Sorry We're Closed: à la mode games on opening a new game studio

Sorry We’re Closed, the first release from à la mode games, launches today on all major console platforms. To celebrate the multiplatform release, we interviewed the studio co-owners C.B. and Tom Bedford, and Liam Svirk, technical producer at publisher Akupara Games. You’ll learn what the indie creators behind this eccentric, narrative-driven survival horror learned while making their first game.

Thanks for joining me today, C.B., Tom, and Liam! For readers who aren’t familiar, can you give some brief background on Sorry We're Closed and some of the guiding principles behind your first game?

C.B.: I usually describe Sorry We’re Closed as a big conglomeration of things that inspired us both over a long time, from when we were kids to now. If I was going to simplify how I thought about the project, it’s “What did 10-year-old C.B. like?” but modernized and made cool enough for a 30-year-old.

Tom Bedford: I’d been interested in game development for a long time and had been following some Unity tutorials. I made a little block character in Blender, and was really excited to show C.B., who was like, “Okay, you shouldn't do any art.” But it got them interested in making a 3D character – their background is in 2D art and illustration. C.B. made a much better character model, we got it into the Unity Engine, and this became Michelle, the protagonist. Then we sat down at the dining room table and wondered, if we were to put Michelle in a game, what would we make?

Tom: Growing up, I was a huge fan of survival horror and exploration-based puzzle games. You could say that the mechanics side of our game comes from my influences, whereas the art style and characters are more C.B.. While we were making Sorry We’re Closed, we were thinking about the feeling of having played those old games, but then when you go back to them years later, it’s not quite as you remember – which steered us away from making a very authentic, PlayStation®1–style horror game.

We still managed to get some of the expected elements in there, like light inventory management, and, of course, the fixed camera. I think we were more forgiving with the mechanics, because we knew that, with how the game looked, we’d probably pull in a section of players who aren’t hardcore into survival horror. C.B.’s background in comics influences the art style, and we thought people who like visual novels might find the character designs appealing.

C.B.: We designed it to be more like how we remember games from this era, but with the quality of life stuff that came with newer technology. I think that worked in our favor – it helped people understand what we were trying to go for, which is great because Sorry We’re Closed is a really hard-to-define game! We’ve definitely had people tell us that it isn’t a “true” survival horror game, because it’s really heavy on dialogue and characters and other things players might not expect from this genre – but they still enjoy it!

As first-time game developers, how did you find a balance to keep both genre newcomers and diehards interested in the game?

Tom: We approached Sorry We’re Closed thinking, if this is someone’s first survival horror game, how can we provide a comfortable intro to the genre? That’s actually where a lot of our accessibility options came from. We have an infinite healing item that players can toggle on if they’re struggling, and there’s no penalty for using it – we’re not locking players out of achievements because they want to use accessibility options or anything. We just want people who have been enticed by the characters and story to be able to experience those aspects of the game.

C.B.: Sorry We’re Closed is very dialogue-heavy in comparison to a lot of survival horror games. There’s a huge cast of characters, while in other survival horrors you’re on your own most of the time. This is how we came up with the level separation where Michelle would spend her time in the town area talking to other characters without any combat, then leaving to go to what is essentially a dungeon where she will engage in combat with far fewer characters to interact with. We really wanted to create a feeling of isolation in those sections, without bringing the whole town along with us.

Why did you choose Unity to build this project?

Tom: On the programming side, I’d come in from web development, but everything in Unity was totally new to me. Going between two different scenes, making a UI for the first time – it was really learning every different aspect of how a game comes together.

I’d opened the Editor before, in 2017 or something, and followed a tutorial to build a spaceship. But then I went dormant until the pandemic when we were cooped up inside. C.B. and I are big fans of games – we actually met on one – so we were like, why not make a game?

We tried a couple of different engines but Unity ran best on my old laptop. We were also being optimistic and thinking about future potential projects, and had heard that it’s easier to release on consoles with Unity. But, mostly, it was about ease of iteration and how well the Engine ran on my low-spec machine.

What other challenges did you encounter as first-time game developers?

C.B.: Sorry We’re Closed was hard to market. We really had to lean into the fact that it’s an eccentric, story-driven survival horror game, while hoping the art and character designs could help players understand what they were coming in for.

One thing we really underestimated was the amount of time and planning that goes into preparing a demo. We needed to prepare one much sooner than we expected, and when you’re thinking about a demo for a public-facing person (versus a publisher) who will download it and play it and we’re not there to troubleshoot, it’s a lot of pressure.

It’s definitely a lot to learn – how did you stay motivated?

