Becoming a detective. Interview with Andrejs and Ernests Kļaviņš

The Case of the Golden Idol and The Rise of the Golden Idol allow the player to take on the role of a detective investigating crimes surrounding a mysterious golden idol. The first game, released in 2022, gained significant recognition and popularity, making its way into The New Yorker and Polygon’s game-of-the-year lists and winning the National Design Award of Latvia 2023 in the Digital Solutions category as well as the Independent Games Festival award for Excellence in Design. The newly released sequel retains the bold style of the previous edition and has been highly acclaimed by players.

Can you outline what in your personal and professional journeys led you to making a game?

Ernests:

We were both in-between jobs, and I proposed this experiment to Andrejs. We wanted, if not to become rich, then at least to earn some money with something that also provided artistic fulfilment.

Andrejs:

Digging deeper into the motivation — you grow up playing games, and there’s a creative drive not only to consume them but also to create. You try a game and feel that it’s imperfect or that it could be done much better with a different theme or approach. For me, games have always been associated with seeing something that doesn’t fully satisfy me.

Ernests:

Yes, games are where you see something that can be improved.

Andrejs:

We both already had quite a bit of experience with game design. Our first true attempt to turn this fantasy hobby into a job that earns money happened in 2009 when Draugiem.lv had a fund you could apply to with your projects. We created a project for an online card game called Adventure Island. We made a prototype and submitted it to Draugiem.lv. They liked it a lot but didn’t want to give us money because they said they didn’t understand games. Instead, they hired me. That was the first time that game design became a professional endeavour for me.

Was Adventure Island a joint project?

Ernests:

No, my previous project was a different one: Adventuring Gentleman, which earned about $700. It showed me that I could create a project that works and can be published.

Andrejs:

I’d add that Ernest’s work on Adventuring Gentleman was made possible thanks to the tools available at the time. Neither of us are programmers, but traditionally game developers have to be programmers. In the past, without a programmer, you couldn’t create a game — either programmers made games themselves or their vision dominated the creative process. But around the time of creating Adventuring Gentleman, a tool called Construct emerged, allowing you to easily create something that worked and focus on the aesthetics or feel of the game. I remember it was very satisfying that my brother could do everything himself.

Speaking of the skills needed to make games, what was the most challenging part of developing The Case of the Golden Idol?

Andrejs:

The biggest difficulty was trying to market the game ourselves. Nothing worked. We spent months trying to figure out if anyone was interested. We worked hard, spamming the internet, begging people to take a look, and attending various events. For example, I spent an entire weekend at UniCon (the largest convention in Latvia dedicated to comics, games, cosplay, and animation), and only about ten people came to try the game.

Ernests:

But at one of those events, we were discovered by a publisher.

Andrejs:

Yes, GameWave. It was the first international game conference organised by Laura Vilsone from the Latvian Game Developers Association and the Latvian Technological Center. It was a small-scale but high-quality conference with a game area, lectures, and great networking opportunities. It was at that event that we were noticed by a scout from our publisher, Playstack.

What helped you get noticed? I assume having just an idea isn’t enough.

Andrejs:

No, of course not. I think there are strong parallels with startups — to get an investor, you need «traction, team, tech». You want to show that you have a product, a team that can deliver, and something cool happening underneath — the technology. With a game, you want to demonstrate general competence, so someone will want to work with you. You don’t need to have a full game or even a demo, but you must prove that you know how to do it — you need a prototype or proof of concept.

In the gaming industry, the complexity lies in the fact that, unlike a traditional product, you’re not solving a problem or saving money for the customer. Instead, you’re offering an emotional experience. The publisher wants to know that the game will make money — address niche needs or fundamentally do something better than competitors in the market. The publisher doesn’t care about the story of the game or what it’s about; they care about the aesthetics and how the game mechanically addresses that emotional need.

Ernests, what was your thought process in choosing pixel art for the game’s aesthetic?

Ernests:

The choice of pixel art was actually a mistake. I used Instagram as a platform to promote both this game and our friend Mārtiņš Ceplis’ game, Space Wreck, and what was trending was pixel art. And pixel art is often associated with cheap, low-effort products.

Andrejs:

We’re not sure if it was a mistake, it’s not fully clear. There’s some internal dissatisfaction with the choice of style. Pixel art was something safe, a lingua franca of the game industry. By choosing it, we minimised risk.

