Oliver Granlund

Granlund built the Tree from loose prototypes matched to art's settings. Art explored places a shrunken couple could visit while design prototyped many mechanics at once, including the sap and match guns. Each mechanic was paired with a setting, then each designer or pair got a level to fill.

Granlund and Robert Johansson built the Tree and the snow globe.

The sap and match guns grew from combat toy to puzzle tool. The first version only sapped and exploded, which was great for combat but useless for puzzles. The weight and spinner mechanics pushed the guns further, and weight became a property of the sap gun so sap could pull things down.

The team chose early to let sap land anywhere, instead of on one white spot in a black room. That choice caused many of the problems later cut out.

The boat went through three control schemes before it worked. It first launched by recoil, which was terrible because you could not see where you were going. A rudder was fun but broke the rules Granlund and Johansson had set: kinetic, minimal UI, use the weapons. They ended on pressing fire to go.

"Instead of having a lever you press Y on, you would blow something up."

A late calm section by Henrik Sandin shaped the rest of the level. Sandin designed it late as a quiet piece between the storm sections, yet it looks like the first thing you play. The rest of the tree had no swinging yet, so swinging had to be added back everywhere.

Art added ants by accident, and players who followed them down a hill jumped off and died. Sandin then used the ants on purpose to point the way players should go.

Granlund mixes parallel, step-by-step and simultaneous co-op on purpose. Parallel is two people playing their own solo game side by side, step-by-step is turn-taking, and simultaneous needs both players acting at once. Hazelight wanted a variety of all three.

Pacing these moments is the big challenge.

Each player gets a distinct role they can grasp at a glance. In the wasp fight Cody is the instigator who saps and May is the detonator who ignites. May has little to do until a wasp is sapped, so the wasps are tuned to attack her while she waits.

A separate tutorial exists because without one both players shot every shooting sign and were confused.

He makes combat about dodging, with lenient aim, so unequal players both stay in. The Tree uses very lenient auto aim, so the challenge is dodging wasps and spraying the right target, not landing a skill shot. A boss fight was also reworked to drop the need to shoot a beetle in the butt.

It is still hard for people who have never used both sticks, but it ended up more usable than most shooters of the time.

Granlund's team tried two health systems that failed before landing on a timer. A shared health bar failed because the weaker player kept taking damage until both died. A Gears of War style revive failed because players are often apart or platforming. The final design is a respawn timer that runs while both are alive, so each player effectively has two lives.

"It's fun to die because then you feel like I'm challenged and you get that stress, but it's not fun to redo it." The timer turns into cheering: don't die, I'm almost back.

Playtest gaps became side interactions that doubled as collectibles. After each milestone the team played with testers, found too little to do, and went on a spree of minigames and side interactions. Collectibles had no good purpose, so the hidden minigames became the collectible.

One started as 'wouldn't it be fun if you could trap your friend' and went from ridicule to torture. They were hidden because they could distract.

Competitive minigames break the cooperative pace. The game is built on cooperation, so its pace is hard to vary. Rivalry gives a change of moment, and when the characters bicker the players bicker too.

Minigames suit different players, including a chessboard, because skill alone would let the same person win again and again.

Every level runs on its own grounded rules the player learns in minutes. Because sap can land anywhere, a weight that goes down must visibly connect to something that goes up. There are no Mario style floating platforms.

"It's basically like teaching a player a new game in an hour."

Variety came first, so no mechanic got more depth than it could use. The boat could have been a 30 minute segment or a whole game, but it lasts five minutes. Granlund says a longer boat would have ultimately made a worse game.

Good enough is a pillar beside variety. The team put its best finds into the level instead of dragging them out.

He budgets far more time for polish than for prototyping. A prototype took about a week to make playable, but polish took far longer. The team learned this painfully.

"it might take like a week to prototype and get playable, it might take way longer to polish." Ideas often started similar and ended wildly different in execution.

Much of Granlund's work was removing places where a mechanic feels bad. Open sap shooting let Cody sap the outside of the first wasp cage where May could not reach. In version two Cody saps the roof and May has to look straight up.

Some things came out fully formed, but most needed one or two passes. "A lot of the work we did with these mechanics was eliminating places where you can do things that just doesn't feel nice."

Iteration is how a small team gets mechanics clear and smooth. Hazelight isn't triple A and can't spend unlimited time on one thing. Half the work was making mechanics clear and the other half making puzzles smooth.

The vault door first exploded when sprayed, but it had to be tiny to keep the camera tight, so it became a turning lid.

Iteration cut the skill the beetle fight demanded. The beetle began as a mini enemy and became one of the most intense fights, with a real boss right after. Grates reduced the aiming, replacing an earlier version where players shot it on the butt, which needed positioning, aim and communication.

Dying is fun but replaying goes against the motto of variation. Players still mourned the beetle, though it was a one week prototype.

He gives artists context before asking them to build. Handing art an abstract piece of gameplay and asking 'what could this be?' is not fun for anyone. The big spinning wheels had no context, and artists turned them into an elaborate lab that shaped parts of the story.

"it's very true that game development is, you know, it's a team sport."

Expensive systems have to earn their cost. The swarm technology, the hammer and the seamless fight-into-slide took a lot of work. Costly features need a clear final look first.

Granlund says he hopes it is cool so he isn't wasting everyone's time. The team's strength is reacting fast: make, playtest, talk and change.

The plane section shows shared ownership producing variety. Per Stenbeck's team added squirrels landing on the plane, and someone suggested jumping out to kick them, like Street Fighter. The plane was storyboarded before any prototype existed, and its three stages all feel different.

One stage homages Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, now in co-op. Art, programming and design each added their own flair, and Granlund says at many studios such what-ifs never happen.

He pairs mechanics with themes so they carry story. Magnets are about attraction and clockwork is about time, which the team calls emotional levels. The earlier game, A Way Out, was story focused; here gameplay won, but the aim was to keep the two together.

"One of our mottos is to try to marry gameplay and story - keep them together."

The Tree grew from one hour to nearly two and diluted its story. Storyboarded as an hour, the level ballooned as prototypes piled up. Cutscenes, such as the robot squirrel one, were added late to carry the story the extra gameplay had diluted.

A segment's story weight only shows once the game is nearly whole. Too long without story bores players, and too long as a bare cutscene loses their interest.

Granlund admits the team neglected the intensity curve. Other games pace repeated platforming and combat, but here every stretch is new. Without pacing, players get exhausted or bored, and he says the team focused on cool things and variety.

Nothing limited how strange the level got. Meeting feedback was to make it a bit crazier, like Avatar on LSD, and players ask 'are we still in the tree'.