Discovering Pier Solar

You could be forgiven if you didn’t know much about Pier Solar and the Great Architects, and its unusual history. But with a planned HD release of the classic-style RPG headed to consoles in late 2013, we thought it was time to shine a light on this fascinating project. We talked with developer Watermelon’s president, Tulio Adriano, about the long-gestating game, and he shared details about the game’s birth, development, and future. 

For more on Pier Solar and its upcoming HD upgrade, watch for our article on the game in Game Informer issue #237. 

Thanks for chatting with us. Who are you, and what’s your connection to Pier Solar?

I’m Tulio Adriano. I’m the president of WaterMelon. I manage the team and the project that we have going on. Magical Game Factory also does work related to managing our orders, sending the games to the distribution centers, and having them shipped. So I guess regarding that, I do a little bit of everything. But with Pier Solar I was the one who coded the game script itself, inside the game engine. I did engineering by creating the instruments that go into the music, a few compositions, work on the sound effects of the game. I think a bit of everything.

So WaterMelon is the name of the actual development studio and Magical Game Factory is the business that people buy the game through?

Yeah, Watermelon is a company. Watermelon’s Magical Game Factory is our website in which we deal with all of the things that Watermelon is doing. So we have the Game Factory that has the ongoing projects, where we have crowd-sourcing. [There’s] also the shops in which we sell the game itself, and the original soundtrack, and in the future the new release for PC. Hopefully, also other physical versions that we may get.

Are you actively working on projects other than Pier Solar?

Yes, we do have four projects going on. Pier Solar HD is going to be the fifth. Two games are still undisclosed, and another two are on the Game Factory. They are Project Y, which is a beat-em-up game that’s going to be released primarily for the Sega Genesis plus other platforms. Then there’s Project N – both Project Y and Project N are code names – for the Super Nintendo that is going to be an action adventure type of game. It’s [possibly] going to be on other platforms as well. But Super Nintendo is the primary release platform of that game.

So with the exception of Pier Solar HD, your other projects are all targeting older consoles, is that right?

Yes, that is correct. Pier Solar HD is our first move into the current console generation platforms.

Why is that? Obviously lots of gamers have a lot of affection for those older systems, like the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, but I have to imagine it’s a whole different matter to make the decision as a business to target a system that is 10 or 20 years old.

That’s correct. But we became a business thanks to our development that was ongoing. Before we decided that the company was going to be an actual registered company, we already had the development going. We had seen the demand, that people are actually interested in getting these new games for the systems. You combine that business opportunity with our taste for the classic type of gaming – our passion for the Sega Genesis, 16-bit systems in general – that’s how we decided to proceed with that, along with the next games and everything.

To talk about the origins of the studio, is it true that things got started on a message board?

Yeah, there was a website hosting a message board called the Tavern. In this message board there was a forum with Sega-focused development people. I was very active in that forum. I was always reading and posting, and learning the news. All of the emulator authors were members of the forum and they were actively discussing how they were building their emulators. So all of that was very nice to just be reading, and it was awesome to be a part of. Eventually a lot of people started saying, “Hey, we have a lot of knowledgeable people here on the Sega Genesis, why not make a game? We could make something in which the members are the characters.” Everyone got very excited about doing that, and eventually we started doing an RPG game. Basically, it was most of the people’s favorite genre. From that point on we started doing the Tavern RPG, which eventually became Pier Solar. When we decided that we were going to have to go for the Sega Genesis and that we wanted to do a physical release, that sparked the company creation, the business that became what Watermelon is today.

At some point, it sounds like that started out as something you were doing in your free time? And then at some point it became your job, right?

Yeah, at the beginning and up to one year before Pier Solar released, we were working in our free time. But it turns out, [all of the] free time we had, we were putting into the game. Basically all of the weekend, all of the possible nights, all of the time we had was put into it so we could get the game released. And yeah, eventually it became full time. Before, [my business partner] was working from France then he moved to China. I was working from Brazil then I moved to the U.S. We were working separately until this year. We decided it was time to make a move and get an actual office in Iowa, which is where the company was registered. From this point on we actually made the plans for expansion, and we are probably going to be hiring more people. The office will start to be getting bigger, so it’s a very unique moment we live in now.