Ernests:

But in some ways, compared to the painterly style we have in the sequel, pixel art is actually harder to make — it has very strict requirements for how things look. For example, pixel art doesn’t work well with zooming, scaling, or different resolutions.

Andrejs:

Another thing that influenced our visual style thinking was that we immediately knew we were working in a two-dimensional environment. Partly because we had no experience with 3D games, and also because we felt that 3D, highly detailed or realistic environments impose the need for a more elaborate design. In a detective game where there are many details, you don’t want to overload the environment with unnecessary information. 2D pixel art looks believable, but you don’t have to dive deep into the details.

Given these practical limitations, how did you come to the idea of changing the aesthetics for the sequel to a painterly style?

Ernests:

One of the inspirations was the game Disco Elysium. Seeing it, we felt like we could use the baggage of traditional painting, which has accumulated over centuries, in this new gaming medium. When working on the graphic style for the first game, we used the graphic heritage of the 18th and 19th centuries, like that of Gustave Doré. I’d say we’re aiming for vivid, unusual characters that remind us of 19th-century illustrations.

Andrejs:

That was something that worked well. One of the visual style’s functions in the game is that you can show someone a screenshot, and they can immediately recognize the game. That’s something we achieved with character design. Many people wrote in reviews: «At first, I thought the characters were all ugly, but then I really started liking them.»

This brings us back to another thing publishers look for — a clear niche, something unique in the saturated game market. But when you create something unique, there’s a risk that no one will want it. How did you deal with that?

Ernests:

That’s why we tried to test it. One-third of our work was spent on testing. We looked for whether people wanted something like this. That’s something we did right.

Andrejs:

In early testing, we had a model in mind of how smooth gameplay should look, assuming that people would be hooked by the game. The specificity of games is that they’re an interactive form of entertainment — they require the player to act, to be engaged; otherwise, nothing happens. No matter how interesting a mechanism or story you come up with, you need to bring the player to that point, draw them in. One of the essential things was to determine how quickly we could teach people to play this game and then see if they were ready to play it to the end.

In one of our mentoring sessions, we received great advice: «This is interesting, but way too complicated. Make something completely trivial.» So, we created a five-minute introductory scenario that perfectly fulfilled this function. Then, at exhibitions, Ernests gave it to people with no gaming experience at all, and it worked.

Did your vision change while testing and listening to player feedback?

Ernests:

We made the game simpler.

Andrejs:

Yes, because it’s more enjoyable to solve puzzles than not to solve them. I think there’s a trap that game developers and puzzle creators fall into — the fear that if someone solves something too easily, you’ll be embarrassed, as if you’ve lost to the player. You forget that solving a puzzle is actually fun, and it’s better to create something that people can figure out and feel happy about.

Our original ambitions were for the game to be filled with irrelevant information, much more complex and realistic, where the player would have to decide what was important and what wasn’t. And we quickly realised that the game became much more enjoyable and smoother if we cut out all the unnecessary parts.

We were also influenced by a video from game design journalist Mark Brown about detective games, where he said that many games pretend to be detective games but give away too much information, so the player doesn’t actually solve anything and doesn’t feel like a detective. Then the designer adjusts their vision in the opposite direction, trying not to give away anything, and ends up with a game that overwhelms people, and they don’t want to play anymore. So, we began to accept that you can be arbitrary in your decisions about what to reveal and what not to. For example, our puzzle text partially gives away what happened, and that’s actually good because it helps the player understand what’s expected and moves them forward.

How does working with a publisher look practically once the game is finished? How does a good game become critically acclaimed and commercially successful?

Andrejs:

Working with a publisher doesn’t start when the game is finished; it happens in parallel with game development. I’d say the publisher’s most important role is to develop and implement a marketing strategy, also investing money in it — figuring out what audience to target and how to position the game so it gets the most attention by the release date and afterward. That’s something our publisher did successfully. They realised this wouldn’t be a viral hit where you post GIFs on Twitter, and people follow and share. Instead, the publisher concluded that this was a reviewer’s game — it had to be put in front of industry reviewers so they could play it and feel the emotions the game delivers. This worked, and we received a lot of recognition and awards.

Additionally, publishers invest money to finish the game’s development, which can also be critical.

