Lucy recommends: Isle Goblin

Hey folks, happy Friday to you.

This newsletter's coming at you from JFK Airport as I'm heading back home after a wonderful New York Comic-Con. I had the honor of hosting the Final Fantasy VII Revelation panel, and it was a fun, albeit emotional, time. The cast are absolute sweethearts and it was such a pleasure to chat with them as they shared their memories of working on the Remake series.

This week has been stacked with LudoNarraCon and the triple-i initiative showcase both being jam packed with news and demos (my thoughts and faves coming next week!), and this week's pick was featured in triple-i yesterday, it's Isle Goblin (Steam)!

Isle Goblin is currently having open playtests, but they will be capped when they reach a certain number of players, with future players joining via batches. I'm thrilled that the folks at publisher Fireshine Games have given me codes for paid LFG Supporters to guarantee access.

Your codes will be at the bottom of this page, so don't miss out!

If you're not a paid Supporter, sign up at the button below for extra newsletters, plenty of giveaways, and more.

What is Isle Goblin?

Isle Goblin is a survival crafting game where humans have invaded your home and you have to fight them off and rebuild what they destroyed. Gather up to 7 of your closest goblins, er, I mean friends, to join you in online co-op, or play solo.

What's the gameplay loop of Isle Goblin?

🔨Gather resources and craft. Your homeland is abundant with resources that can be turned into useful items like weapons or used to rebuild and decorate your village. Go fish, mine, and harvest to your heart's content

⚔️ Fight back against the humans. Craft weapons and fight back against the invaders! Using weapons increases proficiency and unlocks new techniques

🧌 Help your goblin pals. Your fellow goblins are struggling in the wake of the human invasion, clear up the pollution and help them rebuild. Return the island to its former glory!

Who's making Isle Goblin?

Isle Goblin is being made by Matt Smith under the name Kilowatt Games. An avid artist, he and a friend made small games while still in high school, but he jumped into making his own games in Unity while he was studying electrical engineering at college. After already building a sizeable following online by posting his art, Matt chronicled the development of what would become Isle Goblin online through devlogs on his YouTube channel.

Why Isle Goblin rules

As a proud enjoyer of weird little guys in games and movies (think Babu Frik, Turgle, and the like), it was only natural that I'd enjoy a game where you get to play as one.

See, in Isle Goblin, the goblins aren't all that weird at all. Sure, they have distinctive quirks, hate the sun, and use human teeth as currency, but they're also just trying to get by as their homes are destroyed by the most villainous of scum: human beings. Just like in Stardew Valley and Fields of Mistria, repairing and rebuilding is a huge part of the game, allowing players to get creative with decorating, fulfil their grand plans of renovation, and most importantly, feel the satisfaction of seeing what was once a derelict, pollution-laden area become green again. These changes don't just come at the push of a button either, they require you to spend time collecting materials, and for you to hunt for rare ones. Walking past a newly constructed hut serves as a fine reminder of the struggle and time commitment it took to get there. It's something to feel a little proud of.

I love these incremental changes in survival crafting games like Isle Goblin: constant reminders that my actions are helping to shape the world. It helps that there's lots of ways I can impact the world, and build my little goblin guy up as I do it. I can plant crops, take up fishing, spend time getting to know my fellow villagers, or even head underground and explore there. Even without the threat of humans, exploring Isle Goblin's world and crafting is an enjoyable loop. Combat adds a really fun dimension to the game, because while it's not punishing, Isle Goblin does expect you to prepare at least a little bit for potential run ins. Humans have bows and arrows, and some of the larger brutes are covered in armor and wield heavy swords that can take you out in a blow or two. Spending time exploring, carefully avoiding human encampments while you gear up for later is a fun strategy, and another welcome reward for investing in your character through crafting.

For fans of

Terraria, Stardew Valley

Developer Q&A

I caught up with Matt recently to chat about his indie game dev journey, how it feels balancing development with content creation, and his newfound love of goblins.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

LFG: Does managing the social side of things (Discord, short-form video content and YouTube) impact development of the game in any way? It's clearly very effective for the dev to build a relationship with their audience but it seems like so much work on top of making a game.

Matt Smith: I think it is a lot trying to do both at once. I have to schedule it for, I have to put on my calendar, start the video, end the video, have it be done by this time. I was really bad with the short form content for almost a whole year, I barely posted at all. It It's hard to like shift gears and do it and just get it done.

I think it is definitely a chore and I don't enjoy it too much. Right now, Fireshine does edit my short form ones. They'll write scripts for me and I'll read it and then they'll edit it completely. I'll tweak the scripts sometimes. Now I have them doing that, which is nice, but it's definitely a huge chore.

