“That's why I think for us, if we do it, it's controlled, and it has been rare. If you're just doing this constantly for 12-14 hours a day, you will eventually have to pay for it.” “I think it's part of the DNA of the studio to not do it,” he concludes. And also you get ‘recap time’, because you have to have rest. “But the most important thing is you get paid, which is not common in our industry, crazily enough. That would be devastating.” “For certain pushes, you might do it in a limited form,” he acknowledges. “I mean, the studio, we are 20 people and we can't afford to have leave the studio, or be destroyed during development. The lack of pressure from THQ Nordic to ship Biomutant has been a blessing, as the negative outcome of crunch would be destructive to both individual staff and the studio overall, Ljungqvist explains. It’s an approach that has been supported by publisher THQ Nordic, Ljungqvist says, at a level he’s “never had before”.
I learned to recognize it.” This goes some way to explain the studio’s ‘ready when it’s done’ approach, and lack of constant public updates. I learned a lot on those themes, on those subjects. “I've been doing this for quite some time,” he says, referring to his almost decade-long tenure at Avalanche Studios. Ljungqvist has been careful to pace the studio, though. It’s safe to say it’s been a busy year for Experiment 101. On top of the additional script forming the basis of these features, the game will be available in 13 different languages, 10 of which are fully voiced, and so localisation is required on all those added words. There’s also a better tutorial system, which more effectively communicates Biomutant’s overflowing toy box of ideas. Ljungqvist notes that, as a result of the expanded script, players can expect a reactive karma system called Aura, which will change NPC dialogue based on your light or dark allegiance. That was a big thing, to wrap that script.” Those new words are scattered across many different areas of the game, which in turn has demanded further development work on those features. “But in the final game, it's closer to 250,000 words. Pretty much a novel,” recalls Ljungqvist. “If you look at the script, by the end of 2019 I think it was about 80-85,000 words.
Biomutant has, well, mutated in that period, too. I think that's what caused us to just wait until we were ready to do it.” Quality assurance isn’t the only thing that’s been happening at Experiment 101 over the last year, though. “Any game is going to ship with bugs, but I'm talking about bugs that are truly disruptive to the game experience,” he says.
Biomutant coop free#
“And then once they've been found, we have to fix them, and that's put some additional challenge on us, being a small team.” Ljungqvist is realistic about being able to ship Biomutant completely bug free - a game with so many systems in its sandbox world is difficult to deliver without the odd problem - but he wants it to arrive in players' hands as solid as possible. “It’s been a huge amount of work for QA, because it's not easy in an open-world game to find them,” explains Ljungqvist.
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