Kickstarter success
In just two days of its Kickstarter launch, Doko Roko met 33% of its funding goal. By the eighth day, this had jumped to 66.6% of the total goal, with the added bonus of being selected as a staff pick on the host site. On November 1st, Mack noted that the project had attracted over 1,000 backers. The good news just kept on coming when Steam officially Greenlit Doko Roko. This means that thousands of players said they would buy the game if it was offered on Steam.
Mack’s celebratory T-shirt design sketch.
A brief introduction to Doko Roko
For all the information officially released by Mack as well as a taste of his creative sense of storytelling, you can check out Doko Roko’s Kickstarter page. For those eager to get to the juicy interview bits, I’ll provide a quick summary of the project, adding pertinent details throughout the interview as well.
As mentioned above, Doko Roko falls into Mack’s experimental category of a 2D rogue-like vertical ascension game. The gameplay emphasizes “lightning-fast combat and a rich atmosphere.”
Doko Roko’s protagonist, the Unslain, utilizes magick and a hefty sword throughout the adventure. The Unslain will encounter the inhabitants of the strange Tower along the way, from lonely folk to aggressive monsters.
This old man may be a strange combination of lonely folk and monster.
Let’s journey into the mind of Eric Mack, shall we?
After improving his art via Noah Bradley’s 12 week Art Camp and learning to code in Java, Mack decided he wanted to be more than a concept artist. His dream evolved to making video games.
Aside from a handful of prototypes, Doko Roko will be Mack’s first fully-fledged video game. His passion drives him to see this project through and garners his full commitment. Given Mack’s dedication to this project, we dug into his sources of inspiration in order to get a solid look into the mind of the creator while uncovering hints at what his game has in store for players.
Gabriella Graham: You’ve been gaming such a long time (“pre-pre-school,” you’ve said). So let’s start with the basics: What games were your favorites growing up and when did you first realize you wanted to pursue a career in video games?
GG: After reading your Kickstarter page, it’s clear that you write with a lot of imagination and communicate your ideas well. This hints a little at the story writing we can expect from Doko Roko, but makes me wonder what writing inspired you. Are there any specific authors, books, games and techniques you draw on to tell a story?
My grandpa used to be pretty much obsessed with sudoku and crossword puzzles. I’d see them littered all over the house all filled in. Him buying a Nintendo entertainment system seemed like the next logical step in this sequence of mental challenges. He literally had like 3 huge plastic containers filled with cartridges and it seemed like he actually played them a lot as I’d see maps that he’d drawn on graph paper as well as passwords and different little secret notes. I think I naturally gravitated toward a lot of the classics. I liked Super Mario Bros as well as Metroid. The first time he told me to go backwards in Metroid I think the top of my head blew off. Megaman X was another big one that I’d play a lot when I got a SNES.
I think I realized I wanted to pursue a career in videogames around middle school. I had no idea what that meant really. My 6th grade science teacher had just given us an assignment one day that was essentially writing out the history of our lives as if we were dead and I wrote that I wanted to work for Naughty Dog.
Enter The Tower. Embrace the experiment.
Doko Roko’s development has been resting on Mack’s shoulders alone for the past year, relying on him for all its programming, animation, and sound effects. The game evolved from Mack’s desire to take the thinly spread fiction of a larger world and lay it finely into a contained space that builds in onto itself rather than expanding outwardly (a.k.a. The Tower).
I like Kurt Vonnegut a lot as an author. The way he presents ideas and ties seemingly tangential threads together is often super enjoyable to me. I like the way Haruki Murakami captures very nuanced and complex emotions very succinctly in his writing.
And I enjoy games like Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus for being very sparse with what narrative bits they choose to reveal to you. There’s so much restraint in these games and the work is that much more powerful because of it.
(We tried uncovering the mystery behind the protagonist, but no dice. Mack didn’t want to reveal too much about this particular secret to prevent spoiling a big part of the game.)
Originally the game was not even called Doko Roko. It was called Grumpy Climbers and it dealt with two little mountain climbers that were tethered together ascending a huge mountainous peak. I liked the idea of controlling two characters at the same time, but in practice it was actually really awful and I was very disenchanted with whatever story there was. It was just meant to be an exercise, but I ended up taking that concept and running with the idea of vertical ascension.
I wanted to work on a project that I cared about, so I started injecting some of the weird philosophical thoughts I’d been having into the story and very quickly it became easy to care about, and easier to criticize how much effort I was putting into it. Turns out if you start to put a lot of yourself into a game you end up caring a lot more about how it’s perceived and how people think about it.
Future development
Mack estimates two more years of hard work on the project, leaving Doko Roko’s launch for late 2017. The game will release on PC, Mac, and Linux. Two months prior to the official release, Mack intends to take advantage of community feedback with a beta test.
With Doko Roko and the Kickstarter as a starting point, Mack hopes to take his indie game studio Okobu and turn it into a thriving business. This could potentially lead to the release of his games on select consoles one day, but he intends to keep an eye on the progress of Doko Roko before setting those specific goals.
Should the Kickstarter gain enough extra cash to hit a stretch goal or two, Mack would love to expand his team of one as well.
GG: You’ve mentioned the possibility of drawing in anthropologists along with animators and sound designers. How will anthropologists effect the story and game design?
GG: How do you intend to release a beta version for testing? Will it be exclusive to your Kickstarter backers?
GG: Doko Roko may still be in development, but the game looks plenty engaging and addictive. Do you already have ideas for your next project? Do you think a sequel would be possible given the story and gameplay of Doko Roko?
Bonus photos
Mack shared some intriguing pieces of concept art across his Kickstarter updates and in a separate forum. A special Twitter page features news on the game’s status and development as well. I’ve included some of Mack’s concept images below to close out this interview.
I’d also rather not say much about Circle of Blood either. I’ll say that it is a completely different genre though.
I’d like to give a special thanks to Eric Mack for his time and all the insightful information he generously provided!