Where are you in Iowa?

Muscatine.

At some point a year before release, you decided you wanted to work on the game full time. Then you get up to this point where you released in 2012. What were your sales like in those days?

We started with a limited release. We decided that we were going to produce a couple thousand units, we put the thing on pre-order. It sold out in just a few months. I think it was three or four months. From that point on, we were sold out. That was back in 2008. So we said okay, now it’s time to focus on what we have to do to get the game finished and released, because people already bought it.

[Next up: Funding a game from scratch, and the new HD port]

So before release, you sold out of pre-orders?

Yes, absolutely. By the time we released the game, every single unit we were going to have was already bought, and they were going to be shipped. And then, because we had the understanding that there was demand on the market for that, we decided to start producing reprint units. When we started announcing reprint units were available for sale, it sold out in three days. So, “Okay, let’s produce another batch.” Then we produced another batch, and it sold out within two weeks. We went along with that year, and then decided to produce yet another batch, so we did, and it sold out within three and a half weeks. Then we started to produce another batch, which sold out by the time we got the Kickstarter out.

All told, do you have a sense of how many units are out there on various systems?

About 6,000 plus.

How did you fund that original game? Did you have anyone putting in money? Or did it not require money because you were doing it all in your free time?

When we decided to start the pre-order, our intention was to have the pre-order money funding production costs. As far as all of the people that worked on development, no one ever got paid. All of the people involved were volunteers, people with the same passion that wanted to get this game out. We didn’t have to spend any money on the personnel that were working up until one of our artists decided to quit the team and that he was not going to let us have the work that he had done. By that time, all of the calculation that we had done for the cost of production just [became] invalid because we were going to have to hire someone to be able to produce the artwork that he had done in a faster time frame. So we did actually have to take money out of our own bank accounts in order to pay for many of the production details. And then after everything, we calculated how much extra [we would need]. That’s when we decided a reprint was a good idea. The first production was actually funding the cost of a lot of stuff, like the plastic mold for the blister, the game shell, and then the game box itself. Not only that, but also the cost of design  and engineering being involved. All of those things put together, the reprint would help us catch up with whatever Watermelon [owed] us. Eventually, reprint was able to catch up and we finally started getting the extra money. That’s what enabled us to build Magical Game Factory, and then move on to other new projects we’re going to have released next year.

So did you eventually get back the money that you had put in from your personal account? 

Well I myself didn’t. I just decided to let this one stay within the company assets so that helps us with the new projects, but my partner he had put probably a bit more  than two and half times than what I did. So we did refund him. 

Obviously the big new right now is that you guys are pursuing Kickstarter to do a new version of the game. Tell me a little bit about where you’re planning to take Pier Solar now?

Well, beginning with the demand since Pier  Solar came out I was always getting e-mails from our website, or our customer support, people always writing to us and asking for the release of the game in newer platforms. A lot of people didn’t have the Sega Genesis anymore or they did, but they didn’t have the wires or the TVs were not compatible with the Sega Genesis anymore. Well for many reasons people who still like traditional classic JRPGs were wanting to see this game released on a modern platform so that they could play it and at the time when the game was released we were really thinking about what will be our next project. We don’t want to become the Pier Solar Company. Of course, we want to become  WaterMelon, who develops video games, not just Pier Solar. So at the time we had to put this on hold so we could focus on our next things and by this year we got The Magical Game Factory released and we got the project well on the way. So we finally felt that it was the time we were ready to manage Pier Solar HD. We have the people  with the knowledge and the experience so we just came up with the idea to put it on Kickstarter that would help us to be able to hire the qualified personal to do the graphic art and the re programing of the game. So that’s when we came up with the campaign and put the Kickstarter out there. The main idea is really to take the game out to the people who wanted to play the game but couldn’t for any reason, but also we want to have the Watermelon name succeed. The home-brewed labels that we had we want to be performing and also seen as a full-fledged game-development studio. So there’s basically no other way to do that other than have our games published in the current platforms. It also helps us reach people who actually may not have heard of Watermelon or have heard of Pier Solar just because they don’t have any contact anymore with retro gaming communities or anything, but still people who like this style of gameplay and Japanese style RPGs. So I think it’s a move that will enable us to reach these people as well. 

