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Max Mraz interview Yarntown Bloodborne, FromSoftware, 16 bit

Bloodborne Fan Game Yarntown Started as an Experiment, but It Became a Beloved Gem

This article is over 4 years old and may contain outdated information

Yarntown wasnā€™t actually supposed to happen. Itā€™s not exactly an accident ā€” you donā€™t accidentally craft a fully playable love letter to a PlayStation 4 classic. But going into the project, indie developer Max Mraz didnā€™t expect it to go so far ā€” or for it to attract so much recognition.

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Yarntown is a free action RPG that looks and plays like a SNES version of Bloodborne. Itā€™s a bit rough around the edges, but for a game made in just a month, itā€™s a pretty impressive facsimile of the PS4 game. You explore a cursed Gothic town full of dark beasts and giant bosses, level up your stats using echoes, and use the familiar dodge roll-centric combat system, complete with parrying and the ability to regain health by attacking an enemy that just hurt you.

All of that just kind ofā€¦ happened. The project was really just meant to be a way for him to mess around with enemy behavior while working on another game using the Solarus action RPG engine.

ā€œWhile developing my other game, Ocean’s Heart, I wanted to give the enemies behavior like those in Bloodborne,ā€ Mraz explained. ā€œBy the time my coding skills caught up to a point where I could do that, however, it was kind of too late. The enemies’ code had become, like, an insurmountable spaghetti Rube Goldberg machine. So Yarntown started because I wanted to experiment to see if I could write a system for enemies like Bloodborne‘s.ā€

Yarntown Max Mraz interview 2D action Bloodborne with Solarus Engine, Ocean's Heart next

But messing with enemy behavior led to implementing a stamina bar. The stamina bar led to parrying. Parrying led to adding a gun. Before he knew it, his experiment had become a game in and of itself.

ā€œIt was a very If You Give a Moose a Muffin situation. He’ll want, I think, jam? And it leads to a cardigan and a puppet show, or in this case, a free video game,ā€ said Mraz. Then he added, ā€œThat analogy probably won’t make sense if you haven’t read the same childrenā€™s books I did.ā€

While Yarntown took only a month to create, with Mraz mostly working on weekends to get it done, it built on his years of experience with the Solarus engine ā€” an engine that was originally built to help create a The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past fan game before becoming its own open-source engine. Mraz himself discovered the engine when he was setting up a Raspberry Pi to be an emulator and realized that the Solarus engine was pre-installed on the software he was using.

ā€œThe idea of making my own game and seeing it on my TV was enough to cause me to spend like three-to-four years toiling away to make that happen,ā€ Mraz said. ā€œInitially, I had like no knowledge of coding and was baffled by basic things like ā€˜what is a function,ā€™ but I am stubborn and stuck with it.ā€

Yarntown Max Mraz interview 2D action Bloodborne with Solarus Engine, Ocean's Heart next

When Yarntown was finished, he wasnā€™t expecting it to gain a lot of attention, saying it was always ā€œonly a little side project.ā€

Over 40,000 people downloaded that side project based on word of mouth alone.

ā€œI figured people would like playing a Zelda/Soulslike, but, like, wow, it’s a lot of people who liked it,ā€ said Mraz. ā€œI really enjoy seeing just how many different languages the streams on YouTube are in; it’s super rad to make that many people happy.ā€

The only negative feedback Mraz ever received was about features that he didnā€™t include ā€” most notably, people were disappointed that Eileen the Crow didnā€™t show up in the game. He added her in after watching one too many streamers get disappointed by her absence. But other than that, heā€™s content to keep the game as is.

For now, his attention will go back to Oceanā€™s Heart, which he describes as a lot more in-depth than Yarntown, both in story and combat. And while he does say the game has some similarities to Soulslikes, he stresses that itā€™s a lot more lighthearted.

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ā€œImagine if in Bloodborne, your hunter ended up embroiled in a tic-tac-toe championship scandal,ā€ Mraz said.

Despite the attention that Yarntown has gotten, however, Mraz didnā€™t use the opportunity to promote his upcoming work.

ā€œIf I were smart about this, which, all evidence points to the contrary, I would have gotten a Steam page up for Ocean’s Heart for wishlists or whatever,ā€ said Mraz. ā€œBut I just made a fun game and wanted people to be able to play it. I’m hoping when Ocean’s Heart releases everyone will say, ā€˜Oh, this dude made that Yarntown game, and that was surprisingly good.ā€™ā€

Even if Yarntown doesnā€™t end up benefiting his future projects, Mraz said heā€™s just pleased it brought some joy to people.

ā€œI, for real, do want to say to everyone who’s played Yarntown that I am super happy you’ve enjoyed it,ā€ he expressed. ā€œI just made it for fun for myself, so the fact it seems to have made, like, thousands of people a little happy for a bit? I didn’t mean to do that, but it’s a great unintentional consequence!ā€


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Phillip Moyer
Phillip Moyer works at the local news station KSNV-TV, but that's boring, so he also writes about video games whenever he can. His work has also appeared in EGM, TouchArcade, TheGamer, and other outlets.