Back in 2023 I declared that Sea of Stars was my game of the year, as did many of the rest of the team back in that wonderful year of gaming. There was never any doubt that Sabotage Studio’s JRPG throwback would not be topped for me, for so many reasons ranging from the combat to the story and everything in-between. It was one of the easiest ten out of ten scores I’ve ever had the pleasure of giving, and since then I’ve been waiting for an excuse to jump back into this sensational game.
That excuse came in the form of Throes of the Watchmaker, a free piece of content that adds an additional eight hour mini campaign to Sea of Stars for everyone to enjoy. Once again this blew me away, and might even surpass the base game I love so much. With an awesome circus theme, all new classes, and even loads of extra side content, Throes of the Watchmaker is essential for any fan of turn-based RPGs.
Now done with development on Sea of Stars, I was fortunate enough to have a chat with Sabotage Studios CEO and Creative Director Thierry Boulanger about the new content, how it was possible to release it for free, and of course what’s next for the Sabotage team. Don’t miss this exclusive interview, because Thierry gives some fantastic answers.
The new sea of stars content Throes of the Watchmaker is out now. How has the team found the reception to its release?
It’s been really good. We’ve been super blessed. Ironically by making it free, our main concern was will it be understood that we feel like there’s value to it. That it’s actually kind of meaty and it’s not just something we like threw over the fence. It’s kind of a challenge we didn’t really see coming. That usually a price tag also comes with an understanding of the scope or size or whatever.
But no, it’s been really good. A lot of people are kind of a bit outraged that they couldn’t pay for it, and we’re really happy with that. We meant Throes of the Watchmaker to be a sort of send off to thank everyone for their support. So it was great to be able to put our money where our mouth is and and use the support we got to give more to the players.
As an almost standalone campaign that about eight hours to complete, it seems wild that Throes of the Watchmaker is free for everyone. Why did you decide to do this?
There were a couple of reasons. First one being that as developers it just felt like it was good timing for this. We looked at how well the game did, and how we wanted to approach the conversation to DLC price, and we were doing fine. There’s like a level we needed to hit that essentially secures production on the next game and that was secured – and that was our goal.
So from there we said let’s remove as much friction as possible. Let’s not have the conversation around is it worth it? Should I buy it or not? And then this kind of monetary freedom just makes everything we do, I mean…
I was going to use the word “free”, but it’s kind of liberating right? Because we approach this creatively and think, let’s just make the coolest thing, and let’s pursue what we feel like making. Instead of focusing on thinking about things like if the production value is there and if it’s worth the cost. Now it’s just a silly adventure and that invites a lighter vibe around it. And that meant it felt like a victory lap celebration around Sea of Stars.
For many Garl was the star of Sea of Stars, but Throes of the Watchmaker is much more focused on the two Solstice warriors. What made you use Throes of the Watchmaker to flesh them out more?
So Sea of Stars was very much about the the story of the world. We thought of the world sort of being the main character. Then everyone we meet along the way has their own background, and they’re the ones that get fleshed out.
Part of the reason for this is because we know our games are all part of the same universe, and the key beats are already sort of determined. So when we make a game it’s like “Oh which story arc are we telling?”, and anything we leave out of that arc is something that’s almost like a side quest, like it’s not mandatory for the main story that we’re telling.
So you could almost think of it as like Throes of the Watchmaker was left out of the main game. I mean, also there would have been a concern of scope and time and budget and everything if we had to do it all in the main game. So it made more sense to flesh out these two characters in the DLC, as by default it’s kind of self-contained and resolves on its own separate to that.
Alongside this you’ve got the metaphor going on (and I think the metaphor is pretty on the nose) of that you go inside of the clock and it’s like the journey within. Then your shadow self materialises, so it’s almost like a metaphor for therapy. You’re dressed as a clown so it’s like you need to embrace a bit of the vulnerability, a bit of that shame. The characters don’t have their usual powers, so that façade they used to present doesn’t work anymore. They have to kind of get back up and reconnect with who they are.
And I think that ties in nicely with some of the feedback we’d been getting – that some people wished there was more about the two main characters and who they are inside. For me that story was always that they set aside their own wants and never got to develop an inner voice, because of the burden put upon them. And that’s kind of their tragedy in a sense, but it’s also their purpose and responsibility. But the DLC meant we got to do this and have fun right? We had a silly DLC that I like to think of as almost like a Christmas Special.
