Minit Fun Racer Devs Discuss The Fun and Challenge of Making the Game
Game Rant recently sat down with half of the development team of Minit Fun Racer, a charity fundraising game set in the same universe as 2018 indie title Minit. JW and Kitty, as they introduced themselves, were excited to talk about how they planned and created the arcadey racer, and where the money raised would go. However, they also talked about how fun it was to get the old crew back together to make the game during downtime and discussed the ins and outs of making such deceptively simple games.
We first asked why they tend to use time limits, 60 seconds for Minit and 10 for Fun Racer, rather than a more traditional rogue-like reset caused by player error. They explained that the 60-second limit in Minit started out as a fun challenge for players, but also meant the developers themselves had to work within difficult design limits to keep the game fun. They opined that the added challenge only brought out more creativity. Intrigued, we asked for more specific details on the challenges and benefits of making a game as simple as Fun Racer.
JW: I think the fact that it’s black and white with a simple art style, it makes it very easy to iterate. If we have an idea we can add it into the game in only a few minutes, just to try it.
Kitty: Definitely. Before, we all came from bigger projects. I worked on Horizon Zero Dawn... If you wanted to experiment with something, add something to the game it became a huge project. You had to set up a meeting, talk to multiple people, it was such an undertaking.... Because this is smaller team with the four of us, we can just put things in and see if it works.
JW: At the same time with the black and white artstyle, sometimes it’s really hard to make the art clear. Every pixel needs to be just right. You can’t just give it a color so it's clear to the player- 'avoid it because it’s red,' or whatever. You [Kitty] and Dom [Dominic Johann] did great making it read well.
Kitty: We worked in such an iterative way that made it fun. In Minit Fun Racer there’s the store, and the first draft of the store had a painting with a bike. Then we said, how fun would it be if you spend some money, there will be a new painting?
JW: So the shop keeps upgrading, and as you buy more items the shopkeep gets richer.
In other interviews with Game Rant, indie developers have mentioned similar benefits of working on smaller titles. The tradeoff of working on smaller games seems to be the ability to try out more unusual ideas, and the ease with which trial and error can be used to make those ideas work. Kitty and JW also mentioned an interesting story about adding fun little details to the game's shop, so we asked for more examples of similar moments in development.
Kitty: Very quickly we realized there is a joy in hitting trashcans, and hitting more of them in a row, so we decided to add a boost from hitting them to the store as an upgrade.
JW: We originally put them in as obstacles, but it was so much more fun to run into them. So now there is the trash turbo item. Hitting trashcans makes you go faster. The whole game was little things like that. We made a really comically long limousine to put in, and then thought, that’s an expensive car, I really want to dent it and annoy the rich person sitting in it. So then that became a side goal.
Kitty: -or hidden things in the background. We have “vegan mode” and it makes the billboards change from things like hotdogs to falafel.
JW: We love putting dumb jokes in. If you have fun making a game, it will shine through in the end result.
Kitty: Also, making a game is pretty personal. The little stories we add come from things we’ve seen or people we like. If you add things from your own life it will be original, because nobody else has that story.
After playing Minit Fun Racer ourselves, it's very clear that the game is dripping with charm, and the fun that the developers had making it shines through. Of course, Minit Fun Racer is also all about raising money for charitable causes, so buying a copy means more than just getting a fun, light little game to check out.
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