Scrubbin' Trubbleis an upcoming co-op roguelike from indie developer Odd Object. It tasks players with the simple goal of cleaning out numerous procedurally generated levels of grime, dirt and trash, incorporating aturn-based combat systemthat plays out at a speed that almost feels real-time.
Game Rant sat down with Odd Object’s co-founder, Tyriq Plummer, to discussScrubbin' Trubble’s concept and gameplay. He explained the thought process behind the ideas present in the game.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How The Idea For Scrubbin' Trubble Was Conceived
Q:Scrubbin’ Trubbleseems like a unique concept; you’ve blended a couple of different things together. What was the inspiration behind the idea?
A:I’ve always been really kind of obsessed with the idea of a multiplayer, traditional roguelike. Not being real time, not having any significant time pressure where it’s like, you only have 10 seconds to decide your action, that sort of thing. Part of the appeal of traditional roguelikes is the ability to take your time thinking out a situation. But that also doesn’t tend to mesh well with multiplayer, because it’s like, then you’ll be waiting 10 minutes for somebody to do their thing while you’ve already determined yours. And so it really started as a design challenge. I wanted to figure out how to make this specific style ofturn-based action work in a multiplayer context.
I made a prototype a few years ago, and as part of that, I realized that there still needs to be some incentive forplayers to coordinate their actions and work togetheroutside of just having combos and whatever. you may’t just have 1 person sitting for 100 turns while somebody else is running around the level for them. And so, as a result of that, from a design consideration, I knew there should be something that should happen with each turn, regardless of who’s acting.
If anybody moves anywhere in the world, something should happen each turn, and that’s where I got this spreading grime idea from. Whenever anybody acts, grime gradually spreads. Eventually, it takes over the level. So, even if one player is being very idle and another player is being very active, there’s still a kind of encroaching threat that’s constantly spreading. Everybody still needs to be a little bit active to work together so that they can push back the tide of grime.
Then it was like, “Okay, how can I explain this mechanic from a thematic perspective? What if it’s actual grime that we’re cleaning up, and we’re cleaning agents and that sort of thing?” Then I started thinking of puns, which I had a lot of fun with. The rest is history. I also didn’t want to just godirectly to classic fantasy, because there’s already so much of that, and I feel like I wanted to do something a little more unique, a little more special, something where I could have a little more fun playing around, as opposed to leaning on tropes.
Q: How doesScrubbin’ Trubblekeep each run feeling fresh and unpredictable, beyond the fact that the levels are procedurally generated?
A:For starters, there are all the various level-up options. You don’t get the same level-up options each time, so you’re always going to becreating a different, unique build. There’s also something that isn’t in this version yet, but that I’m currently working on, which is the idea of run modifiers that your score is going to impact. The reason you will want a high score, basically, is to stave off these negative run modifiers that will gradually accumulate. As you’re cleaning up one floor, the longer you take on this floor, the future floors are going to get dirtier and dirtier.
There’s still no time pressure, but you will definitely want to take fewer turns on each floor than you have to, because the more turns you take on a floor, you’re going to start accumulating negative run modifiers where future floor enemies are going to be tougher. Or there might be more traps on a future floor, that sort of thing. Just a series of spiraling issues that you’ll encounter, and those are going to be randomized on each run as well.
You’re not always going to get the same ones in the same order. So I think a combination of that should help keep the game fresh enough. Another consideration was the fact that, because this is a multiplayer game, the teamwork aspect should help keep things fresh. You’re not justplaying with AI that you’re controlling directly; you’re playing with other humans. That’s going to inherently bring its own layer of chaos. That’s always unpredictable!
How Scrubbin' Trubble Differentiates Itself
Q: What would you say will set this game apart from a lot of the other roguelikes on the market?
A:I think the fact that it is a more traditional, turn-based roguelike, but with a modern twist. This is where the genre started, but it’s not what a lot of people associate with roguelike. I’ve had this conversation with players before. People seemodern roguelikes as real-time, action platformers and that sort of thing. That’s more what a lot of people associate with the concept of roguelike now, but really, my interest in the genre started back with these more traditional games likeNetHack. I really do think that trying to bring some of the more modern, more recent developments of the genre back into this more traditional, classic context is unique and something that I haven’t really seen anywhere else. I’m hoping that will pique the interest of both people who are interested in the more modern spins on roguelike, as well as captivate people who are familiar with where the genre started, and bring them both together. To that end, it is a turn-based game, but it moves very quickly in terms of the moment-to-moment gameplay.
