How does one come up with, and subsequently make, Peak? Well, it sounds like you just kind of have to do it in weird ways. If you’ve missed it, Peak isn’t just slang you’ve heard your teen use to denote something being really good, it’s a co-op video game about climbing mountains with your friends and having a very good/ bad time while doing so. The bulk of work was also done in a single month as part of a collaborative game jam between Another Crab’s Treasure developer Aggro Crab and Content Warning developer Landfall. And in an interview with PC Gamer, a couple of the devs that worked on Peak have shared a little insight into how it got made.
According to Aggro Crab head Nick Kaman, Peak was made “mostly from jealousy.” To be clear this sounds like mostly a joke, but for Kaman and the rest of Aggro Crab, this feeling came about when they learned that Content Warning was also made as part of a one-month long game jam, and sold ridiculously well. “It turned everything we know about game development upside-down,” Kaman said.
“At the time we were on the precipice of launching our biggest game ever, Another Crab’s Treasure—an intense 3+ year-long project that burnt a lot of us out. While it was a success, Content Warning was a much bigger one made in MUCH less time.” So, Kaman and two other devs at Aggro Crab asked if they could join Landfall for their next jam, conducted in Korea, the latter said yes and off they went.
“We brought our computers to an Airbnb in Hongdae and locked tf in for a month. As soon as we landed, we beelined straight for the nearest IKEA and spent the day assembling office chairs and desks (that were donated to the local indie scene at the end of the month).”
Peak itself had actually been pitched the year prior… in a hot tub in Sweden, of all places, said Aggro Crab creative director Caelan Rashby-Pollock. “The concept was a lot more vague then and much closer to an open-world survival thingy, but we all quickly got excited about being a group of lost scouts on an island, and the macabre slapstick that can come from that.”
After that, all their time in Korea was spent either working on the game, or “getting food while talking more about Peak,” Kaman said. “While it was pretty intense, it was also the most fun I’ve ever had working on a game.”
While sales are absolutely not an indicator of quality by any means, Peak has since gone on to sell a boatload too. I mention only to point out that this doesn’t mean the key to success is starting with a good idea and then only taking a month to make it. Both Aggro Crab and Landfall are experienced developers, so I beg of you, don’t point to this as an example of a quick route to success.