Retro Dodo: Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Retro. Today, I'm joined by K.C. from Gortyn Code, a man who has made one of my favorite games that I've been playing recently, Chantey. You've seen me talk about it a lot on Retro Dodo, you've seen the videos I've made of it, read the review, and now I'm getting to chat to the man behind the game itself. I'm very glad you're here, K.C.; Let's kick off with you telling us about when you came up with the idea for Chantey?
K.C.: Well, the idea has been around quite a long time, not in the final form, but I would say that I started thinking about it about 8 or 9 years ago that it would be nice to have this kind of like a hodgepodge of an adventure game mixed with rhythm elements where instead of doing the traditional battle system you would have to do this kind of like frantic rhythm sections. To be honest, I did not really grasp the final form of the game until I came across the Game Boy development community.
K.C.: It was around the same time when I really got into pirate metal as a sub-genre of metal music, which I'm a big fan of. I started listening more and more to the songs. I loved the way, you know, that this is kind of a style of music that is not meant to be taken too seriously, but at the same time, you can go pretty heavy with it. It has a pretty serious storytelling capacity. Some of my favorite bands have some extremely silly songs and then some really, really epic parts. And in this respect, I think it kind of all clicked together at around 2023 when I decided to partake in the Game Boy competition, a game jam that was organized by a homebrew community of game developers for the Game Boy.
K.C.: So I started to give shape to this crazy idea. I never really thought that it could work, but after some playtesting, I actually saw that there was potential there. Then, after the jam, I decided to continue working on it, and there you have it, the entire Chantey game. You know, it was just, you know, a lot of different things that happened by happenstance, and then you have a crazy idea coming together on the Game Boy cartridge.
Retro Dodo: You've fully gone into the lore of pirate life in this game. They're going to places like Tortuga, and there's the Spanish Inquisition happening all around you. The storytelling is phenomenal. What kind of research did you do to get into creating the story elements of this game? Because, as I've said, there's the rhythm element to it. But what we're playing here, what we're looking at, is very much an adventure title that could sit up there with the early Zelda games and the beautiful storytelling that made those games like Oracle of Seasons and Ages so captivating to me.
K.C.: Yeah, I love those games, and you can definitely see the influence they've had on Chantey. In my opinion, I've been a big fan of pirate mythology altogether. I used to dress up as a pirate every Halloween. It was my favorite theme on toys like my Legos, for instance. I always had all the little pirate sets. So I always loved that, and I've done my personal research for quite some time just to understand and grasp the kind of climate around the 1700s in the Caribbean.
K.C.: Games like Assassin's Creed Black Flag, which is also a huge inspiration behind Chantey, definitely helped flesh out some of the characters and the interactions among them in a more cinematic way. And then after I decided to really get into developing Chantey in 2023, after the GB Compound Game Jam, a lot of research went into trying to get things just right. It wasn't just a matter of putting Tortuga in there because Tortuga is like a really famous place of pirate activity, but it was also about understanding what the state of affairs was in Tortuga at the time that the game takes place.
K.C: Tortuga has fallen, let's say, from grace. It's no longer the pirate haven it used to be because that was in the 1600s. So, you know, the pirate activity had moved to Nassau, which was also the headquarters of the pirate republic. So I did a lot of research. I read on a lot of references and every place, every mission in Chantey, I've tried to capture some small part of that research to make sure that you're playing something that is also authentic. It's not just fun, but it would also, you know, if by completing the game you would have more interest in reading about this history, this stuff about pirates, then I think that I would have accomplished my goal with all the research that I did.
Getting To Grips With The Battles
Retro Dodo: The battles themselves are tricky. There are times when I've tried to get to that sweet spot; I've been able to get through to the next round, and I've just not made it there quickly enough because you know, it's not something that lasts for a few seconds and then you've won. You really have to put a large amount of concentration into it. So how did you go about creating all of these tracks yourself, arranging them all in 8-bit, and what was your idea for the difficulty curve from beginning through to the final boss battle, as it were?
K.C.: So the idea here was, like I mentioned, I wanted to make something that pays homage to pirate metal. Heavy metal, in particular, has many songs that go on for like 5-6 minutes. I wanted to have that in the game. I didn't know when I started out if I could fit everything into a cartridge, but then I found out that there were people who were actually making actual music on a cartridge - a musical cartridge, there's no game in it. And then I thought, why don't I make Chantey do both? So it can be both a game that you can play, and also like a music cartridge because compiling all the songs together, it's about 48 minutes of actual music, and that's just the songs that you play in the battles.
