Devlog #6: Am I Imagining Things, or Does Gamepad Make Our Game More Fun?

Hi! My name is Adolfo Rico, and I'm the Technical Director at Hilltop Studios, and Lead Programmer working on Curse of Resthaven.

I was fortunate enough to join Hilltop Studios during development of Lil' Guardsman. Today I wanted to talk about some of the work I've been doing recently on Resthaven, and how it's built on lessons we learned making our first game.

While a lot of my time lately has been spent polishing the upcoming demo and squashing bugs, one of my biggest focuses has been gamepad support and Steam Deck compatibility (more on that later).

Making Curse of Resthaven feel great on a controller has been a much bigger challenge than it was for Lil' Guardsman. The bigger challenge comes from all the simulation and management DNA we’re incorporating: merchant haggling, town vendors, upgrades, inventories, progression systems, tooltips, nested menus… those systems are easy to design around with a mouse, but making them intuitive on a controller is a different puzzle. After a lot of work, it's finally feeling really good.

Some controller support had already been roughed in from an early build. The core interactions in Resthaven are fairly straightforward, even if the systems are complex. But until recently, there were dozens of little edge cases that forced players to reach for a keyboard or mouse every few minutes: menus that didn't quite navigate correctly, pop-ups that couldn't be dismissed, screens that assumed a mouse cursor existed, etc.

At this point, I believe approximately 99.99999% of those issues have been eliminated. Our goal is to fully support three playstyles: controller, keyboard-mouse, and mouse-only. That way, you can play however you feel most comfortable.

At its heart, one of Curse of Resthaven’s main genres that it’s mashing up is adventure games: a genre often synonymous with "pointing-and-clicking" (a.k.a. mouse, maybe keyboard but oftentimes not.) But plenty of adventure games over the last twenty years have successfully made the jump to controllers and consoles.

If we'd decided to make this a keyboard-and-mouse-only game, life would have been a lot simpler. But we wanted the game to feel equally good whether you're playing on PC, Steam Deck, or console. That meant solving a lot of UI and UX problems. Clayton, our Art Director, has been doing a great job in this area.

I think about how much menu navigation is required to play Baldur's Gate 3 on a controller and shudder a little. Fortunately, I think we've found some good solutions.

Steam post image Pictured: One of the greatest games of all time, but look at that menu navigation.

One of the biggest examples is our tooltip system. Traditionally, tooltips are easy: hover your mouse over something and information appears. Problem solved. But that approach falls apart with a controller.

Instead, we've mapped tooltips to the R3 button. Players can toggle them on and off whenever they need additional information. Some tooltips remain visible while browsing menus, while others appear contextually when an object or UI element is selected, mimicking the behavior of hovering over them with a mouse. We also moved tooltip information into the lower-right corner of the screen, inspired by games like Hades.

Steam post image Our tooltip system in action, in the bottom-right corner

Another important design decision involved interactable objects in the world.

Mouse players can click precisely on almost anything. Controller players don't have that luxury. Nobody wants to hunt for a tiny pixel-sized hotspot using an analog stick. To solve this, we implemented a layered interaction system. At a distance, interactable objects display subtle dots above them. As you get closer, those indicators become brighter and more obvious. Finally, when you're within range, the full interaction icon appears. The result is that players naturally discover things without feeling like they're fighting the controls.

A lot of these solutions were originally motivated by controller support, but they've ended up improving the experience for mouse-and-keyboard players too.

All of these little improvements add up to something that feels great on a gamepad; maybe even better than with a mouse or keyboard! There's something about holding a controller that makes you feel more connected to the character. Instead of clicking your way through the world, it feels like you're actually moving through it. You're driving, not pointing.

(Of course, getting here wasn't painless. There were definitely moments when I wanted to pull my hair out.)

And then there was the Steam Deck.

Steam post image Steam Deck: making millenials feel like they've got a new Sega Game Gear since 2022

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been tracking down a particularly stubborn issue that was causing crashes on the Deck. After a lot of investigation, log hunting, and Scott wrestling with Steam Deck's wonderfully confusing file management system, we finally found the culprit: a video encoding issue was crashing the game, but after a bit of trial and error it works again.

The bottom line is that Curse of Resthaven now feels great on Steam Deck, too. So if you're planning to play curled up on the couch, we've got you covered.

I'm excited for everyone to get their hands on the demo very soon and see how it feels for themselves.

Until next time, here's a picture of my cat.

Adios!

• Adolfo Rico

Steam post image My cat Dona hopes you have a good day!