#MeetIronGalaxy – Noah Sasso

The function of Design can take many forms during game development. A designer’s curiosity, creativity, and past experiences help guide the direction a project takes. Testing a game’s limits can often give designers ideas of how they could approach gameplay moving forward. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking to a game designer constantly in the pursuit of learning.

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Iron Galaxy: Hey Noah. Please introduce yourself and tell us what you’d say you do here at Iron Galaxy.

Noah Sasso: I’m Noah. I’m a designer, which means I spend a lot of time planning, developing, and testing our games’ rules and mechanics. I’ve also been lucky enough to work on narrative design and writing for a few projects, which can be a fun change of pace.

IG: That’s a fun spread. More on your projects soon. What’s the most rewarding aspect of creating things that other people experience?

NS: Games don’t really come to life until they get into players’ hands, so it’s great to see people digging into the stuff we work on and having fun.

I love to see them strive to progress, too. The way a COMBO route in THPS 3+4 can feel just out of reach while you’re still learning the game, or the pain of getting flung off a skyscraper in Rumbleverse and then climbing back up for more... that’s the good stuff.
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IG: What’s BARABARIBALL and where did the idea of creating BARABARIBALL stem from?

NS: BaraBariBall was a martial arts sports game I made back in the day (along with the wise and powerful Richard & Marcus Terrell). It’s sort of a minimal take on platform fighters, but instead of trying to KO opponents you’re trying to dunk a ball in a goal.

BBB was released as part of a collection of other local multiplayer games called Sportsfriends, which we’ve recently made available for free on Steam and PSN.
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IG: As a musician, what game comes to mind when thinking of impressive audio design?

NS: I think the Earthbound and Secret of Mana OSTs are timeless. I love the inventiveness of Rhythm Tengoku. Thumper, Shiren the Wanderer, Anodyne 2, I could go on.
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IG: It’s great to talk with a designer who cares about the little things. What are your latest thoughts on approachability in fighting games?

NS: I gave a talk at GDC about this topic about 5 years ago! A lot of the trends that I mentioned are still playing out today, like the use of universal mechanics (the drive meter in SF6, for example).

It’s funny, Rumbleverse was in progress at that time but hadn’t been announced, so of course I couldn’t talk about it, but there’s a lot of people at IG that think about this question a lot. Rumbleverse was our attempt at making a combat game that felt approachable and new. It’s sad that it’s not around to play today, but hopefully we’ll get the chance to take another swing soon.

IG: Congrats on the launch of THPS 3 + 4! How did you evolve as a designer while working on the project?

NS: This was the first project where I served as design lead, so I got to talk with a lot more people about all sorts of aspects of development. Making a game can feel like being faced with an endless series of decisions, some of which you can anticipate and some of which you cannot. I think it’s important to have a clear vision of the shape and the vibe of what you’re trying to build so you can plan carefully, but it’s just as important to be able to respond to the unexpected moments gracefully.
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‍IG: Takeaways that can be applied even outside of game dev. Please recommend three of your favorite indie games and why someone should play them.

NS: Anthology of the Killer: A collection of funny, short walking-type stories about murder, but it’s actually a bunch of jokes about zines, but actually actually it’s a (successful) attempt at pop art from one of the most avant-garde developers in the game.
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‍Thumper is an incredibly fast, intense, and psychedelic rhythm game. It looks and sounds so ominous and throws some genuinely surprising and creative rhythms at you. Plus, if you’re into loud music, the drummer from Lightning Bolt is half of the dev team.

Fight’N Rage: A criminally underrated beat-em-up with fantastic combat and movement, tons of features, it’s almost a perfect game. Fight’N Rage is (mostly) the work of a solo dev and one of the best examples of the genre, indie or not.
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BONUS REC: Kero Blaster is a little platformer from the creator of Cave Story. You play as a frog with a gun. It seems simple, and it is, but everything here is masterfully designed and as satisfying as it gets.

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IG: Worthwhile recs. Tossing those in our Steam Wishlist now. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

NS: All you need is noodles. Maybe some handmade noodles??

IG: Not enough noodles. What is one place that you hope to see one day?

NS: I’ve always wanted to visit Brazil. I love Brazilian music, I got to see Milton Nascimento perform live a few years back. Good times.

IG: Our heads are bobbing. Thanks for the rec. What’s one genre of games that you think is underrated?

NS: Shoot-em-ups are overdue for a revival. They’re easy to learn, incredibly respectful of your time and tend to have the best soundtracks around (I like a lot of the music they’re inspired by too).

Dezatopia and Star of Providence are good examples of some modern takes on the genre.

IG: More recs. We appreciate the links. 👌 What movie have you seen the most?

‍NS: Probably the original animated Transformers movie.
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IG: What fictional universe would you choose over our own? What if there was no coming back?

NS: I really like Krazy Kat, this old comic by George Herriman - so old that it is now in the public domain. It’s about a mouse that loves to throw bricks at a cat. It’s full of ideas, the characters and the desert setting look incredible. It was a big influence on Calvin & Hobbes but it’s a lot more freewheeling and absurd.

Oh, and if I were stuck there, I’d bring lunch and a lot of bricks.
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Thanks for the visit behind the scenes of your interests and philosophies about design. You clearly spend a lot of time thinking about the player and the things they’ll be able to discover when playing an Iron Galaxy game. We’re tempted to ask you to share some of the easter eggs you’ve left in the games you’ve worked on; however, we know you’d ask to leave that experience for the players. Cheers, Noah.