M64 Focus | Ozan Drøsdal (Game Developer, Artist & Content Creator) -

Ozan Drøsdal: (Game Developer, Artist & Content Creator)

Name/Known Alias: Ozan Drøsdal / The Ozan Show.

Occupation: Game Developer, freelance artist and content creator.

Best Known for/Notable Works: Manual Samuel, Helheim Hassle, The Holy Gosh Darn, My Child: Lebensborn (Dialogue work), Fruitbus (Dialogue work), The Ozan Show (YouTube and Twitch)

Fun Fact: I love crows and have been trying to befriend them for almost a year now. I always carry around nuts. I know, what if I suddenly meet someone severely allergic to nuts?! This is a risk I have to endure to befriend those amazing mini dinosaurs.

How did you make your break into the industry: Me and my friend Gisle showed off our hobby project Manual Samuel at a local game testing arrangement and the real game devs there told us we should apply for government grants, we got the grants and got to show off our game at an event called Nordic Game because of it. Which is where we met our publisher at the time. The rest is history!

Favourite Projects to have Worked on: The Holy Gosh Darn! This game showcases everything we have learned since Manual Samuel and we can show it off properly because there is no pandemic like there was when we made the second entry Helheim Hassle.

Hardest Projects to have Worked on: The Holy Gosh Darn since it is soooo complicated dialogue and animation-wise. I can’t imagine what a nightmare it is to code, but luckily I don’t have anything to do with it.

But in a way also Helheim Hassle. Circumstances led to us being forced to self publish that game in the middle of a pandemic and let me tell you, that was no fun at all. I’d make 10 holy gosh darns before having to deal with that again.

Currently Working on: The Holy Gosh Darn.

Currently Playing: The original Fallout game. It is the most difficult game I’ve ever played so the next time someone complains to me about how hard the last boss fight in Manual Samuel is, I’m going to tell them to check out Fallout.

Currently Watching: I just finished the Fallout series which is why I’m messing around with 30 year old games kicking my butt so I am kind of between shows right now. Thinking of jumping back into Good Omens since I bought one month of that streaming service originally for Fallout.

Defining Career Moment: When a Manual Samual playthrough without commentary had over a million views I felt pretty cool (that video has since been taken down, but not by us mind you! we loved it and used it all the time when looking up stuff Manual Samual related.)

Another good one was when a (THE) Norwegian game journalist I very much look up to and respect called Helheim Hassle the funniest Norwegian game ever made. That was awesome!

Throughout your career, of the many things you have since learned, is there anything you wish you knew at the beginning: Hmmmm. Many of the things we’ve learned to NOT do or make sure to NOT skimp on are things that might happen anyway because of circumstance no matter how much experience you have. But here is a little list: Don’t take things for granted, everything takes about 250% longer than you expect, self-publishing is super duper hard, be sure to test the crap out of your game and find people who haven’t played it before or you might get blindsided by your usual gang of testers figuring out a game mechanic easily making you think new players will do so too, details are important, stand by your vision and don’t be afraid to start over. Think of the time you spent before starting over as a valid part of development. We scrapped almost a year of work on both Helheim and THGD and my god am I glad we did.

If you had the opportunity to work with any IP, what would it be: To be honest, I just love my own IP so much. We put ungodly amount of hours into making our IP as awesome as possible and I don’t think I would do the same for somebody else’s “baby”.

Is there anyone you haven’t worked with yet, but would like to: I would love to cast Mark Hamill in one of our games. Also recently heard Jason Mewes in Fallout 76 and I must say… I was JEALOUS!

For fans of your work, who’d like to get in touch and stay up to date with all the latest news, what are the best places for them to reach you on: Discord! I love to help out with puzzles, get into head cannon discussions, show off VIP, look at fan art and of course we have a very good track record of helping out with bugs and corrupted save files and such on there as well! I stopped checking my mail in 2019 because I don’t need that kind of stress in my life so yeah. Discord is the way to go. Here is the link: https://discord.gg/7zT2uk3