Many criticisms have been levied against the Nintendo Switch for its relative lack of power, particularly following the launch of Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X. Poorly optimized games like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have only added fuel to that fire. However, the Switch is the third best-selling console of all time with a recorded 122.55 million units sold as of December 2022, and Nintendo's February 2023 Direct shows the hybrid console has plenty of life left in it. One indie game set to hit the Switch soon is Tall Story Games' Lucy Dreaming.
A "love letter" to classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, Lucy Dreaming is very much a product of its developer Tom Hardwidge. He and his wife Emma started Tall Story Games amid COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK, having next-to-no prior experience in the gaming industry. After a Kickstarter campaign in 2021 helped them devote more time to the project, it launched in October 2022, and will now follow suit with a Switch release on February 28. Game Rant spoke to Tom and Emma about the process of porting Lucy Dreaming to Switch, and how they expect it to perform in Nintendo's ecosystem.
Building Up to Lucy Dreaming with Game Jam Practice
Tom's journey into point-and-click development began with Where's My Cloak?, an interactive educational experience commissioned by The Roman Baths Museum. The closest he'd come to creative dev prior was interactive quizzes and such appearing in online banner ads, so he did not know the basics - including the fact that pre-made game engines existed. He built Where's My Cloak? using web-based tech like HTML and JavaScript. His subsequent project using that "cobbled-together" code, Lockdown, caught the attention of other independent developers.
Talking with fellow adventure game nerds inspired Tom to finally pursue his dream of developing a full point-and-click game, with Emma as an organized director responsible for marketing and PR. He began scribbling down ideas for Lucy Dreaming on paper and was able to mock up her bedroom using Visionaire Studio within a week. However, his first real test for the technology came as part of the AdvXJam in 2020.
In just 12 days, Tom created Hair of the Dog by reskinning the groundwork he had begun for Lucy Dreaming. "That gave me a relatively self-contained, solid, and finished game at a high standard." The free game jam title also offered Tall Story Games a chance to practice porting, as Visionaire's basic offerings covered Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. It was a particularly valuable opportunity for Tom to understand Steam's backend systems as someone who had never used Valve's storefront.
"I got to do all my swearing at Steam, Android, and Apple before releasing a full game. Though Android completely changed how it works in the meantime, so I had to re-learn that again."
Tall Story Games on the Ease of Switch Porting
Fast forward to October 2022, Lucy Dreaming launched to positive critical and fan reception on both PC and mobile thanks to its nostalgic pixel art, classic LucasArts-style gameplay, and darkly sarcastic British sense of humor delivered by voice actors like Monkey Island's Dominic Armato and Emma as Lucy. Soon after, Tom decided to order a Nintendo Switch dev kit. While the couple consider themselves non-gamers, not even owning a Switch, Tom grew up playing Super Nintendo and Game Boy.
Lucy Dreaming was designed with gamepad support to make it compatible with the Steam Deck, so Tom said it only took five or six hours to get a version working on Switch. In fact, he feels Switch porting has been "quite simple in a lot of ways" compared to PC and Android in particular.
"I think because the nature of the game is quite simple: it's single-player and 2D, using very little memory with low-res pixel art. The size is less than 300 MB, including voiceover and music. When you're porting to the Switch, avoiding boxes about multiplayer and live-service and so on, it means less hoops to jump through."
That first brush with the Switch dev kit got the game to a nearly 90-percent perfect state without crashing, according to Tom, and a port was approved by Nintendo before Christmas. Still, Tall Story Games waited to release due to some unforeseen complications in the approval process and a desire to drum up interest. Despite what major studios can accomplish with games like Hi-Fi Rush and Metroid Prime Remastered, Tom and Emma's experience at advertising agencies taught them "not to just appear on the scene with a game."
Making Fun Adventure Games for the Whole Family
Tom learned some lessons in porting Lucy Dreaming, particularly regarding UI design and optimizing point-and-click controls for console - especially looking at games like Return to Monkey Island or Lost in Play. Yet there has been a certain "magic" to seeing his game appear alongside Mario and Zelda games in screenshots sent by Tom's brother after receiving an early Switch key.
Tall Story Games expects Switch sales to match Steam based on comparisons to Thimbleweed Park provided by Ron Gilbert; a veteran of the industry responsible for Monkey Island and co-creating the children's education game company Humongous Entertainment, whom Tom said it was "surreal" getting to chat with on social media. However, while fans of the niche genre will point one another to games on PC, the Switch is less predictable due to its wider, typically casual demographic.
However, Emma hopes this becomes an opportunity to introduce younger audiences to the classic genre.
"I look at having a child now, and younger people playing games are not discovering adventure games. I just think it's such a shame, you want to engage children in stories, yet when they're gaming that's not necessarily what they're playing."
Anecdotally, the Hardwidges said they've had experiences at different events where children are suspicious to try an indie game recommended by their parents, and instinctively gravitate toward modern WASD controls. But "almost unanimously" they get invested in solving puzzles, sometimes requiring Tom to break out Hair of the Dog on the convention floor to offer them more of a taste. "That's the true joy," Emma said.
While the duo hopes people buy Lucy Dreaming so that they can continue working on future projects, Tom and Emma say the most important (yet terrifying) thing is building a brand with a reputation and expectations. Emma points to one picture they received over Christmas of a family playing Lucy Dreaming together on vacation. "Obviously people want to play games on their own," Emma said. "But the fact that it can be something other people are involved with is lovely." For parents concerned about the snarky British adventure, a language toggle is also included to remove the "10 or 15 slightly naughty words" for a family game night.
Lucy Dreaming is available now on Mobile and PC, with a Nintendo Switch port releasing on February 28, 2023.