Infinite scroll can be a beautiful thing for a website. There you are, leisurely scrolling through an article when suddenly a new headline appears, and you seamlessly transition to a whole new article. The newly released Death by Scrolling is a game that adapts this mechanic to a dark fantasy world where horrors lurk on the borders of this scrolling – and if you pause for even a moment, death is sure to follow.
‘I was messing around with a lot of different things,’ Ron Gilbert, founder of Terrible Toybox and lead developer on the dungeon crawler Death by Scrolling tells ScreenHub. ‘One of the things I was messing around with was infinite scroll. RPG-like fighting as the screen scrolls…so you had to keep up.’
The American game designer loves to play all sorts of games – from action games to RPGs and beyond. While he’s largely been painted as a prolific developer of point-and-click adventure games, he wanted to try something fresh with Death by Scrolling.
‘I love action action games. I love RPGs. I love all this stuff,’ Gilbert says. ‘It really just got me thinking, well, I should really try to design one of those because I play them all the time, and I really enjoy them.’
Death by Scrolling interview – quick links
Finding the joy in Death by Scrolling
Death by Scrolling started as a prototype that was developed in the wake of Terrible Toybox’s Thimbleweed Park. It was only planned to be an experiment but ample enthusiasm at prototyping group meetups inspired Gilbert to expand the concept.
Over a four year period, he worked on the game slowly, eventually corralling like-minded, Australia-based developer Elissa Black to help flesh out its world. Black had met Gilbert years earlier at a PAX panel all about sharing novel ideas about game design. They had stayed in touch, thanks to a shared ‘upbeat sense of humour,’ Gilbert says, and enthusiasm for making games.
‘The first time I ever saw Death by Scrolling was when Ron sent me a short video of it,’ Black tells ScreenHub. ‘What really leapt out at me wasn’t what the game was, but that it GIFs really well…you don’t need much else explained.’
Black says it was being able to see the vision so clearly that inspired her to join development. Terrible Toybox knew what Death by Scrolling was, and all it needed was a solidified vision to bring it together.
‘It was a game that was really fun to sit around with friends and watch it being played because there are so many close calls and narrow escapes,’ Gilbert says. ‘Everybody cheers when that happens.’
Harnessing the idea of a party-like game where infinite scroll was a constant danger, Gilbert and Black soon began collaborating to couch their brightest ideas within a viable game concept. In its prototype phase, Death by Scrolling didn’t really have a narrative conceit or lore to expand. It was only about the rush and thrill of the chase.
At first, Gilbert posited a light-touch narrative about delivering packages, but he tells ScreenHub he thought this was ‘lame’ and wanted the game to be ‘exciting’ and about ‘fantasy fulfilment.’
‘Elissa and I were talking a lot about the theme,’ Gilbert says. ‘What should it be? What should it not be? I always wanted to do something at the bottom of the screen that players are running from. So, it made sense. You wanted to keep running. That became this little stretch of fire. Then we talked a lot about, maybe [the player] is in purgatory and you were running from the Grim Reaper.’
Rather than simply being a game about escaping death, Death by Scrolling also re-imagines the nature of purgatory. In this game, it’s been bought by a corporation and so the struggles against capitalism continue long after players are dead. They might deserve peace but they’re forced to grind to make money.
‘Elissa and I are both of the “eat the rich” camp,’ Gilbert says. ‘We don’t like billionaires.’
This theme evolved naturally over the course of development, as its ideas began to coalesce. Realistically, the state of the world and the games industry also contributed to these overarching ideas.
‘At first came the mechanics,’ Black says. ‘What type of story, or what sort of setting, would fit these mechanics? Then, you start thinking more about that setting, and then that comes up with new ideas.’
Working collaboratively on Death by Scrolling
After years in the prototype stage, work on Death by Scrolling swiftly picked up over a short period. Gilbert and Black restarted working collaboratively, with Black handling a lot of the level design, and Gilbert corralling the engine, mechanics, production and other elements. An engine programmer was brought on board, as well as a tester who ‘just spent all day long playing the game’ and outlining the challenges to address.
‘It’s quite frustrating because he keeps finding bugs, and if he wasn’t good at his job, we’d have less bugs to fix,’ Black jokes.
Working in a small team was ideal for Gilbert. After a long career contributing to projects from the original Monkey Island games, to edutainment titles at Humongous Entertainment, The Cave at Double Fine Productions, and beyond, he’s firmly ‘gravitated’ towards small teams and smaller games.
‘I don’t have a desire to work on a team of 100 people,’ Gilbert says. ‘Even Monkey Island is [around] 25 people – and to me, that’s a large team. It’s reaching the limits of what I want to do.’
Creating the right balance for Death by Scrolling
Of course, the small team meant that Gilbert and Black had to look beyond their crew when it came time to testing and balancing the game so that players can engage in a rewarding loop.
Feedback is one of the most important elements of moreish game design. Terrible Toybox aimed to get a wide array of responses to ensure the released game inspired the same cheers rained down on the original game prototype.
‘As designers, we get really good at our games because we know all the little ins and outs,’ he says. ‘You start to play something, and you think, Oh, well, this is too easy, right? You make it harder, and it’s still easy, and then someone else plays it and it’s super hard.’
‘I think part of this game was making sure we had a group of play testers. We had a couple of hundred people that played the game and we could talk to them, watch what was going on, and get a sense of where the balance of the fun was.’
‘You can only make a first impression once,’ Gilbert says, quoting an old adage. The important thing was to balance the game and provide ample reasons for players to play, and to return consistently.
Developing power-ups to tickle players
Making a good first impression meant widely experimenting with in-game weapons and perks to ensure replayability. As a rogue-like, Death by Scrolling is all about romping through a deadly world, trying new combinations of weapons and abilities to survive as long as possible.
‘Half the power-ups in the game I came up with during the early prototyping phase,’ Gilbert says. ‘But the power-ups are hard, right? Because there’s a lot of balance. You could think of a power-up and it sounds really neat, then you realise it’s just too overpowered. It’s too good to have the whole thing. So there’s a lot of back and forth with the different power-ups.’
As for picking favourites, Gilbert chooses the game’s exploding arrows, while Black votes for one that allows players to lob cannonballs at their opponents.
‘It can result in some incredibly funny things, where you’re running around, causing constant explosions, and trying desperately not to kill yourself,’ Black says.
For those with a taste for high chaos, Death by Scrolling aims to deliver.
After several years in development, Death by Scrolling is out now for PC. For Black and Gilbert, the game has had a long path to release but at the end of the adventure, they can both look back in pride on what they’ve achieved.
