Management games based on the video games industry are nothing new -see SeGaGaGa and Game Dev Story. But a management sim based on a fictional game maker working on a mass multiplayer online role-playing game where you can see how your game plays? And control how things go online and live? And also having an investor lording over you and happens to be a parody of one Richard “Lord British” Garriott, the father of MMOs?

That’s Let’s Build A Dungeon in a nutshell, and my 15 minutes with the upcoming sim title is glorious. Coupled with appropriate 2D pixel aesthetics and accompanying UIs to capture the feel of a facsimile game on game design and management, and the Singapore-based company Springloaded may have a potential underground hit in their hands.

We talk to Springloaded’s founder James Barnard about his new game and the philosophies behind it.

KKP: What actually inspired you to make Let’s Build a Dungeon? Is it because of the years of making games?

James: Yeah, very much so. Loads of things actually came together to result in that game. I think the very first inkling I had of it actually was that when I woke up one day, I had an idea for a game, and I just wanted to make it really quickly, and I wanted to build tools that would allow my need to make it really fast.  And I thought, why don’t I go and do that, but I need to make it part of a game, and I want to make those tools things that everyone can use.

And basically from there, it evolved. We made a game called Let’s Build a Zoo, and figured “how can we make something like that” but for video games and the industry? And it incorporates this idea that I have about how I want to make amazing new tools. So we ended up mixing everything, and it just became an autobiographical exploration of the games industry.

KKP: Will new players get the concept of a sim game-slash-MMO-level-editor-hybrid? 

James: So when we showed it at Penny Arcade Expo 2024, we had a 10-year-old kid called Miles, he came over and played it, and he played it for an hour, so he seemed to love it.

Let’s Build A Dungeon is pretty accessible, and it stretches all the way from kids to jaded people like us, who will see our lives reflected back at us in the kind of deep darkness of the simulation part of the game.

KKP: Will it still retain the humour and snarkiness of your last game, Let’s Build A Zoo? Or will it up the ante with commentary aplenty?

James: More so. Even more so. I’ve gone far deeper into the sort of satire.

We’ve made Let’s Build A Zoo, but obviously I’ve never run a zoo. So how much do I know about zoos, you know? But I’ve run a video game studio for 12 years and worked as an employee for another, like, 12 or 13 before that.

So I’ve got just all this wealth of life experience about what bad bosses do, what it’s like to crunch, what it’s like when you have to submit to Sega and Nintendo, like, because I’m that old, it’s Sega as well. And just all the horrible things that have happened in our careers, and I can get to reflect on all those things in the game.

And some of them are just funny, like, it’s that thing, you know, like when you have an accident, and you’re like, oh, my leg hurts because I fell off something, and at the time you feel terrible, but a week later you can laugh about it. So it’s great to make jokes about all those experiences that were probably pretty horrible at the time. I also celebrate the greatness of the games industry, like, how much joy and fulfillment it gives me.

I really love making games. It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life and continues to be that. So a big part of the game is a celebration of why I love doing that, you know?

KKP: We kid because we love, right?

Exactly! And the fact that the game is so wide and it’s sort of genre hits, like, from fishing to, like, monster catching to, I hope we don’t get sued by Nintendo to, like, you know, combat and wizards, I mean, everything that an RPG encapsulates, we can also have that layer where we kind of mock that. And because our games usually sort of break the fourth wall, this one’s doing just really weird things with people’s expectations and subverting what you expect from a game. There are many things and moments in the game that I think will surprise people.

That’s one of the most exciting things about the game for me, along with seeing, you know, the amazing things that people build. So whilst I’m doing this huge commentary and satire about the video game industry, the kind of rejoicing and celebration that will come from it,  from people building games that I will get to play inside our game, it’s going to be great.

KKP: Because you’re a Singaporean company, we have to ask: how’s the local games industry these days?

If I look back, I’ve been an independent studio for 12 years. One of the oldest, I think, in Singapore and is still doing active game development.

 There have been ups and downs, for sure. I think 12 years ago it felt like the whole industry was really new and green and there was a lot of support from the government and it just felt like there was a lot of excitement about the industry in Singapore. And I think now, there’s actually, I think that went away a little bit.

It didn’t do so well, perhaps. We didn’t have those huge hits from home that we wanted to have. And now there’s actually so many things to shout about and celebrate, but it’s like, no one’s doing that enough.

I think our industry is actually starting to thrive. We’ve got quite a few studios, obviously, not just us, but BattleBrew Productions, and The Gentle Bros. And hopefully Unyielder from True World looks like it’s going to do really well.

That’s good stuff. I think we’re going to have more studios that are doing games that are good enough to sustain themselves. And we should be celebrating that. We should be proud. 

There is no release date for Let’s Build A Dungeon at this point in time. The game will be out for PC (Steam), so you can wishlist it if making MMOs and overworking devs is your thing.