What was attractive about Kickstarter for you? 

The main thing is that it’s a type of funding that we can just use to develop the game and instead of having to go to a bank essentially and get a loan and have to be worried about how are we going to be able to repay this loan. I have to say I did go to banks to see how much we were going to be able to raise and how the payment terms would work. It’s really hard for the small business to begin just because they have so many restrictions and so many requirements as far as collateral goes and they are not going to wait until our product is done and we are selling to start repaying back. You get the loan, and the next month you have a payment due and that was going to be one of the hardest things for us to deal with because we’re not going to be selling the game until it’s complete. So those things I think is the main reason why Kickstarter started to look attractive. 

Tell me about what your goals are with this new HD version of the game. What are you hoping to change from previous versions? 

The graphics, obviously, so that the game is contemporary with the console generations we have today. Including the Dreamcast, although the Dreamcast is not a current console, it has the graphic capability to display the same amount of colors and the same quality of graphics in its own resolution. The main thing we are doing is basically we are reprograming the whole game in a much more efficient way so that  we can have achievements and just stuff that are used in the games today that we were not going to able to implement on the Sega Genesis. At the same time, if there are some improvements to be done within the game we are going to take the opportunity to fix whatever bugs people found along the way. We’re also developing a new script engine, and we are going to leverage that script engine in Pier Solar so there are many technical reasons to do that, and also the fact that we want the game to look better than the Sega Genesis could provide to us because we really had a hard time dealing with all the limitations that the Sega Genesis has, so that we could get the best graphics showing on the screen. The new generation is just a lot easier to do that just because there are no limitations; it’s just your imagination and your skill.

When you consider what you have planned for this HD version, are you hoping to include options for players to experience the older version of the game as well, or is the product you’re hoping to deliver purely going to be just the new version?  

That was supposed to be a surprise, obviously, but I think we got so many inquiries about that we ended up revealing that we are going to include the original 16-bit graphics in all the versions, including the Dreamcast one, and there are going to be unlockables so you’re going have to find within the game an item that is going to unlock this option. So once you find that you have the option and you switch graphics to 16-bit and you are going to be able to play the game in the old version and compare how it looked and how it looks now. 

What about audio? Are you going to give people the choice to listen to the original kind of chip tunes style audio in addition to the more enhanced soundtrack version? 

Well we are really trying to get that accomplished and there are few limitations that come with it. The main limitation is just raw megabyte space. Our soundtrack we actual made needs at least 300 megabytes just for soundtrack. If we lower the quality of the sound any it’s going to have an impact in the experience that we have when you’re listening to the soundtrack in the game so we don’t want to compromise quality. The main thing is how we are trying to do now is to actually have a play back of the FM soundtrack. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the VGM format, which is a format that lets you play Sega Genesis, Master System, and other old school console music in players like winamp. It’s basically emulating the Sega Genesis audio hardware and then playing back those instructions. So we are thinking about trying to come up with a system like that. Then the whole soundtrack takes about five megabytes. That would not be a big impact in the whole game size, but if we have to put the whole soundtrack as an MP3, streaming file, then it may prove to be, I wouldn’t say impossible to do, but it would add significant limitations, especially the Dreamcast version, because it’s going to come on a disk and we only have so much space on the disc and we don’t want to do a two disc release for a game that fits on a cartridge for the Sega Genesis.  The idea is out there; we are just trying to find the right solution for that. 