You know where all the characters are there but they’re in a different time period or something. They’re dressed up as farmers for some reason. The fact that the tone is a little less serious also invites a good DLC vibe. You understand that it’s extra, and just do it for fun. I’m not a big fan of stories where there’s a big 10,000 year curse that you’ve just defeated, and then in DLC it just comes back for another 48 hours. I didn’t want it to be just the revenge of the bad guy. So the DLC fit perfectly for these reasons, and was like one stone for a whole flock of birds.
You’re used to the Solstice Warriors having their Lunar and Solar Powers in the main game of Sea of Stars. What made you decide to give them totally new abilities for Throes of the Watchmaker?
We initially pitched that we would include Throes of the Watchmaker just for backers of the Kickstarter. But that was before we understood how big Sea of Stars was going to get. You never know the response a game will get. You can make it as good as you can, but you can’t guess how much it’s going to resonate. So seeing how it did resonate we’d been given the means to go further and deeper with the scope and production values. Like in the cinematic pre-rendered cutscenes we had the same budget in Throes of the Watchmaker as we had for the entirety of the main game.
This also applies to everything in the DLC, which is shorter but we always like to distil rather than dilute in our games. We don’t make games with grinding and we don’t recolour assets. With the DLC we wanted to push that further. So this means you get more skills and combos you can use in a shorter amount of time. You get more varied animations and everything. So the fact they lose their powers was the thing that triggers all this. Initially it could have been content where we refused the same timings or reskinned some of the same sort of skills, but because the response to Sea of Stars was so good we were just able to go all in on Throes of the Watchmaker.
Using these new skills was one of the highlights of Throes of the Watchmaker. Which were your personal favourites?
Well it’s like Eric says when he’s asked about his favourite track, I love all my children equally. When doing the game design there was one issue though, with Valere’s limbo attack. It was kind of problematic, because we had this idea that sounds cool in our heads and told the coders. Then we tried it out and it just didn’t feel engaging, and we had to figure out how to tweak it. It was the one we singled out and said this one actually sucks. But then just through tweaking and feedback and adding the healing factor to incentivise you moving up and down, it became the fan favourite and certainly my favourite.
The circus theme of Throes of the Watchmaker is so charming. What made you decide on this theme for the DLC?
Well we did the epic Hero’s Journey, and we didn’t just want to go back and add some new yellow crystals instead of the purple ones. So we decided to just do a major tone shift. We approach environment design as a snow globe, where a snow globe is like a mini world that’s self contained, it’s got all the assets and ambience inside it and you can almost hear the music.
We like to make sure every area feels like this, its own unique thing, its own flavour that’s clearly defined and clear cut. We designed the game around having very refreshing areas, it’s not like you go to the forest and then the jungle and then a swamp. It’s more like you’ll explore a cavern and then suddenly be way up high. We wanted to make sure we could create from scratch a full roll out of varied areas that are really clearly defined, and having an overarching theme really helped with that. I also really like the circus and cursed carnivals and evil clowns. Honestly it just comes down to that being a cool and fun proposition.
Pitching it to the team in the first place, there were a lot of initial impulse reactions of excitement. We wanted that to be captured and expressed in everyone’s perspective crafts. There were a bunch of questions on how that theme could translate to the player. The idea of the circus and the characters turning into clowns and doing acrobatics, everyone would just beam at the idea. It’s also the response we saw with the reveal trailer, and the response we’re seeing from people playing now. There’s something about the theme that just invites play in a way that feels right, and isn’t taken too seriously.
So despite being shorter than the main game, there are still lots of mini games, side quests and secrets in Throes of the Watchmaker. Why was it important to include all this extra content in the DLC?
This could be just a me thing, and I don’t know if players genuinely appreciate this or not. But for me gameplay is always a function to tell the story in a kinetic and tactile way. So for example, if you’re looking at Messenger, it’s a linear action platformer at the start because you’re just carrying this scroll to a destination. Then it turns into a Metroidvania. That’s not only because it’s a cool gimmick, it’s because the story at that moment is that you have a clear mission now. You need to kind of scout around and figure out what to do next. That’s supported by that kind of gameplay.
Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG because you need a group to tell that story. It’s about a group that’s going on an adventure. There’s more puzzles and everything, so the game genre kind of supports everything like that.
So when you look at the mini games, on the face of it’s just fun to have them. But they also I feel help express the fact that you’re at the fair. You expect a kiosk where you want to play a game and win a plushie or whatever. It’s kind of like how in the store we have a souvenir popcorn bucket that you can buy for a few bucks off the snacks, and you can bring it back to the main game and it applies in all the shops there too. It’s like you went to Disney World and brought back a souvenir you can use in everyday life. And all these things just feel right on the gut level about Throes of the Watchmaker. The mini games sort of heighten the sense of being at this circus or fair or carnival.
