PAX AUS Indie Showcase 2024 - Anticitizen Red
The PAX AUS Indie Showcase is a chance to see some of the best new and upcoming titles from the ANZ digital and tabletop development scene, with past winners including such celebrated games as Unpacking, Copycat, Yum Cha, Kingless and many more. The 2024 Indie Showcase is shaping up to be another highlight of the event and Player2 encourages visitors to PAX AUS to make their way to the PAX Rising area and check out the following title, as well as the many other excellent indies on display.
Queebly Software was born in the fires of Beer & Pixels, the renowned Sydney game dev monthly meetup. Anticitizen Red marks their first foray into digital games after many other creative endeavours. The trio of James, Freya and Sam spoke to Player2 about their design process and winning a spot in the 2024 Indie Showcase.
Player 2: Sam, James, Freya – thanks so much for giving us some time to discuss Anticitizen Red! The first thing I wanted to learn about is the genesis story of Queebly. How did it all start?
Sam: Queebly Studios was born out of a hole left by leaving Theatre productions a couple of years ago. We tried to fill the hole by doing film for a hot minute but realised it was impossible from a monetary/publicity perspective unless you knew the right people.
Game dev seemed like an “easier” way to get seen and share our silly little ideas and it also gave us complete control over every aspect of the narrative. Instead of just influencing actors to say things which they might forget on stage when the performance happens, or changing up costumes to look better on film and then realising all that detail is lost when we do colour correction. We can control how people even interact with the world we create down to the most inconsequential detail. Some people see the specificity of game programming and game design as a negative (cause its really nitpicky) but I love it for that reason and I love the amount of control it gives us.
The Queebly Studio creation came about when we realised people actually somewhat cared about our funny little shooter and we could spin it into something that we might one day be able to live off and create even more funny little games out of it.
James: Sam, Freya and I had worked on many projects together across a couple of different mediums, to varying levels of success. Nothing really ever “stuck” though until we tried making games, which is cool and fun.
Queebly is our little guy that we invented the very first time we showed off AR publicly at Beer and Pixels in Sydney. They’re just a funky little guy, and I think they’re cute.
Freya: I think we were walking to Beer and Pixels one night and we were joking that we should pretend to have devved a game in the 90s so it would seem like we had more clout in the industry. “Yeah I devved on Queebly’s Wondrous Adventure back in 1993, the game was lost in a fire in 2003 though so you can’t play it anymore, just trust me”. Did I say joke? It’s totally real. I devved on Queebly’s Wondrous Adventure in 1993. Got lost in a fire though.
P2: Anticitizen Red for me brings to mind media like Android: Netrunner, The Matrix and Dark City to late 90’s boomer shooters like Duke 3D and plenty more in between. How did AR come about and what were the team drawing on to create such a distinct look and feel?
Sam: Some stories stick in your head and will not leave until you write it. Anticitizen Red is the third attempt of the same story in differing mediums and this time it seems like we’ll pull it off.
Essentially we liked the idea of an Australian Cyberpunk and what that would entail and imply, who would be the super power? What would other countries want with Australia? The future is now, but how would it be distributed? Would Australia even be relevant? Who would be in control based on predictions today?
These questions led to our biggest change in the Cyberpunk formula: An American occupied Australia. Most Cyberpunk is stuck in the 80s and seems to have a heavy Japanese influence based on the writer’s world view when creating the genre.
So instead of a future where Japan and its corporations are the technological powerhouse of the world, it is now America and its corporations, who have essentially created Vassal states of every other country to maximise profit at the cost of everything else, this detail has become crucial to us as Australia has had a history of American intervention and cultural transference (not all of it is positive) and this issue has and will not go away.
Americas problems are Australia’s problems, and so we decided to follow it to the logical conclusion and make our world from the perspective of a rusted down, American vassal state. The country version of a mining town after the mines have dried up.
James: AR is really built from a love of those 90s-00s single player shooters, which is something that we really wanted to convey both gameplay wise and aesthetically. There’s so many layers and ways in which AR has been inspired by games we loved growing up that it’s impossible to really boil it down to any specific direct inspirations. To make it easier, I’ve made a graph to try and explain some of Anticitizen: Red’s DNA.
Freya: If you ever find yourself going “Wow the music reminds me of XYZ” that’s probably not a coincidence, I’ve listened to a lot of different stuff for AR. Obviously the music in Cyberpunk: 2077 is a huge inspiration, other than that; HEALTH, Carpenter Brut, the Portal 2 soundtrack are some that come to mind.
P2: How did you feel when you found out you had won a place in the Indie Showcase for this year? What would you say are the best things that come out of being bestowed with a spot?
Sam: We put our game in as a “Why not?” because we essentially had nothing to lose, but didn’t expect anything back from it. While we were confident that our game would be liked by “someone”, it is scary to realise that your game will be liked by “someone that isn’t you”.
This and a bunch of recent wins for the game and our group has given us way more confidence in showing and asking for our game to be seen and hopefully funded and helped us realise that the game is normally really liked and enjoyed when put in someone’s hands and that we have a new challenge of getting the game into as many hands as possible.
