked the idea of we need to find a timing or like, you know, when this can happen. And then this was at the end of back then I worked at Hazelight, so I did, I was working on It Takes Two. So I was like wrapping that game up and I thought, okay, you know what, I love working at Hazelight. I was part of building that studio up and I thought whatever Hazelight’s going to do in the future is going to be absolutely amazing. But maybe they don’t need me. Yeah, I’ve done enough. So, that was the toughest, toughest meeting I’ve ever had was to meet up with Joseph and say, You know what? I think I have to do my own thing now.
Jon: Jump Space to me is a medley of different genres. We’ve got elements of Left 4 Dead in terms of the on-foot combat carnage, Sea of Thieves for the ship-based crew aspects. And then you can insert your favourite Roguelite title in there on top bringing those mechanics. What was the inspiration for bringing all those genres together?
Filip: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, actually. We looked a lot at those games that you mentioned. So Left for Dead, Lost Colony, we played it quite a lot as well. It’s kind of very, conceptually very similar. And we thought, okay, if we were making this game, what would we do different? And we’re very much experience driven, if that makes sense. Like, to be honest, I don’t think the game itself is very sort of elegant in its game design. Like chess is an elegant design game. Our game is much more about explosions. Right?
Jon: Yeah, I can’t disagree. There’s a lot of explosions!
Filip: There’s so many games that are very elegant and beautiful in terms of their game design. Ours is much more about the visuals and like, in a space game, I want to do X or I expect that. Okay, how can we make that work within the systems we have or within the game that we want to make that is simple and easy to understand because we really wanted to make something that was accessible and also appealing not only to hardcore space fans, but also the hardcore space fans ‘normal’ friends, maybe, and stuff like that.
So there is this magical balance there of, okay, we want all these things. How do we make them sort of easy to understand and not too complex and too deep? We really liked Sea of Thieves because they have very similar challenges that we had in terms of being a crew. But we wanted it to be a bit more deep. Like in space ships, it’s all about engineering and components and building and upgrading and stuff like that. Sea of Thieves had none of that. But the simplicity of Sea of Thieves is clearly very appealing to people. So how do we find that balance of making components something you want, but not too complex. Yeah, so that’s been why we look at other games a lot. Left 4 Dead is a good example as well. The on foot experience when you run around shooting stuff. We also even have what we call ‘the director’. It’s like an AI in the background that kind of spawns in events if you’re playing a bit too slow and stuff like that.
Jon: I did wonder if there was an effectively a system there that was kind of, “Are they having an easy time? Nothing’s happened in the last five minutes. Let’s hurt them a little bit.” That’s cool.
Filip: Yeah, I went deep with how Left 4 Dead did it. So you know, technically like how does their system work? Is it something that’s applicable to our game? And you know, sort of did a lot of research on that. Same with Doom, actually. Doom has a fantastic system for how the enemy AI decides when they can attack or not. We’ve been very open about looking at all the other games. We’re definitely not the people who would sit in our own cellar and not take inspiration. We’re the complete opposite, looking through all sort of open material, lectures, on how different developers did things from games that we find interesting and sort of see what we can borrow there.
Jon: There’s a lot of different environments – Icy moons, deserts, asteroid fields. Is each of these a handmade thing or are there assets and some form of procedural generation in place?
Filip: They’re actually handmade. The philosophy…I mean, I come from the background of being a level designer, making environments myself, and always been a little bit sceptical about procedural generation, at least in terms of like, ‘live’ procedural generation.
Jon: Letting a system do it for you all the time?
Filip: Yeah, so like it’s super fine to use it for, you know, having a tool in the editor. So you click and you get something,and then you hand place things. But we bet on the fact that we could make the tooling and all the sort of systems fast enough that you don’t need it. That we don’t need procedural generation. And instead we would just have a very large amount of content. Because then we can ensure quality. What my sort of, when I look at certain procedural generated environments, they’re usually like, okay, once you’ve seen the deepest valley and the tallest mountain, everything looks the same. And in a game where, it needs to be as tight as Left 4 Dead, you can’t have that. There has to be some human element to building these environments, making them interesting. So this corridor has something or this space station has something that space station does not have. We bet on finding ways to work very, very fast and make sure that, going from nothing to having a level that’s in rotation and sort of working is a couple of days basically.
Jon: There’s a lot of variety in the missions. Do you have more crazy ideas floating around?
