DaveMakes And Mixoluma’s Design Philosophy
By: Jeffrey Rousseau
Tags: Indie Game, Videogames, Technology, Gaming, Interview

DaveMakes And Mixoluma’s Design Philosophy

Going behind the scenes on a shiny new flow-state puzzler

One of the best things about entertainment is legitimate discovery. Information is fast, word of mouth is everywhere, and ads are commonplace. So it’s rare to say “you just came across” something. Yet, when you do it’s fantastic. This is what happened when I saw one random “like” on social media that lead me to Mixolumia.

If I’m to be honest, this game couldn’t have come at a better time. This title has the lowest barrier of entry imaginable. The game carries a familiarity we’ve seen for decades. Yet, it definitely carries its own unique relaxing vibe. Whether you’re playing for 5 minutes or an hour, the title allows you to chill out.

Within the year of 2020, a game like Mixolumia is so timely and necessary it’s as if planets aligned for its release. So, what exactly inspired this title’s creation? What design philosophies were fundamental in its creation? What does the creative process look for a small time indie dev team? With these questions — and others — in mind, I interviewed developer DaveMakes.

Jeffrey Rousseau (JR):

What inspired you to become a game developer? A specific game? Specific events?

DaveMakes (DM):

When I was a kid in the ’80s, my dad had a Commodore 64. They had magazines you could get back then with all the code for a game printed in them, and the idea was you would meticulously copy it all into your machine and then you could play the game. I don’t think even my dad understood what the code meant, but it felt like following a set of instructions to cast a spell. It felt like magic.

Later, I got into stuff like QBASIC, which was still difficult to understand but allowed me to make some really simple programs of my own. It was a lot harder to make anything back then, and my brain wandered too much to really buckle down and become a decent progammer. So it was just a hobby, I would occasionally have fun with until around 2008 to 2010 when I was getting a degree in graphic design. Weirder, rougher, more art-focused indie games popped onto my radar, and I was really drawn to it. It turned out I was really not looking forward to designing advertisements and corporate logos or whatever, so I shifted my focus and got into games.

JR:

The indie games space feels like being in a giant library. There’s so many choices available for us as individuals. How do you navigate that feeling of competition or attention? Or do you see this differently?

DM:

There are so many games out there, it’s really intimidating. I have no idea how anyone succeeds in this market, or how folks can justify the gamble of putting tons of resources into a project that might not make any waves, even if it’s great. I don’t have a very business-oriented mind, so it’s difficult for me to say how I process this stuff, but I figure if I can find some level of novelty in an underserved niche, and I keep my development costs extremely low, hopefully I can find just enough of an audience to make it worthwhile and keep going.

JR:

I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but Mixolumia is a very chill game. I’m assuming this was because of the games that inspired it. Was this decision to be so intrinsically calm a decision to be as welcoming as possible?

DM:

I deal with a lot of issues related to anxiety, depression, and what I’m pretty convinced is undiagnosed ADHD. I think I naturally gravitated towards designing the game by chasing what I needed from it. I honestly don’t think I could stand to work on a game that stressed me out. The game does really pick up, though, which I think rewards my tendency to hyper focus on something once it’s pulled me into that sort of meditative state.

JR:

One of the most profound features is that music is reactionary. As you gain more points and score the beat picks up and tempo kicks in. This is becoming almost universal with these particular games. Was there a specific logical reason for this feature? Vs just having a song loop in the background?

DM:

This game is something of a love letter to the Art Style series of games, which had really interesting dynamic and reactive music, and of course Lumines and more recently Tetris Effect, which has really set the bar for the genre now. Audio is such an important and underappreciated aspect of gameplay. You can change just the sound of something and the exact same interaction can be made to feel snappier, or weightier, or smoother. I threw out sounds while working on this game because they made the controls feel less precise.

On top of that, music and the way it builds can help draw players into the game. I honestly don’t think people would find the game as compelling without it. It was also just an interesting challenge to myself as a developer, especially when I realized how cool it would be to open up the music system to customization. I’ve always loved games that let you create and customize your own content, and I wanted to give people that opportunity in a way I hadn’t seen done before.

JR:

Has their been a specific fan response to Mixoluma that you were very surprised with? Or certain things fans have shared online?

DM:

The whole response has absolutely floored me. I guess people think I’m joking when I say I thought maybe ten of my closest friends would buy the game. My expectations were extremely low. It’s been very cool just seeing people playing and enjoying the game, but also watching a community spontaneously form to create and share color palettes and music packs has been extremely humbling. It’s so rewarding to see other folks find a creative outlet in this thing I worked on. There’s also people like the speedrunners who jumped on board right away. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of people speedrunning a game like this! It was so fun to watch them struggle to beat a five minute marathon in the first few days, and now someone just cracked 3:20.