James: I was lucky enough to be the guy who got the call, I was at work when they called through and were like “ Yo, you got PAX” and I was genuinely shocked.
PAX has such a huge legacy, I mean, we’ll be showcasing in the same place that Hollow Knight, Unpacking, and so many other incredible Australian games have been before us it feels wild to think we get to be a part of things.
Freya: It’s crazy! I still can’t really believe it – it probably won’t hit me until I’m at the convention centre and someone pulls me aside to tell me that I was just talking to the CEO of games.
P2: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a design team in getting AR to this point?
Sam: The biggest issue we had in regards to this game was making sure people “got it” as soon as possible. While the game is generally enjoyed when people get the hang of it somewhere through Map 2, getting them through Map 1 was a big challenge.
Essentially the game looked and felt like a normal third person shooter. But some mechanics made it very different in a minute-to-minute sense and it broke peoples flow a little. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the game did not hold your hand at all and punished you harshly for getting it wrong as well as the expected indie jank that some people will excuse and some people will really not.
People generally let jank slide when they’re already in and immersed but will not let it go in the first 30 minutes. Getting that first 30 minutes as good as we can and making it feel like a “real game” was our biggest priority.
So we polished our base game play mechanics up to a mirror sheen and added more tutorialisation in game play. This avoided a lot of our “instant quit” moments that we used to have before and let the game get out of the games way and just let people enjoy themselves and our story we have made.
James: The hardest part is the learning curve that comes with making our first big game. There are so many hurdles that are hard to jump for the first time, we are constantly learning new things and figuring out new workflows which always make us go “Damn, that would have been good to know months ago”. I guess sometimes you gotta do things the hard way first so you can figure out the easy way later.
Also having to explain Max Payne to people, we go “It kinda plays like a modernized Max Payne” and people go “What’s that?”. Y’know how many people don’t know about Max Payne?! It’s crazy. Should be a part of the school curriculum, put Max Payne on the NAPLAN.
Freya: I’ve been a musician in various forms for most of my life, then a few years ago I bit the bullet and finally spent wayyy too much money on an Ableton Live license to actually start recording stuff. Then a little later I reconnected with Sam and was like “Hey you’re making a game, I’m trying production. I’ll make you one or two tracks if you want.”. This quickly spiralled out from “just one or two tracks” so my biggest challenge was probably learning how to compose weird cyberpunk music and get it right quickly.
P2: Is there a rough window for the release of Anticitizen Red?
Sam: Game dev is hard to estimate for, especially when we’re pretty new to it. But we’re shooting for late 2026.
James: Late 2026. Unless I get hit by a car or something, that might push it back.
Freya: I think I’d be upset if James got hit by a car.
P2: Have Queebly already started kicking around ideas for their next title, or are you still in the trenches with AR for the foreseeable future?
Sam: We’ve all pitched stuff to do next. But there is nothing concrete as we all have very different games we like to play and some of our individual picks are instant “No’s” for the other people in the group.
After Anticitizen we plan to do like a mini jam where we test out core game play mechanics of all the best pitches and we pick the one that’s the most viable and the one we all can see ourselves working on for a couple of years without killing each other. Personally, I want to make another shooter set in the same universe as Anticitizen Red that is a direct sequel but I think I will be (rightfully) executed if I ask for it.
James: We’ve got a lot of ideas floating around, the one I think we’re most settled on is Freya’s idea, so she’s taking the creative lead on that bad boy.
Freya: Imagine, if you would, a mouse.
Player2: What can PAX AUS Attendees look forward to at the Anticitizen Red booth?
Sam: Our great personalities! [CITATION NEEDED] And an even greater game!
Essentially we’re letting players get their hands on the first 10-15 minutes of the game (sans cutscenes cause story doesn’t fly in a convention sense where you’ve probably come with friends and have a bunch of other stuff in the room to compete with) and letting them experience how cool the world and the general game play is. Hopefully getting them hungry to experience even more in the comfort of their home when our demo and game releases!
James: You’ll be getting the first look at 2026’s Game of the Year, there’s so much to love about this game; the action, the comedy, and if all else fails, you could probably ask us our gamer hot takes, we got a lot of those.
Freya: If people ask nicely I’ll show them photos of my cat. Or if they don’t ask nicely. Or if they don’t ask. Do you want to see a picture of my cat?
P2: Alright, one final question -who on the team is the best at the game?
James: Sam.
Freya: Sam.
Sam: Me.
It’s become an issue ‘cause I’m the Level designer and game designer and also I’m the guy who tests and plays the game the most by far so I’m the one who sets the difficulty for each encounter and each level and I’ve had to kinda settle myself down and save the things I find hard for the end of the game. However, I do like that this game really lets you “style” on enemies (all damage is completely avoidable if you’re a bad enough dude)
Personally I can’t wait for the game to release so enough people on YouTube do a ‘no damage, melee only speedrun’ and then I can make an expansion pack that’s essentially Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels for those thirty people.
P2: Thanks so much for speaking to Player2 – we can’t wait to check out Anticitizen Red on the show floor!
PAX AUS Attendees can find the Anticitizen Red booth in the PAX AUS Indie Showcase section of PAX AUS from October 10-13. The game can be Wishlisted on Steam right now!
