Video: Make Games Like a Horse: The Design of Bugsnax
In this GDC 2023 talk, John Murphy of Young Horses goes through the specific (and very colorful) internal pitching and prototyping methodology that lead the studio from its first game (Octodad) to 2020's hit Bugsnax. In it, he runs from the studio's history and surprise hit that started as a student project, to their long, involved design process so they could avoid the "sophomore slump" after Octodad: Dadliest Catch released.
"We ended up just returning to the same method that we learned from mentors in school about how to decide what to make," says Murphy, brandishing a whiteboard with plenty of reference art.
"…How we did it was everyone reflected on what they were preoccupied with or inspired by. And everyone on the team would pitch here just like a few random inspirations that people had: things like Space Jam, or Pharrell's big hat.” Screenshots of both feature prominently on the moodboard slide.
"So the way that it worked was we went through multiple rounds of fewer more detailed pitches, starting with just elevator pitches, or just titles of games like here we got things like Burrowing Dirt bros, or Alternate Reality Steve Irwin."
Eventually, the team settled on three main concepts they wanted to dive into further, and they began working on simple prototypes. Murphy walks through each concept with accompanying reference art and videos of the functional prototypes.
"So the first thing we prototyped was something that we were calling Summer Camp. The elevator pitch was: 'you are a misfit kid trapped in a mysterious summer camp. If you want to escape, you need to take pictures, make friends and hunt down urban legends. So these are a few of the inspirations for that. And here is what we came up with,'" he said, running
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