GamesNight continues coverage of the growing video game industry in Aotearoa. Recently, 18 New Zealand teams attended PAX AUS thanks to support from CODE (Centre of Digital Excellence).
We had a great talk with Shrikkanth, the founder of Astronaut Diaries, about their debut title, Denari, a narrative-driven hack and slasher with a telekinetic twist. We spoke about their recent PAX experience, the team’s development journey, and the many inspirations that went into Denari, from its artistic design to its heartfelt story.
Hey there Shrikkanth, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to GamesNight. How are you and the team feeling after PAX?
PAX AU was fantastic. In 2023, it was such an invigorating experience that it was important for us to bring the whole team across in 2024. There’s nothing more motivating than watching probably over a hundred people play the demo and resonate with it. It was awesome to speak with gamers who remembered us from last year and specifically sought us out. Experiences like that pull us out of the tunnel vision of development and remind us of why we’re on this journey. It was especially important to us for our brilliant new animator, Rachel Khan to have this experience, and I can confirm she was super motivated by it.
Can you please tell us about your studio, Astronaut Diaries and your journey in game development so far? I see the studio was founded in 2017?
My entry into the game development pathway was a bit strange. I quit my old software job and just started making things under the studio, Astronaut Diaries. The initial ideas weren’t very compelling, and I slowly realised that to make a great game I had to pick something that A – I would play and B – I had the capability of making. Given it’s such a programming-heavy genre, I landed on hack and slashers, and that eventually lead to the early prototype for Denari. I showed this to my friend, Isabelle Dela Torre, who introduced me to her colleague, Tamihana Greaves. These two came on board as the artists and thus, the Denari squad was born.
Denari looks fantastic! Can you tell us about it and the inspiration behind it?
Our art director Tamihana Greaves’ key influences range from Nintendo games to graffiti art. He’s also infused a lot of the character design with touches of the teams’ various cultures. Some of the weapon designs have an influence of Māori bone carvings as a nod to his own culture.
Taiu has an immediate iconic mascot look to him. Can you tell us how this design process came about?
Taiu’s design process went through many iterations. At first, we didn’t really know what the setting of Denari was, and were tossing up ideas from steampunk to classic fantasy. When we figured out the lore of the world a bit more, we decided that Taiu’s home town, Port Nali, is a fishing village, as a nod to my own family’s background as fishermen from Tamilnadu, India. Taiu’s design therefore had to work within this setting, so the rest of the qualities that Tamihana gave him, from his fish-hook inspired sword to his bare feet to his pony-tail all emerged from there.
The Denari army looks fascinating and frightening at the same time, can you explain some of the enemies we might face?
The Denari host is designed to push the player’s mastery of our combat system. Angel is a sorceress who can summon bolts of lightning from the sky. Of course, if your timing is good, you can catch the lightning and redirect it to cause a chain-lightning effect. The Titan is a giant beast who fights with his fists. It’s not a great idea to take him head-on, but standing back and blasting smaller enemies into him can help to wear him down. The Phantom is a teleporting assassin who can close the distance and strike you instantly. A good way to take him out is to wait until he’s teleported close, then to parry his sword strike and counter him.
I hope you can see how each of these enemies brings out a different strategy from players. This will allow us to combine them into larger groups and make players go through some conflicting decisions in combat, which will hopefully be both challenging and fun.
There seems to be various elements such as fire and lightning, can you go into detail on how this may alter player combat approach?
This is something we’re working through as we build. At the moment, it’s possible to set fire to flammable objects such as wooden houses by redirecting bombs or fireballs at them. If you push an enemy into a burning structure, it causes additional damage. We’re always looking at ways to encourage the use of the telekinetic powers, so we’ll continue to explore ideas like this going forward.
Combat does appear to have an element of difficulty to it! Can you explain the process of finding that balance?
This is really tough! I think the balance we’re trying to strike is related to “fairness” in games. If a player fails, and it’s their fault, the game is fair. If the player fails, and it’s the game’s fault, the game is unfair.
As we’ve ironed out fairness problems, we’ve found that players are a lot more receptive to difficulty. We all like a challenge that comes with the promise that it is solvable. That way we can trust that our persistence will pay off.