K.C.: I believe that the actual length of the battles can help because of the limitations of the Game Boy. I cannot have an entire barrage of notes drop at the same time. I have to keep the synchronization as much as possible, and adding more notes and making parts more difficult would make it almost impossible for somebody just on a Game Boy screen to try and play a song for like 6 minutes. And at the end of the day, I want to tell the story. I believe that the story is the most rewarding part of the game, reaching that final story.
K.C.: The actual music that you hear gets you pumped. So the idea here is that you play the music well enough so that your troops can prevail over the troops of the enemy. So this is where I put the high bar and I made sure to create two difficulty levels - one which is a bit more accessible and the other one which is a bit more challenging. I've played it to death myself so I can clear both quite easily right now, but even I struggled in the beginning to get a lot of notes in the end. It's just a case of constant practicing and then the length of the song I believe actually helps because there are a lot of parts of the song that repeat. You get like a chorus, for instance, that will repeat at some point, so you have already practiced it once earlier in the song. And then you've got some places where the music will go down a bit slower.
K.C.: You get some time to rack up some of that hype meter, especially if you have it let it drop, and then you get to play an additional part or some songs that will have some repeating parts right after another so you get down the pattern really quickly. Then you are able to very quickly build that high bar up until the end. I do give a little bonus, a monetary bonus, if you actually manage to fill out your high bar, and then after you complete the game you basically unlock the entire setlist that you can either listen to or you can just play the game, replay those battle parts and try to improve upon your score.
Creating A Masterpiece With ModRetro
Retro Dodo: There's a reason for everything in this game. You don't just have like pirates here because, or you know... soldiers here because. If you go in depth with it, there's an almost kind of Lord of the Rings-esque lineage of people and the reason for people being there. The lore is really solidified, and I really enjoy that as a prolific reader and someone who loves playing all kinds of games. I love the fact that the fantasy element of it is solid, and there are no little plot holes; all the holes have been filled. It's very tight, and the storyline has a great narrative to it. I've really enjoyed every second of it. And obviously ModRetro have enjoyed it as well because this has gone from a GB studio creation that you've made for a competition to now being sold on cartridges with full color manuals box art and T-shirts. So how did that come about, and how was that for you seeing your creation, packaged up and sent off by such a huge company?
K.C.: To me, it came as a surprise, to be honest. Already back in 2023, about Christmas time, I first spoke with Chris from Spacebot, who is also the publishing manager of the publishing arm of ModRetro. We spoke about an exciting new opportunity. Of course, when I started developing Chantey, it was only through emulation. I then started to figure out what kind of tools you can actually use to put this game on a cartridge. I didn't really think that I would actually convince somebody with this crazy idea of a cartridge that doubles as like a music album of sorts, and you know the rhythm elements with pirates and an adventure in it.
K.C.: So I did prepare a pitch after I spoke with Chris, which he was kind enough to present to the higher-ups at ModRetro, and then when this was greenlit, I remember that when I first spoke to Chris and it was greenlit, and then learned a bit more about the project that was ModRetro at the time. I was so excited; it was Greek time. It was like two o'clock at night; I woke my wife up and I told her everything about it, and like the game is going to be on a cartridge and it's going to be on this new device that is going to be created, it's going to be sold together.
Retro Dodo: It's all an amazing achievement K.C.! Have you got a strong connection to the Game Boy from playing with it as a child?
K.C.: When I think about myself as a child, I was playing on a Game Boy. It was my sister's Game Boy, it was not mine. So she always had first dibs, you know, we always wanted to play it, but at the end of the day it was hers. So when I did not have access to it, I remember distinctly that I had this little wood cutting set and I would go and paint cartridges of my own. I would then cut them out with this little saw and create a little Game Boy from wood. I wish I still had it, but I don't. I think I threw it away at some point as you do, but this is the very first time that I even considered the fact of making games. So being that currently I have my own game that I can actually play on the Game Boy that I grew up with is completely crazy to me. And ModRetro has been a great partner to work with in terms of the support they have provided throughout the development.
Thanks to K.C. for joining us on the Retro Dodo podcast to talk about all things Chantey and bringing this game to life with ModRetro. Make sure to listen to the full episode below to find out more about his creative process and to learn more about this amazing game!