[Next up: What platforms will Pier Solar HD be targeting? And how does the game compare to a classic 16-bit RPG?]

You’ve talked about platform releases. Tell me a little bit more about that what platforms you are aiming to release on?

Primarily we are working with PC, Xbox, and Dreamcast. On PC it will be available for the three main operating systems, which are Windows, Linux, and Mac. We are trying to get the game on Android as well and we are really trying to get as a stretch goal to go with Sony and Nintendo, but the only reason we cannot just come and announce it is because we cannot be sure that they are going to have us approved for licensing. It is in our road map, and then if we have the opportunity even though we didn’t announce the Kickstarter we are going to do it but we cannot just come and promise right now and then later have to let people down if we don’t get licensed by Sony or Nintendo.  

But you’re pretty confident at this point about the PC, Xbox, and Dreamcast?

Oh that’s 100-percent sure. That’s not going to fail, and Android is also quite a very strong possibility. Wii U and PlayStation 3 is in our roadmap. [Editor’s Note: After this interview was completed, Watermelon completed its Kickstarter with all stretch goals complete. The game will now release on Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Ouya, Android, PC, Mac, and Linx, with a retail option on Sega Dreamcast.]

It sounds like in every case you’d be talking about a digital download release except for Dreamcast is that right? 

Yes.

So not like a disc release? 

Well there is a physical version, of course. We cannot guarantee we are going to have physical version for Xbox yet because it requires the XBLA license and we cannot guarantee they are going to approve it. It’s the same situation as the other ones, but the PC is going to have a physical disc.

If it does have the physical disc it will also be available for download? 

Yes. The download is always going to be there. 

What elements of 16-bit RPGs did you and the rest of the team really want to keep   intact, and in what ways did you want to innovate in a new direction?

The first thing that we wanted to keep is basically the same spirit of the RPGs we played back in the 90s. All of us are big fans of RPGs such as Lunar, Phantasy Star, and Chrono Trigger, so we tried to implement the same type of spirit and story flow of those games. It usually starts very casual and you end up having to save the world. A lot of people may say this game has a lot of clichés of RPGs; well, it does, because it was a game that was supposed to be a tribute to all of those awesome games that we played in the past. We did keep you going to town, you explore, you can go to shops, you buy your weapons, you upgrade your characters, as you add members to your team you start walking with a snake line, we have the turn based battles in the game, and they are randomly encounter triggered. It’s a very old-school type of classic JRPG, but we also tried to add some elements to the gameplay, especially the fights, which is probably where the players spends 50 to 60 percent of the game. We wanted to add something that was unique, and that’s when we designed the Gathering system, which is a system that lets you sacrifice a round in order to concentrate your energy and it will make your attacks 1.5 to 2 to 3 times stronger. You can gather up to five levels and we made it in such a way that if you use the system you have a huge advantage, strategically speaking, in the battles. If you just try to play the game by using attack, magic, attack, magic, you can probably get through it but it would probably be a little harder at some points of the game. If you learn how to use the Gathering system it gives you a huge advantage when fighting the strong enemies like bosses and stuff. 

It has a combination of three elements that adds to the strategy of how you fight. The first one is using Gather to put more strength into your characters and as you go on in the game you find items that will make you start the battle with one, two, or three levels of Gather and you can also find items that give you extra levels or of Gather or allows you to build up Gather faster. The second thing is the defend option, which most RPGs have but sometimes they are quite useless – sometimes they just reduce how much damage you get by a little bit. In Pier Solar we decided to make a nice implementation of defend, which lets you counter-attack when someone tries to attack you or someone else that you are defending. Let’s say you get Edessot to defend Alina; if someone goes to attack Alina, Edessot is going to jump in front of Alina to take the hit and hopefully do a counter-attack. Another one is the move to front and move to back which directly impacts what the enemies are targeting, so if you move a character to the front he is more likely to be attacked and if you move to the back he is less likely to be attacked. So maybe you want to get your character that does the healing on the back so that they always have the energy to be using that. When you combine these three elements you can get pretty deep into the battles if you can master them. 