I remember when I wasworking onUFO 50, even then I was told that I had an interesting way of making turn-based games feel ‘actiony’. I took that as a huge compliment. I like that a lot. I feel like that’s the sort of zone that I’m trying to lean into, design-wise, with this. It’s turn-based, but I still want it to feel quick. When players are in that sort of lockstep zone together, I still don’t want people to be waiting too long for each other.
Another aspect of team play inScrubbin' Trubbleis that you’re able to throw items at each other, which is very helpful, because if you get stuck in a situation, maybe kind of like trapped, or low health and surrounded by enemies or something, somebody who’s outside that combat situation, can find an item around the level and then bring it back to them, toss it to them, and then they can use it to get out of the situation. Also, some characters have abilities that aid teammates. For example, one character has an ability called bubble up, which lets them encase teammates, or even enemies, in a bubble. This stops them from being damaged, but, conversely, also stops them from doing damage too, so there aretactical options on how to use abilities.
How Scrubbin' Trubble Plays With Classes
Q: Classes in the game have a unique look and feel, but are they still based on the traditional RPG classes players will know?
A:Absolutely. Even though I said I’ve tried to avoid the cliché of traditional fantasy, of course, theclass tropes are still useful. In terms of, like, you have your healer, you have your damage dealer, you have your defensive class, that sort of thing. And so all the traditional classes are still represented. Even the names are puns on those classes, like the Frothbarian instead of Barbarian, the Washbuckler, the Bubbledin instead of Paladin. They all try to fulfill those specific gameplay roles.
How Scrubbin' Trubble is Balanced For Solo Play
Q: How does the difficulty scale depend on whether there’s one player playing it or three or four? Is it much harder for players playing on their own?
A:It’s tougher playing on your own, but not too much. The game is still playable single-player — it’s fairly balanced. There are more enemies in multiplayer. More boss enemies will spawn at once. But there’s also the matter of the chaos of multiplayer, where there might be a little bit of friendly fire on certain items, so you have to be a little more conscious of where you’re aiming at stuff. Whereas in single-player, you can go crazy a little bit and be more careless and reckless in terms of just knocking dudes off ledges without needing to worry about whether your allies are there. There is a little bit of self-balancing to it as well, just in terms of the interaction between players and their abilities.
Q: How long will a typical run take on average?
A:Well,it’s a multiplayer game, and we are fully aware that people have lives outside of gaming. They can’t just dedicate hours and hours each day to a game, necessarily. I feel like a lot of people are in a similar situation, where it’s like, they just want a little wind down after work, maybe play a game with some friends, hop online, play a few runs. So with that in mind, we’re aiming for a full run to be maybe no more than an hour. If you’re good at the game, you probably beat it in 20 to 30 minutes, and then do a couple runs a night, get on the high scoreboard, that sort of thing.
Q: How do you beat the game?
A:There are four ‘filth of the Apocalypse’ thatserve as the final bosses. Each run will end, essentially, with one of those four bosses. To beat them all, you’ll have to do a couple of different runs. And then that’ll be its own sort of achievement. Then it will cycle through those.
Scrubbin' Trubble’s Art Style Explained
Q: The game has a very distinctive art style. How did you decide on it?
A:Because I want the game to appeal to both people who are familiar with and like traditional roguelikes, as well as people who are maybe more familiar with the morerecent evolution in the genre, I feel like it’s important to have visual clarity there. We were first messing around with having a text scroll that explains the turn that just happened. You used to get this a lot in traditional roguelikes. A little message log that explains ‘Player one hits this enemy. Player two took this much damage. It fills up really fast with a lot of tiny menu sections and that sort of thing. We were thinking about doing that just because it’s a genre convention of the turn-based roguelike. It was sort of like, we’re making this as a traditional roguelike, so let’s have that genre convention.
However, it very quickly became obvious that the reason those games had that was because they didn’t have graphics. We have graphics now, so that text box is just more noise, it’s just a lot of visual noise that we don’t need anymore. Especially if we just make the game look good and readable. We can have it so that these complex interactions can still be possible, but that players don’t need to read an encyclopedia to know exactly what happened on the last turn. My background is primarily as a pixel artist. That’s what I’ve done on most of the projects that I’ve worked on. But I decided that the fact that we’re making this kind of weird, unusual game with this weird, unusual theme —having it be pixel arton top of that was too many layers, so we decided to remove the pixel art thing. Instead, we decided to make it some good-looking, high-res art, without the added confusion of having people think it’s a retro thing or whatever.
Q: The game’s not out yet, but are there any thoughts about future content, post-launch?
A:It’s too early to say for now. It’s definitely something that we’ve had some discussions about, but there’s nothing concrete at the moment.
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