[Interview] Planning a Series with Dexter Stardust (#3)

Three is the magic number…

Welcome back to another Miketendo64 interview that sees us chatting with Dexter Team Games’ Jeremy Fryc, regarding the upcoming Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space. In the second part of our mini-series comprised of Dexter Stardust interviews, we learned all about how friends, family and friendly strangers have helped to make Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Space the game into the game it has become.

Now we’re back with our third Dexter Stardust focused interview and this time we’re talking about the game’s episodic nature and the future of the series, including change of genre, but first, let’s welcome back Jeremy:

The Name’s Fryc, Jeremy Fryc:

Miketendo64: Before we dive right into the probing questions, we always like to start things off nice and light. Therefore, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

Jeremy Fryc: Of course. My name is Jeremy Fryc and I want to thank you for your interest in my game. I’m so happy to finally be able to talk about it like this. I’m truly honored. I’ve been working on a version of this game since 2012. At that time, I was almost exclusively interested in writing and producing music at the time.

But ScummVM had found its way onto my computer and played through some of the LucasArts classics, and I thought to myself, “Maybe I can do this. Maybe I could make a game”. I knew nothing about it. I didn’t even know what an indie game was… but here we are today!

Miketendo64: And now to follow-up, what is your role at Dexter Team Games and what is the extent of your involvement with Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space?

Jeremy Fryc: Good question — while my friends Munk Alejandro, Lola Mendez, and Alec Corday helped me create the characters in Dexter Stardust, when it comes to the actual game, I wrote the story, did all the artwork, design, and animations, as well as the sound design and music. Kind of a one-man-band, so to speak.

Planning a Series:

Miketendo64: While, for the most part, development of Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space, comes down to you and you alone, Flynn’s Arcade are also attached as a publisher. How did that relationship come to pass? What excited them about this upcoming release and how have you found the arrangement?

Jeremy Fryc: I feel really fortunate that Juan, from Flynn’s Arcade, was interested in my game. He DM’d me on Twitter and then we started chatting on Discord. I had a few publishers reach out before, but I didn’t get a good vibe from them. Juan was different. He’s super straightforward, very transparent, and an excellent communicator. He just loves games and he wants to help developers realize their dreams. He’s the reason Dexter Stardust is coming to Nintendo Switch. And in many ways, the realization that this game would be on Nintendo gave my friends (who voice the characters) the push they needed to finish the voice overs. I am extremely grateful to Juan, for sure.

Miketendo64: Featuring voiced dialogue, can you tell us a bit about the voice talent you have involved in Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space?

Jeremy Fryc: I mentioned earlier that I co-created the main characters of Dexter Stardust with my friends Munk Alejandro, Lola Mendez, and Alec Corday. They are all really creative people, and I feel very fortunate to know them. We all lived in roughly the same area of the Dominican Republic back in 2012.

One day, I was hanging out with Munk and Alec and I just said, “I’m making a game but I don’t know what the main character should look like”. So, Alec went into his closet, pulled out a leather flight jacket and put it on Munk.

Munk has such an interesting face and personality that… well, that was all we needed. I just knew… that was Dexter. He was Dexter Stardust. Alec and Lola are married, and Alec’s mother had a really cool dark-red leather jacket… Lola put that on, and BOOM! We have Aurora.

Back then, I was going to rotoscope Munk and Lola to create animations in the game. So, the characters in the game were actually going to look exactly like them.

After I completed a demo of that first rotoscoped/semi-realistic art-style, I had a legitimate panic-attack about the game. I just wasn’t happy with it (After that, I also learned to care less about the game. There are certainly more important things in life. No more panic attacks). I redesigned the art-style, and created the more cartoonish look that you see today. However, the characters are still inspired by Munk and Lola. Naturally, they voice those two protagonists. Many other friends fill out the rest of the cast.

Miketendo64: Consisting of 5 episodes, (Episode 0: Delivery on Venus, Episode 1: Robot from the Planet X, Episode 2: Mega Problema in the Bodega, Episode 3: Escape from Mars and Episode 4: Secrets of the Moon), can you tell ourselves and our readers a bit about the design process that led to each episode and, without too many spoilers, give us a quick outline as to what each episode is about?

Jeremy Fryc: The episodes are a happy accident. Before cutting the game into episodes, I had finished a rough play-through of the game and I played through it twice. Both times I was really unhappy with how it felt. The pacing was really off, and something was just… missing.

At the time, I was watching a lot of Futurama, Bob’s Burgers, and Clarence, and I got the idea to cut the game into different episodes. So, I sat down and plotted out how I was going to do that, realized that I needed to add some cutscenes and rearrange some puzzles, and then I got to work. It took about 2 months to rearrange everything into proper episodes, but it was totally worth it.