LFG: In early videos, Isle Goblin was a drastically different game, and you said it was almost a turn-based with movement inspired by Crypt of the NecroDancer. You've mentioned that you've always had an idea for Isle Goblin but that things have changed over time. What do you think were the core aspects of the game that you held on to throughout development?

Matt: I knew I really wanted multiplayer, I thought that would be a very important addition and I knew I wanted town building elements. I think that's stayed true since the beginning, the town building elements. I wanted NPCs that felt very personalized and alive and like they have their own little schedules and stuff. I wanted the world to feel very alive and dynamic: if you destroy a human camp or whatever and reinforcements come they should rebuild later on, things like that.

LFG: What's the least glamorous part of indie dev?

Matt: I think for me, at least early on in the process when I was still working full-time, it was a huge time sink and I definitely didn't spend as much time doing other things that I could have, like spending time with friends, things like that.

LFG: What are the biggest lessons you think you've learned over your time in game development?

Matt: I learned that I definitely have to plan things out really well. People say make a GDD (game design document) before you even start making your game and I think that really helped when I did that big restart. I was like, I'm going to lay everything out and try to imagine it as best I can, every little detail. I deviated from that a bit, but I think it was really helpful to just be able to say, okay, I can trust my plan now. I can shut my brain off and just do the tasks and do like a little "is this working?" check-in every month or so. For the most part, I can just take things off the checklist, which I think I'm good at. It's nice to have a really solid plan, I think that's helped a lot.

LFG: What's it been like documenting your journey, and going from having viewers and people in your community watching you create the game to them being able to play it?

Matt: It's been interesting. I found that the players generally have a pretty similar vision for how things should go, I think it's been nice. I've been definitely assuming people understand things better than they do in terms of like their synchronization with me. Like, some people would say "I played the game for 3 hours and I didn't even dodge once. I didn't know you could." I'm like oh... interesting, you never hit space bar. I didn't even think of that, I need to add some sort of tutorial. My tutorialization was not where it should have been.

LFG: The more casual audience maybe wouldn't think to do that whereas someone who's a little bit well-versed in survival games, they'd instinctively try to do that.

Matt: Definitely. Like the Terraria crowd, my inventory is very similar to how Terraria's works. But anybody who hasn't played Terraria, they're asking questions like, "Do I have to like drag the food and put it onto the goblin and click it?" I'm like, "No, you can click it anywhere." Things like that.

LFG: What have you pulled from in terms of inspiration throughout the years?

Matt: I think I've pulled very heavily. I think you could describe Isle Goblin as top-down Terraria with Stardew Elements and that would be pretty accurate. I think Hades I've taken some inspiration from for their top down combat, I think they do it really well. I'd say those three are kind of the big pillars. If somebody says, "It's very similar to those three," I'd say, yeah. It's pretty much a mashup in terms of gameplay loop.

I try to innovate wherever I can, I think a lot of mechanics here and there are different from what we see in those games. There's smaller stuff like the fishing mechanic, I guess, is kind of unique. Spear throwing. If you go around destroying a bunch of human camps and stuff on the island, within a few months there'll be a wave of reinforcements, enemies will flood the screen, kind of like a Terraria invasion, but unlike Terraria, they'll rebuild their houses stronger than before.

LFG: What's the audience that you hope is Goblin reaches?

Matt: I think the single player and multiplayer survival craft groups will enjoy it, the Terraria fans. I don't know how much the Stardew fans will enjoy it. Stardew is a stressful experience, but it's a different kind of stress. Isle Goblin's very combat heavy, so I think the Terraria crowd is more suited to it. Terraria, I think, can kind of appeal to everyone to an extent because the fantasy is somewhat generalized. I'm curious how our hone in on goblins will serve us in the long term. I'm curious if that puts people off, but I don't know.

LFG: You think it will? I thought it was a nice spin.

Matt: I think I was just trying to think, how do I be unique here? I want to do some sort of survival craft game, but what if you played as the enemies? What kind of enemies could you be? I was just cycling through enemies in my head. I felt like goblins were iconic enough that people recognize it, but also kind of not too overdone.

I wasn't really a huge goblin guy before, but now I'm all in on goblins. I like goblins, they're really fun. I think I also watched that anime That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, there's the little goblin town and they're trying to fight. I like that. I don't know. I think that played a bigger role than I remember because I was watching that around then.

Play Isle Goblin!

Head over to the Steam page and request access to the playtest by hitting the button below.

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