You just launched the sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol. How was the balance changed between artistic fulfilment, having found a successful formula, publisher pressure, and business considerations while working on a sequel?

Ernests:

We don’t want to fall into complete self-repetition. We want to develop our ideas, not do the same thing three times, both in terms of story and mechanics. We want to change something.

Andrejs:

It’s an interesting situation where we have much more stability. In the first game, especially during the first half of development, there was a big feeling of uncertainty — would this work, or would we have to throw everything out? Now, there’s no such feeling; there’s much more confidence. We know we’ve made a great game, and I’m absolutely convinced that the second part has also turned out very well. At the same time, there were stricter deadlines, greater responsibility, and a bit of fear of losing what we’ve achieved.

Ernests:

There’s a saying that anyone can write a first book. Now we’ve written the second one.

You also no longer did it alone; you now have a larger team. What are the biggest challenges of scaling up the work?

Andrejs:

The most significant challenge is balancing the influx of ideas and people with maintaining your tone and the core vision of the game so it doesn’t become a mish-mash of different people’s ideas. In terms of content creation, we have a fundamental storyline — that’s something we primarily steer ourselves. In terms of details and episodes, where we know what the outcome should be, we give more creative freedom to other people.

The other challenge is that working as a duo is super easy. Communication between two people is fast and direct. As the company grows, inevitably, you spend much less time on the creative process and much more on coordination and management. That can be frustrating because it feels like you’re losing part of what you love doing.

Who else is on the team besides the two of you?

Andrejs:

We have Will Ackerman, a games journalist from England; Bill and Dani from Australia, who are escape room creators and mystery story podcasters; and Marcus and Nathan, who have another mystery podcast. They work in mixed teams, developing various storyline arcs. We also have Artūrs Lācis, an artist I’ve worked with before, and programmer Rihards Paškauks.

When Ernests and I finished the first game and its two expansions, we felt creatively drained and exhausted. Now that we have different people on board and less time to work on our own ideas, we’re regaining the desire to create something ourselves.

Was it a conscious decision to build an international team?

Ernests:

Our first choice was to look for people in Latvia, but that didn’t go well, so we expanded our search internationally. We were looking for people who had already done something on their own. The Australians and Americans had their podcast, and Will had his own indie game.

Andrejs:

One big challenge was that we were looking for a profession that essentially doesn’t exist. In Latvia, there are no puzzle creators, specifically people who create stories told through puzzles. There are experienced game developers, but no one who has done something exactly like this. I’d say that building an international team has paid off well. We’re quite satisfied with the result. These people have a good intuition about what works and what doesn’t.

he previous Minister of Culture expressed the view that Latvia should increase support for the digital gaming industry. What do you think such support could look like practically?

Andrejs:

I’ve been thinking about this since our meeting with the Minister. Fundamentally, our country should become more attractive to foreign studio branches. The gaming industry is similar to the startup business — if you want, you can try to create something, and most often, you won’t succeed. But in the meantime, between developing your ideas, you can easily go work as a programmer or product manager in an IT company. We [in the gaming industry] don’t have those alternatives — you’re either a hobbyist or running your own indie studio, which is a tough job. We need to build at least a somewhat stable job market in Latvia related to games that allows talent to work and occasionally say: «Now I’m going to try to realise my ideas.»

Ernests:

All the state support options that come to mind don’t involve going to the Ministry of Culture. For example, making it easier to pay non-residents for their work. I’d also support state backing for the Latvian Game Developers Association because they helped us. People from the association organised events and gave us positive feedback about our publisher, which was important.

Andrejs:

State support and making incubator and accelerator programs more attractive to game developers would be extremely valuable. These programs focus on getting things done with practical work. I’m inevitably more sceptical about new education programs, like a game development program at a university.

Ernests:

Universities create the illusion that you’ll become a game developer and earn a lot of money.

Andrejs:

Yes, that can create illusions that aren’t entirely true about jobs that don’t really exist. The only companies providing jobs in Latvia are a few big mobile game companies. Realistically, you’ll go work for Evolution Gaming because they also make entertainment applications, and it’s close enough. To promote the industry, there needs to be a mechanism that helps think of games as a business, about publishing, about something that can be completed. You need to have the confidence that a game isn’t a diamond you’re forever polishing in your basement and never showing to anyone