Even so, there were compromises. One compromise I needed to make was that it would have been impossible to make each episode the same length and contain the same puzzle complexity.

Again, this is because episodic gameplay was not the original plan. But I had a solution — I added little indicators at the bottom of each episode that indicate how long the episode is, how much of the story it contains, and how puzzle-heavy it is. This was a way to inform the player’s expectations before they even start playing the episode.

Episode 0, “Delivery on Venus”, is a bonus episode that doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the episodes (except for a little cutscene at the end). It was designed at the very end of development, as a quick 15-minute demo. I think it took like 2 months to add on that episode.

Episode 1, “Robot from the Planet X”, very much feels like the first act of a movie. It sets up the story, and sets Dexter and Aurora on a path of no-return.

Episodes 2 and 3, are like the second act of a movie. They both take place on Dexter’s home planet of Mars. This is where you really get to see Dexter in his element. Most people know him in his hometown on Mars, and it’s fun to see Dexter interact with those kinds of people before the story whisks him away forever.

Episode 4, “Hidden Secrets of the Moon” is… a SECRET! C’mon, I can’t tell you that.

One cool thing to note though, is that every episode is playable from the first time you open the game. It’s kind of like when an entire season of a show drops on Netflix. I could have locked the episodes off, but I didn’t. If someone wants to revisit an episode, they don’t have to start from the very beginning. They can just play the episode they want to.

Miketendo64: Unlike Episodes 1-4, Episode 0 came to be as a demo. What lead to its creation? Was it something you always wanted to do, or something that came to pass later on down the line?

Jeremy Fryc: Every game needs to have a demo, and when I created episodes 1 through 4, I realized that I couldn’t really release any of that as a playable demo. Episode 1 especially is too story-heavy, too spoilery.

So, I sat down and sketched out a few scenes… and created placeholder artwork for what you see in Episode 0. With that placeholder artwork, I was able to create a playable version of the demo in about a week.

Then, over the next two months, I finalized the artwork and polished it. For me, it’s a perfect demo. 10-15 minutes of gameplay. No spoilers. Easy puzzles. And it communicates the idea of what it would be like to play the full game.

Miketendo64: With the first game described as being Season 1, should you go on to create additional Dexter Stardust adventures, would you do so as another game, made up of multiple episodes, or release additional episodes, made available as either standalone sagas, or free DLC to Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space?

Jeremy Fryc: Great question! Actually, I have already started Dexter Stardust Season 2. It’s a pixel art platformer and it picks up immediately after the first game finishes. And yes; it is episodic just like the first game. I really like that episodic format. I’m about 1/3 into the development of that game. The second game is three episodes of roughly equal length. So, I’m almost done with the first episode.

The systems are all in place. Now, it’s just creating the content… which is not an easy task, but it’s been fun learning level-design in new genre!

As far as the Dexter Stardust saga goes… I plan on three games to fully complete the story. But each game is a different genre that I personally enjoy. The first game is a point and click adventure (which we are talking about here), the second game is a pixel art adventure platformer (which I’m working on now), and the third game…. is a secret, but I have ideas!

And if you are wondering; yes, I know how the whole story ends. I planned the ending before I started working on the beginning. You gotta know where you’re going, right?

About Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space:

Space! Dexter Stardust barely escaped when the Vreesians, inhabitants of the menacing Planet X, sent a fleet of robots to destroy all life on Earth. Now, twenty years later, a mechanical man from the 10th planet seeks to communicate to Dexter a very important message – he is the key to saving both humans and Vreesians. Play the taco-loving Dexter Stardust as he, and his good friend Aurora, go on the greatest adventure of their lives and discover the mystery of the Robot from the Planet X!

Classic Adventure Gameplay

Created as a classic point and click adventure, you can walk, talk, and interact with everything in your surroundings. Use and pick up inventory items to solve puzzles in over 100 unique scenes.

5 Episodes in One Game

Playing Dexter Stardust is like watching back-to-back episodes of a Saturday morning cartoon! With 5 total episodes, feel free to jump to or replay any episode you’d like at any time.

Full Voice Acted

All characters, cutscenes, and gameplay are completely voice acted!

An Adventure for Everyone

The whole family can go on a spacey adventure; with its non-violent gameplay, incredible story, logical puzzles, and easy controls, Dexter and gang are sure to jump off the screen and into your heart.

Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Space releases on Nintendo Switch on March 3, 2022. For more tantalizing interview extracts, we hope you check out the next instalment.