Filip: Yeah, so we’re constantly looking for themes, things that we don’t have in the game, but what, I usually say like, I think we have the chance now of making the best space adventure game ever made. And then we need to tick all these boxes. We just have to. We just have to find ways of incorporating all these things, creating this blob of stuff and hopefully it kind of sticks together and kind of provides something consistent to the players.
I think we had 570,000 unique players in the demo, which is absolutely crazy. So with two weeks, you had that many people playing. And then, of course, you had some players who were super competitive. they’re like, “The game is too easy. I want me and my crew to really get challenged. I want an endless mode. I want to keep jumping and jumping till the game is so hard, I can’t finish it.” So then you have the one extreme. And then the other extreme is, “I just want to hang around and have pizza. Like, what’s up with all these ships? I don’t like it. You know, it’s too stressful.” And I think, we need to kind of take those extremes into account and be like, okay, maybe some missions are super casual and some are super extreme. And with a game where you have a map and you do different missions based on your preferences, I think there is an opportunity there to kind of cater to those extremes without diluting the whole experience.
Jon: How much work went into the world-building of the Jump Space universe?
Filip: I think some of the some of the science fiction games that have stood the test of time have done so because their world and universe is appealing to a lot of people. I’m talking Mass Effect and Whole World and those games who’ve done a fantastic job of making the world feel alive. And I, you know, we thought very early on that that’s something we should try to do. But at the same time, it is a cooperative game and a lot of people just want to go in and blow stuff up. So we have to find that balance of like, you know, I usually talk about Diablo in that sense, because Diablo, sure, has a story, it’s there, but it’s not ‘in the way’. So we wanted a theme that’s very simple, I can explain in one sentence, you know, the machines have taken over the galaxy, and you’re a pocket of survivors trying to bring the fight back to the machines. We’re trying to work with those themes that are very easy to digest, but still conveying something that is coherent and sort of, the characters are kind of funny and sort of interesting in their own way. So I think we haven’t put huge amounts of work into it if you count the man hours, but it’s definitely more than most games in our genre, I would say.
Jon: As you begin the journey in Early Access, you’re working with the community. I’ve spoken to a number of developers who have gone via Early Access, and one thing I’ve heard repeatedly is just how important that community support is. Is there anything that you would want to reiterate and say to them as you begin this first brave step out into the unknown?
Filip: Yeah, I think I’ve said it many times to the community before, but one, I don’t think communities understand how impactful they are. Even for example, we started a studio, you’re looking for investors just saying, hey, we got a group of people who are really into this. They’re already sitting there in the Discord channel waiting. Like that has an impact on us getting the funding to do this thing. So even at that sort of hugely fundamental level, having that support actually means so much as a developer. At this stage, we started a closed beta, I think, in February of this year, that would be 8 months ago or something like that. Getting people who are generally interested in the game, really try to break it and put the hours in. some people have over 100 hours already, which is insane to me, but they do. And reporting things. that, professional quality assurance does not.
For me, it’s been a revelation actually. It’s beautiful in a way. I had this experience just last week where I was chasing down a bug that was really kind of complex to double check that everything was fixed. And I was about to leave the office. It was late. And I just typed, you know, guys, You guys have found this bug. Can you help me, you know, see if it’s still in the build, the update that we just pushed? And, you know, I go to bed, come back in the morning, 10 guys have been grinding for 10 hours straight to see if they could make it happen. And they’re like, no, it’s fixed now. You’re good. And I’m like, what the hell? This is crazy. We owe so much to these people and I, you know, we have plans to maybe give them something in return.
Jon: Anything that you would want to tease that’s coming in the future?
Filip: We are enormous Half-Life fans. Well, we…I would say I am. And we’ve got some fun, some fun melee action going on with some inspiration from there that I think looks really cool. Because we haven’t really done melee weapons yet. And we’re going to kickstart that with a certain item that you Half-Life fans would kind of appreciate seeing.
Jon: Last question, I have to ask this on a personal level because I was deeply offended, but pineapple on pizza? I mean, are you guys for real? No option for pepperoni or a meat feast? Like, what’s going on?
Filip: [Laughs] In Sweden, we’re very open. We have bananas as well, on the pizzas. Anything goes.
Jon: Thank you so much for your time – and best of luck for launch!
Jump Space is coming to Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview on September 19th. If you’d like to know a little more about the game, check out our in-depth Review-in-Progress.