We have in GameFAQs a person who designed the FAQ for Pier Solar, who actually did the challenge of trying to finish the game without fighting any fight that wasn’t necessary for the game’s advancement, which means that he would get to the third or second boss on level 2 or 3. He was able to actually beat the game so that really shows how well the systems work. 

Another thing that we wanted to add to the game is the level of difficulty of the enemies will be adaptive to how strong you are. That means that if you gain some levels and you go back to an area in which you fought previously, the same enemies that you fought before are going to be a little stronger. You leveled up, so why not have the enemy level up a little bit right? That makes the game a little more challenging if you have to revisit any regions. It’s not just like all the enemies in this region have 50 hit points and every time you go back they always have 50 hit points, that’s not a challenge when your attacks are doing 200 damage. We really tried to improve on that as well so the battles would get more interesting.

I noticed during my playtime with the game it seemed like there were slightly fewer random encounters, but the random encounters I did have were more meaningful. Was that a direction you took on purpose? 

Yeah we did try to develop the game’s encounters in a way that you don’t get too many or too few random encounters, we tried to find the right balance so that you have a consistent level of challenge as you go through the game.

Tell me briefly about the game’s story. Who are the main characters, what is the threat that they have to deal with, what’s going on in the game?

As any other JRPG from the time, it starts casually. Hoston is a botanist and the game begins when he is overhearing the conversation between his father and his mother. His father is ill and his condition is worsening; he wants to do something about it. Much to his mother’s protest he decides to go out and get some herbs that have the healing power to get his father back on his feet. He goes out and meets with his friends and his friends are always very supportive of him, and they say, “Yeah let’s go and help you.” As they go on this quest they start finding some things that are different from what they expected, some surprises, and then that will lead you into the quest that you’re going to have to go around the game world for, trying to get elements and understand what you’re dealing with until you get to the game’s main goal of fighting the final boss. I’m trying not to spoil too much.

Would it be fair to say, based on the full title of the game, that what they discover connects to some sort of ancient forces and civilizations that existed in the world?

Right in the beginning when you’re finishing your first quest you’re going to find something talking about the Architects, and then the idea is that the Architects were people who lived so long ago that it became legend. It’s like Greek mythology; it became legend. At that point you start finding clues that it actually really existed and then you start getting involved with that and eventually you are involved in something much bigger than when you begin in the game. You are the one who is in the actual position to help the world.

Do you have a sense of when you’re hoping to release this new HD version of the game?

Our estimation is for a release in December 2013.

Do you feel pretty good about that? Do you feel like that gives you the time that you’ll need to do the updates that you want to do?

I don’t think we’ll have any trouble reaching those goals because we are targeting to start development in January, but we are already working on it. There’s no point in us just waiting for the funds to happen. If they happen then we are going to have wasted a month and a half, so we already started the game development and we’re just working as much as we can on each project. By the time we get the funds we’ll be able to get personnel that’s going to be dedicated to the game. I’m pretty sure if nothing goes wrong or unexpectedly, by December 2013 people are going to be getting their notification that the game was shipped. 

Right now, where you guys are at on the project, have you been starting to do some of those updates? Where has your focus been?

We have done the in-game art concepts that are going to be implemented by the artists. We also have our coding side with all the improvements we are making on the engine.The programmers are going to be able to study the game logic and reprogram again on new platforms. Those are the main things that are going on.

I suspect you’re going to have quite an enthusiastic audience of people who don’t have Genesis machines anymore who will be pretty stoked about the opportunity to play the game on XBLA or PC.

Absolutely, we could have gone with the cheaper option of doing a straight port but then there’s no value added. We wanted to give the people who are actually going to get this game something else, so that’s what the HD graphics will be.