As South Africans we’re very proud of those of us that manage to do amazing things out there in the world. Seeing other South Africans make waves on the international stage in all fields gets us all pumped and ready to back our countrymen.
Gideon Griebenow is one of those countrymen.
It was just a few months ago I saw his game World Turtles pop up on my social media feed as it launched into Early Access. I was curious and wanted to chat with the team behind the game, after navigating their busy game development schedule, I was finally able to talk to the man behind it all – only to find out this was a locally grown game, born right here is sunny South Africa.
Before we dig into the game itself, it’s always nice to find out about the people behind it. In this case, it’s just one hard-working gentleman who goes by Gideon ‘Great A’Tuin’ Griebenow. I asked Gideon if he could give us a little backstory on himself and how he got into developing World Turtles and this is what he had to say:
“I studied financial risk management, so I was working for large banks and financial institutions, helping them calculate all the boring financial measures that they need to report to the reserve bank around credit risk management. It’s a good career, and it’s nothing to complain about, but in Feb of 2019, I saw a Unity tutorial for the first time, so I started playing around, making YouTube videos about my ideas around science and using Unity to help visually explain those ideas to others. This helped me learn how to use 3D software, and the more I learnt, the more I started to enjoy it. One day I came across a good quality tutorial on how to make and handle hex maps, and as I worked through it, I realised that I could probably use this to make a decent game. One that people would actually buy and play. Before Unity, I used to make games in Microsoft Excel, but I could never get the graphics to look decent. Unity made graphics for a game viable using the assets you could buy or get made for you. So I just kept learning, and the more I learnt, the more I was able to make the game and its scope larger and larger, and I just landed up spending more and more time on it. I started cutting down on real-world work projects so that I could have more time to work on the game. After about two and a half years, after seeing the progress made in developing the game, I decided to give myself a year and go full-time into game development. Depending on how well [World Turtles] works out means, I might be able to carry on developing other games after. It seems a waste to learn and develop these skills over the past three and a half years to just give it all up after one game. I also enjoy game development a lot more than my real job, so it is something I’d like to continue to do, without a doubt.”
Considering Gideon had a financial background, it was interesting to see the kind of game that he had come up with. World Turtles is a colony builder set upon the backs of floating, space turtles. I had to ask where the idea came from. A few of you bookworms out there may have already guessed.
“I’m a very big Terry Pratchett Discworld fan, so that setting was just something natural for me to use. The world on a turtle’s back is as old as the mountains. It’s cropped up in various different stages, civilisations and times, so it’s fine to use that setting, but I even contacted Terry Pratchets daughter to ask if I could use the setting, and she said it was fine as long as I don’t try to make Discworld itself. At first, I played around to see if I could actually make this technically work, and eventually, it got big enough for me to create a whole colony builder on the back of a turtle.”
During this conversation with Gideon, I reminisced about a time during Covid when I, too, tried to play around with some game development software, but I was never able to get an actual idea in my head to turn those development skills into an actual game. Gideon mentioned how he had been thinking up this idea for years before actually starting the development process.
The game has been out in Early Access for just a few months, so I asked Gideon how that one year he had given himself to do game development was going. It turns out that the one-year started way back in November of 2021.
“In August of 2022 [About nine months into that year], I had been contacted by an American publisher, and we worked out a deal that would keep me going financially. They offered a recuperable advance where I would only need to pay it back as the game made money. It’s kind of worked out for me in a sense that, unfortunately, the game has not made as many sales as we’d hoped for, meaning the advance worked in my favour. We conservatively expected the game would sell three times as many copies as it has currently sold. Maybe it’s Early Access that’s preventing people from buying the game, and they’re waiting for the game to complete, but either way, I am continuing to learn and develop the game to completion. I still want to do this long term as well, and maybe I learn enough from this game that makes my second or even third game my most successful release.”
Since Gideon thought that moving the game from EA to a full release might just be the key to getting it out there, I asked how that transition was going.
“I don’t want to release when the game is not in a complete state. It’s looking to be around the end of quarter one or two next year [in 2024]. The reviews are sitting at a good ratio of positive to negative. Most of the complaints are about a bit of optimisation, which I have already improved on, but most of them are on the UI. This is my first-ever attempt at a UI, so it’s bound to be of a lower grade than what people may be used to, but over the last month and a half, I have been working with a professional artistic team that the publisher is paying for, that is helping me fix up the UI. I have also changed the terrain triangulation and the terrain textures so that it looks visually smoother and more appealing. Much of the UI up until now has been what they refer to as programmer art, where I’ve just slotted something in there so that there is something there.”
Being from South Africa, we also tend to face a lot of our own day-to-day challenges, blackouts being one of them, so I asked Gideon if being in South Africa has affected his game development.
“Everything is done online these days. I work with the American team on Slack, and while the time difference is a bit of a mess, I do work quite late, so there’s not really an issue when it comes to connecting with the American teams. In terms of South African challenges, luckily, I installed quite a large solar system around six or seven years ago. It would’ve been quite a disaster if I didn’t have power all the time, but I do, so it doesn’t affect my development or connecting abilities which is good.”
Turning things to a bit of a lighter note, I had to check what games Gideon played when he wasn’t nose-deep in coding for World Turtles. It turns out he hasn’t played a game in years.
Gideon started off with a bit of a chuckle, “I haven’t played for the last fifteen years or so. The last games I played were Civilisation and StarCraft 2. These days I prefer actually making the game rather than playing it. It probably would’ve been helpful if I played some games, not that I want to copy anybody, but to see the standard of games these days might’ve helped with the development of World Turtles.”
We chatted about the UI development a little more, and Gideon mentioned that he would receive the new artwork soon after the interview. Moving a step closer and closer to that 1.0 release.
While sales for the game might not be exactly where they had hoped it would be, World Turtles was still being noticed by people. The game’s opening track, “The Beginning”, has been nominated for an award in the “World Soundtrack Awards” category at the Film Fest Gent, Belgium’s most prominent film festival with a focus on music. The track has been nominated alongside 87 other tracks from games like Star Wars, Hogwarts Legacy, World of Warcraft, Resident Evil, Far Cry, Diablo, God of War Ragnarök and A Plague Tale: Requiem.
Gideon mentioned that the composer, Kyle Misko, reached out to him around 2019, and at the time, Gideon wasn’t able to pay what Kyle was looking for. However, Kyle was so inspired by the game that he took on the project nonetheless. They aren’t really sure how the track managed to make it as one of the nominees. Obviously, someone who played the game thought it deserved to be awarded, but Gideon says they are both honoured to be sitting up there with some of the greats.
The festival runs on the 19th of October, and we’ll certainly be keeping our eyes out to see if World Turtles made the cut.
It was such a pleasure chatting with Gideon and going a little bit behind the scenes of a one-man game development team. A busy working schedule filled with such highs and lows can be challenging, but I can see that Gideon is determined to get World Turtles out there beyond the stars. If colony sim games are up your alley, be sure to check the game out over on Steam and show some support to one of our very own.
Gideon, we wish you all the luck in the world with the full release of World Turtles. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more games coming out of your development studio – and who knows, perhaps there might be something special to look out for on the next NAG Cover DVD.