JR:

You’re a multi-talented person, musician, designer, artist, etc… What hobbies outside of game design helped you foster your creative output? Or rather what hobbies help you stay creative?

DM:

I’m the kind of person who feels compelled to try all sorts of different things. In recent years, I’ve intentionally cut back on the number of hobbies I have to try and more deeply engage with my favorite activities and also to try and limit how much hobby-related junk I keep laying around the apartment. It’s also hard to draw the line between things I do for fun, things I’ve turned into part of my job, and things that have held over from failed ventures of the past. Like, I really tried to get a music career going when I was 19 and couldn’t really keep it up, but I kept it around as a fun thing I did privately. But now I’m making music for my own games, so… yeah.

What I really like to do that isn’t something I can accidentally monetize is visit museums and look at mountains. Bonus points if it’s a museum by some mountains. My favorite kind of museum is contemporary art. If it’s really weird, like aggressively obtuse and alienating, I get a huge charge out of that. My favorite mountains are the ones covered in coniferous trees, preferably in the early morning while the sun is still low, with clouds or mist rolling over them. Japan is really great for this. Give me some mossy rocks too? Hell yeah.

Credit: Paul Tamayo.

JR:

Is there an aspect of your design philosophy of Mixolumia we haven’t discovered yet? Or one most of us would be surprised to know about?

DM:

Gosh, I wish I had something smart to say to this. If somebody really digs into the game and infers some galaxy brain philosophy underpinning it all, I will absolutely nod my head and sigh, “Ah yes, you have now uncovered the Secrets of my Craft.” But really, I don’t know. It’s jazz. I’m just chasing gut feelings and stuff my brain wakes me up with at 3am.

As mentioned in the interview with producer Paul Tamayo (linked above), you can’t help but just flow with the mechanics of the title. Keep in mind, this was a puzzle game that conceptualized on Twitter. As Paul notes so poignantly, we are given a game that requires both sides of your brain to play. But also feels so laidback at the same time. It’s taken interesting ideas to become something new and refreshing.

JR:

As a game developer what is the biggest misconception you see about your career? Or one people often get wrong? Or something you feel we should be more aware of?

DM:

In game development, the stuff that’s really hard isn’t what you think would be hard. It’s the things everybody expects but doesn’t appreciate, all the menus and settings and saving and loading, compatibility garbage and cross platform support. It might just feel harder because it’s not very interesting to work on and nobody will like a gif of the result on Twitter. It really complicates even a relatively simple game like Mixolumia.

JR:

If you see the success you’d like to see, what would you like to see for the future? Possible ports? New stages?

DM:

We’ve done well enough that I can look at other platforms more seriously. Itch has been great, and I love them, but it’s a limited audience. The advantage of that is that it’s given me some time to fix remaining issues and respond to player feedback to strengthen the game without too many people being upset at me, but it would be neat to try and widen that audience soon. In addition to that, and we haven’t yet hit numbers where it would be financially responsible for me to do this, but my dream would be to be able to hire some more folks to make music for the game.

Specifically, I would love to be able to leverage any success I reach in order to channel funds and attention towards some upcoming audio folks, especially people from marginalized backgrounds who aren’t getting a fair shake in the industry and could potentially use any opportunity as a springboard to better things. I don’t want to sound self-aggrandizing when I say that, because this still feels to me like a very small project, but a primary goal of mine working in this space has always been to try and make a dent in fostering something resembling equity in the industry however I can.

JR:

If you had to pitch the game to folks whom don’t normally play indies? How would you?

DM:

I feel like Mixolumia fits into a genre that’s very approachable to a non-gamer crowd. It seems like everybody and their grandmother played Tetris on the gameboy. Stuff like Bejeweled and Candy Crush were household names. Any pitch I give is going to be loaded with industry terms and gamer baggage, so instead of describing the game to someone, usually I just pull up a video on my phone, or stick them in front of a laptop running relaxed mode. There’s a fair amount of depth to discover in the way blocks slide, but the core concept is so simple and the player feedback is obvious enough that people can usually tell right away if it’s the kind of experience they’re into within a few seconds of looking at it.

It is without question for me to say that this is one of my favorite games for the year. Dave was able to create something that anyone can play within a matter of minutes. The idea of playing this game and experiencing any levels of stress is hard to believe. What better reason is there to play? I look forward to see what’s in store for the game and what DaveMakes does next.

Mixolumia is available for purchase via itch.io. You can also add the game to your Steam wishlist. It’s Steam released date hasn’t been announced yet.