I also really appreciated Wheels coming back for this DLC too. Was it hard to add an extra figure to Wheels and still ensure it felt balanced?
So it was theoretically already there. One weird trick we have with game development is to only ever use about 60% of what you know. This can be about a character or a mechanic or anything. We do this so that if we ever need to flesh something out that can be done easily. First of all you present something that’s more simple because often a full idea is a bit convoluted, especially if you’re aiming to make a lighter game as we wanted to. So adding more never feels like tacking it on, you’re just extrapolating something that makes sense. So the Warlock was already there in terms of balancing everything. All we did for the DLC was say “Hey Bryce, it’s time to sketch a new figurine”.
So much content was added to the game with Throes of the Watchmaker, but were there any ideas that didn’t make it into the DLC?
No I wouldn’t say so. We actually ended up doing a bit more than we were going to in the first place. The scope initially was for roughly six months of production, and we ended up spending almost two years on it. Pretty happy with the journey there.
I just had to ask because last time we spoke you mentioned doing tricks while grappling on the boat.
Oh yeah. Oh man. That was going to be like an isometric Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. With tricks on the waves and spinning to gain speed and everything. Then we thought maybe we could just sail to the next island instead.
Speaking of the open world exploration, I really like the train you can ride to get to new areas. How did that become part of Throes of the Watchmaker?
We always talk about form and function. The cliché quote is that form follows function. So if a creature is spiky you can’t jump on it, but if it’s squishy you can. But a lot of what we do is finding form for functions. So you could have a basic lock and key right? But the function of a lock and key could be a statue where you need to insert diamonds into its eyes. That’s a lot cooler.
A lot of our work is how do we find the coolest form. Or a more intricate form, or a form that has gameplay or that breaks down your objectives into separate steps. So it was pretty clear we needed a function to move around the map that wouldn’t just be walking, because we’d done that a lot already. We wanted it to feel like an upgrade too, something new that was added. We’d done the boat already, but having a sort of equivalent where you could imagine in a future DLC (which there won’t be unfortunately) wondering what the next vehicle would be. And with everything being clockwork the little toy train in the mini world just made sense.
Now Throes of the Watchmaker is out, that’s a wrap on Sea of Stars at least for the time being. What’s next for Sabotage? And how is that progressing?
We basically had the same dev-cycle with The Messenger as we had with Sea of Stars. When a game releases we have a month long break, and then we have a summit meeting where I pitch to everyone. Here’s the DLC for the current game, which has a known pipeline and everyone stays busy working on it. There’s also a pitch for the next game, and so we split a smaller team to work on preparing the groundwork for the next game while the bulk of the team works on the DLC. It’s a bit imperfect, but by the time we’re done with the DLC we’re ready to greet everyone over in the next thing.
So for the past eighteen months we’ve had four people working on the next game while we finished Throes of the Watchmaker. Now we’re reaching that intersection where we’ll take a little break for the summer, and when we get back it’s time for everyone to jump onto the next game. All I can tell you now is that it’s known as Project Sparrow, and we’ve been slowly working on it for that eighteen months.
We are very excited for Project Sparrow, and that’s part of why there won’t be more DLC for Sea of Stars. Project Sparrow is where our personal excitement is, because we’ve been on Sea of Stars for like seven years now. As sad as it is to leave it, we’re ready to move on. There are always ideas for Sea of Stars too though, so I don’t know maybe we’ll do one day a week to flesh out new things for it. We’ll see.
Obviously there’s not much you can reveal about your next game now, but would I be right in thinking it’ll be set in the same shared universe as The Messenger and Sea of Stars.
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.
If we were ever to make a game that wasn’t in that same universe or wasn’t retro inspired, we wouldn’t call it a Sabotage game even if it was the same team creating it. We’d give another name to the studio.
Since you have that post release break coming up, are there any video games from your backlog you’re planning on playing while you have this down time?
I’ve actually managed to stay on track with most of what I’ve been wanting to play. I don’t think I have a pile right now to get through. I finished Expedition 33, and I’m currently playing Doom: The Dark Ages. I’m not sure what game is up next. I’ve yet to play Crosscode from a few years back so maybe it’ll be that. We also just got a Trinitron 32 inch old school Sony TV, so I’m probably going to put the retro games on the CRT. I think that’s legit what I’m most excited for. It feels right for the summer, to play through Yoshi’s Island or something.
Sea of Stars is out now for all consoles and PC, the DLC is also out now and free.