It appears the village elder, Ooma doesn’t approve of Taiu, I think she might be a little harsh on poor Taiu!?
She sure is! But it comes from a place of love, or over-protectiveness, depending on your perspective. Taiu wants to join the Apostles, an order of warrior monks who dedicate their lives to protecting the people of Qira. This is a great honour, but it comes with great risk. Ooma is trying to be Taiu’s voice of reason, to counter his other influence, Teach, who is Taiu’s voice of ambition.
Denari looks to also have a great focus on narrative and lore such as the Goddess Qira! Can you describe this process and what went into designing this world?
We started with the combat of the game, and worked from there to try and justify its existence.
Why does Taiu use a sword? How does he end up with his abilities? What is the nature of these powers? How about the Denari’s use of magic? What’s the origin of their powers?
I think we chose answers that resonated with us on a personal level. A topic that’s really important to me is self reflection and “spirituality”, so it felt natural to inject these themes into the world. This lead to us creating the goddess Qira as a source of Taiu’s powers.
The result of the process of answering these questions was a coming of age hero’s journey, with themes related to our own upbringing as immigrant and indigenous kids growing up in western society. That might sound strange as an influence for an action game, but we do think it’s important for any story to come from the heart, and we hope people feel that when they play the game.
How long has Denari been in development, since the studio formation?
6 years on and off. Though recently, thanks to funding from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE), we are now a full time team.
What made you go with this style of game for Denari and to tell Taiu’s story?
I mentioned that I set out to make a game that I would play, and that I had the capability of building. So, making a combat game was a pragmatic goal, but an artistic one too.
At the time I felt really inspired by game modes within larger games that placed players in a confined environment and got them to fight enemies. Kingdom Hearts’ coliseum and Hyper Light Drifter’s boss rush mode come to mind. I was blown away by how much fun could be had when you reduce gameplay to just combat in a box. This inspired me to dive into the depths of combat design, and to make a game where the cornerstone of the experience is sick-as-hell combat. The telekinetic angle was something we landed on during development by play testing a lot and thinking about what mechanics might help to augment the experience and make it its own thing.
At one point, Denari was very much a pure-combat experience, with not much story attached to it at all. Further in the development journey, the team realised that none of us really enjoy games that don’t have a story component, so we began asking ourselves questions about why any of this fighting was happening, what our character’s motivation must be and those I mentioned above.
Your question is framed as though we started with a story but the truth is that we began with getting a sense for the style of the game. We didn’t start with a concrete idea. Instead, we built from the ground up and eventually landed on a cohesive identity, from gameplay to story.
Were you inspired by any games for this direction?
We love games with fast paced combat, engaging character arcs and intriguing lore. Hyper Light Drifter and Kingdom Hearts come to mind as early inspirations. Furi and Nier Automata are great references when we’re discussing design.
As for the delivery of the story, we are always inspired by the master, Hironobu Sakaguchi. Games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 9 are our key influences for the delivery of our narrative.
NZ development scene is thriving thanks to studios like CODE helping teams get started and accelerate their process, what do you think of the current state of the NZ development scene and its progression?
I think the New Zealand scene is in a beautiful loop of forward momentum at the moment, where each success has a blast radius that helps to create more successes. Our musician and sound designer, David Mason also worked on Dredge. The knock on effect that Dredge’s success has had on our own credibility has been really cool to witness. “A rising tide lifts all boats” would be the Dredge-appropriate adage. I’ve had fun name-dropping David at conferences and getting a “wooooooah” response. We’re very proud of him, and we’re always quick to brag about how we found him first.
CODE is a team of absolute legends. Things changed for the better for us when CODE’s industry development manager, Vee Pendergrast found us at a local showcase. Since then, we’ve travelled with CODE to conferences, attended their business workshops and successfully applied for their startup funding. CODE have helped paved the way for many successful studios, and we’re honoured they’ve decided to support us too.
We are really doing our best to succeed critically or financially so we can pay the momentum provided to us by Black Salt Games and CODE forward.
Thanks so much for your time and we can’t wait to experience this journey ourselves! Is there anything else you’d like to add on how players can keep up with you?
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