Tom: Game jams really helped keep us disciplined about moving forward. When we went to our first one, we had a few rooms built in the Editor, we had the character, the character controller, and the camera system – that was all stuff we’d started working on really early. We took the jams as opportunities to focus on other components we needed. The first jam would be all about scene transitions; the second, menus and buttons; the third, dialogue systems. We just kept building the smaller parts we’d need for Sorry We’re Closed in these two-week timeframes. It really forced us to finish!

It’s really impressive how polished and original Sorry We’re Closed is for your first game. How did you keep your ideas in scope?

C.B.: It went the other way – we definitely overscoped! There was a lot of back-and-forth about what ended up in Sorry We’re Closed, because before we signed with Akupara Games, we were only working on it part-time, so features got cut before they were ever put in.

Tom: When we had our dog, Troy, before he passed, we’d go on our walks and talk about the game. We’d bounce all these cool ideas off each other that we’d just cut because we were just envisioning a one-hour game. It wasn’t until we signed with Akupara Games that we realized we could bring a lot of those ideas back and make the full Sorry We’re Closed experience.

The other really difficult thing for us when we got signed was understanding how unstable the games industry is and always having that on our minds. We didn’t know if we would ever have this opportunity again, so we were thinking that whatever we wanted to do with a game, it had to happen with this one.

How did you find your publisher, Akupara Games?

Tom: We have very clear reasons why we chose Akupara. We spoke to a few different publishers, who had different propositions – one proposed they’d give us some money to develop the demo further, but we didn’t want to quit our day jobs without a guarantee of further funding. Luckily, Akupara was one of the first publishers we’d spoken with and they’d been enthusiastic about the project from the start. Before they signed us, they did a code appraisal of one of our console builds – I got a lovely comment about how it was one of the most organized Unity projects they’d ever seen. But we definitely needed their help!

What did working with Akupara Games unlock for Sorry We’re Closed on the technical side of things?

Liam: Most of the work we did was related to optimization. Estevão Arantes, our head of tech, did a full evaluation of the game and created a custom culling system that ended up being crucial for the launch on less powerful consoles. I worked closely with Tom to get the game over the finish line, ensuring we passed certification, and making sure that the game-feel on consoles was accurate to the PC version.

Tom: I can provide a bit more context on culling… When we started working on Sorry We’re Closed, we had small test scenes, and we thought we were doing okay, so we made bigger levels, but the performance was beginning to suffer. It turns out I was missing a key piece of knowledge: Culling is not just ticking the box that says “This mesh is available to be culled.” I thought, we’ve left them all ticked – we’ve done our job!

I tried to fix it with baking, but the complex geometry was causing issues. Because the game has a two-world system, all of the effects would hit at once because they’re all there – everything is two sets of geometry. With the custom culling system Estevão implemented, we were able to separate all the scenes into separate rooms or blocks that we could just turn off.

For other small teams considering working with publishers, what advice would you give for deciding who to partner with and how to make the most of that relationship?

Tom: We made very deliberate decisions about the process. Part of it was getting appropriate funding to work on the project full time and finish it. Part of it was finding a publisher that we knew truly believed in what we were making, and will let us make the experience we want it to be, without trying to steer everything. We were very pleased to get feedback, but we didn’t want to feel like we had to change the fundamentals of our game.

C.B.: When we were pitching to publishers, I was very clear about wanting to be involved with marketing the game, so I could learn from the process. So I guess I’d say in general, make sure when you’re working with a publisher that you’re clear on the responsibilities of both parties. What do you actually want the publisher to do for you? Is it funding, QA, localization, marketing? There’s a whole range of services a publisher can offer, so you need to really know what you want, communicate that, and work with your publisher to make it happen.

For players who are diving into Sorry We’re Closed on consoles today, what’s one thing they might not notice on their first playthrough, but is meaningful to you?

C.B.: It’s just a small detail – a song that I made for the game that features a dog barking. It’s our dog Troy, who passed. He was near the end of his life and had dementia, and had been barking for five hours while I was in my room trying to record this song. I was a little bit frustrated, but at the same time I knew he was just confused and scared. At one point he happened to bark on beat, so I kept it in. The song ended up being in the trailer that got our game noticed, and is the theme playing in the town segments in-game. So if you’re playing and you hear barking, that’s Troy!

Thank C.B., Tom, and Liam, for sharing your time and insights. Sorry We’re Closed is available now on PC and consoles. Find this and more Made With Unity titles on our new Steam Curator page, and read more game development stories from creators on Unity's Resources hub.