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Lazy 8 Studios

I had the fortunate opportunity to talk to Rob Jagnow, Founder and Lead Game Designer of Lazy 8 Studios about Cogs. The game is a unique and innovative puzzle game wrapped up in steampunk-inspired visuals. Cogs is currently available on the Steam digital distribution service for $9.99 (a demo is also available). This is what he had to say about his game.

Q) Tell us who you are, what you do, and a bit about yourself and your game.

My name is Rob Jagnow, and I guess you might consider me a transplant from academia into the game industry. I finished my Ph.D. at MIT in 2005, traveled around the world for a year, and then ended up back in Boston with a really fun job a Demiurge Studios. When I relocated to San Francisco in 2007, I used the move as an opportunity to start my own company which eventually became Lazy 8 Studios.

As for Cogs, the idea for the game came about more than five years ago and has evolved quite a bit since its beginnings. From the start, the focus for the game was really about gears, pipes and machines. As I experimented with different ways of interacting with those parts, I eventually settled on using sliding tiles. That evolutionary process may explain why Cogs is so different from typical sliding tile puzzles.

Q) What was the inspiration behind Cogs? Are you a fan of non-digital puzzles?

I’ve spent a lot of time playing the standard Windows games like Minesweeper and FreeCell. When those got boring, I decided that I could do better. In short, I was inspired to make a game that would be fun for me — something that I could use as a distraction for a few minutes at a time that would be fun to play over and over again.

I was also struck by the embarrassing lack of casual games that take advantage of modern graphics hardware. Its 2009 folks, my grandmother has an Nvidia GeForce card in her desktop computer, but it just sits there begging for polygons. I wanted to make something that was fully 3D with rich materials and nice shadows that would run on a typical mid-range computer.

Q) I imagine the creation of a puzzle game, like Cogs, is different than creating other genres. What are the challenges / opportunities?

One of the big challenges was to create a wide variety of puzzles so that even with 50 levels, the game never feels repetitive. Originally, I only planned to have 20 or 30 puzzles, but once I got some ideas rolling, that number just kept growing. In the end, we actually had more than 50 and we left out a few, including the one in the demo expansion pack that’s included with the full version.

That’s actually something that I’d like to talk a bit more about. Considering that Cogs was created by just one programmer and one artist, it might come as a surprise that we included mod support from the very beginning. Daring players who aren’t afraid to dabble in a little code can create their own puzzles, either with original art assets or by using any asset they see in another puzzle. The mod documentation is still in the works, but I fully expect that creative players will come up with some amazing ideas.

Q) Where did the steampunk visuals come from? Are you a fan of the genre?

Honestly, I was barely even aware of the steampunk genre before starting work on Cogs, but it just feels so appropriate for the game. Brendan Mauro, the lone artist for Cogs, came on board the project in May of 2008. At the time, the game had about 25 puzzles and was completely playable, but it was skinned with my ugly, gray engineer art. Brendan’s was a young guy, fresh out of school, but he immediately saw the potential of what the game could be and he had the creative vision to make it a reality. I gave him lots of freedom to come up with his own ideas and he turned Cogs into the shiny wood and brass world that you see now.

Brendan and I are particularly proud of the user interface, which was heavily revised through the life of the project based on user feedback. We wanted the user to feel like they were interacting with a machine at all times with nothing to break that illusion; as I explained the guidelines to Brendan, “no magic.” That means no floating data overlays, no appearing or disappearing windows and no hovering UI elements. Everything should be analog and appear as if it could be steam-powered. For instance, when you restart a level, we don’t just have the counter instantly reset — we roll each digit back to zero. We spent a lot of time balancing these extra animations with speed and responsiveness so that the UI is fun but not frustrating.

Q) Some of the latter puzzles are particularly complex, what was the process for developing each puzzle?

Believe it or not, creating complex puzzles turned out to be easier than creating easy puzzles. When I tested some of my very first puzzle ideas on friends, they turned out to be incredibly difficult to solve. So the hard part was creating easier puzzles that didn’t feel repetitive.

For each puzzle, the design process usually starts with a jog. I know that sounds strange, but I have a hard time summoning creativity on demand while sitting at a desk. So I go for a jog, take in the sights of San Francisco, and without really having to think about it, a new concept or two will usually come to me. I’ll take that idea with me back to the computer, sketch a 2D “unfolded” version of the puzzle in Photoshop, and finally put it all together in a .puzzle file. Sometimes that works on the first try. Other times, I have to refine the idea repeatedly to make it fun.

Q) What are you working on next? Will there be a sequel or DLC?

Since Cogs was done by a two-man team, Brendan and I both wear a lot of hats and we have to pick where to focus our efforts. For the time being, we’re trying to expand our audience by making Cogs available at other game distribution portals and translating it to other languages. But there will almost certainly be official expansion packs coming along in the future. Even before that happens, I suspect that players will start distributing their own custom puzzles, so I’m looking forward to seeing some new ideas from the Cogs community.

As for other projects, I have a couple of secret ideas in the works that are quite different from Cogs. Lazy 8 Studios will continue to work on small-team casual games, but I’d like to explore other creative avenues. After all, that’s one of the big benefits to being a small indie studio — you can try new ideas and take big risks without a deep management hierarchy forcing you to play it safe.

Q) Where can players who are interested in making additional levels go to learn more?

The best place to start is at our ModDB webpage. Also, the mod tutorial is slowly taking shape on our community Wiki.