Interview with Pixel Ghost
Ollie Coe is the creative force and main/only person behind Pixel Ghost, one of the most prolific Playdate developers to date. You may recognize his games from this site, since I wrote about every single one of them over the course of one big, glorious week. And, since he’s so nice, he said he’d be willing to get interviewed for Playdate Unofficial, too! Let’s get started!
PlaydateUnofficial.com: I read that you got into Pulp because of a New Year’s resolution, but had also tried making games before in other engines. Why is this the one that actually stuck? Do you have plans to work in the full Playdate SDK someday, too?
Pixel Ghost: Before exploring Pulp, I had a look at Game Maker and Godot (Which I do plan to come back to probably next year) but I found myself just rewriting code from tutorials without really understanding the fundamentals and having it clear in my head what my actions were creating.
Playdate and Pulp came along and I was able to follow some of SquidGodDev's tutorials (For which I'll be forever grateful) and with the visual style of Pulp, it was able to stick in my head and make sense! I have also made two Gameboy games using GB Studio and this is another great piece of software as it's not so heavy on strict code.
The way I feel at the moment, I sort of like being able to push the boundaries of Pulp as it becomes a bit more of a puzzle (Big up orkn and Scribe who are also repping Pulp)... so no immediate plans for diving into the SDK but I do plan to learn Godot and try and release something on Steam in the future (That was the plan this year but I had so many plans and had to cut some...). Maybe once that becomes clearer for me, I can explore the SDK in the coming years.
PU: How did the ghost become your mascot? Does it… have a name?
PG: So the way it came about was I had to draw a 8x8 character in Pulp and after messing around for a while I had something that looked like a ghost… so then I drew a haunted house, filled it with residents and Life's Too Short grew from there! (Credit to my partner Abbie for the name.) It was sort of by accident but now the ghost is the logo for my limited company and has been involved in 6 games across Playdate and Gameboy… I even did a run of merch earlier this year and have loads of stickers somewhere.
I don't think the ghost has a name but people normally refer to them as “little ghost.” I keep thinking about the idea of doing an origin story but I kind of like the idea of a non-specific silent protagonist who just wants to help!
PU: You do marketing consulting as your “real job.” Do those skills help your own game making/promoting? Is it the kind of day job that gives you the freedom and energy that being creative on nights and weekends requires? It can be hard to balance.
PG: I would actually say that being a game developer has helped my job as a marketing consultant. I have worked jobs for Ubisoft, Nintendo and I'm currently contracting at The LEGO Group and in all of these environments I'm working at a high level with large teams, lots of processes and stakeholders. What launching indie games has taught me is that I can't use those same tactics and instead have benefited from being active in the community and being open and authentic on social platforms to grow a following and community. Having 14+ years experience with games marketing certainly helps with instinct on branding, assets, channels and getting things done though! I think some of my trailers have been pretty cool...
In terms of then balance, it can sometimes fry my brain but I'm pretty good at juggling a lot of projects so I've been able to release most of my games whilst also working high level full time marketing jobs.
PU: You donate a lot of your small game profits to charity, and the people you’ve met on your travels have inspired some of your in-game characters. Can you talk a little about what drives you to do that, and some of your favorite/most inspiring places you’ve visited and people you’ve met?
PG: I used to joke that making games that help others means I can continue exploring a career making games without the guilt of just doing something frivolous for a living but I also think art can be a vehicle for good. Games don't just need to be about shooting, murder and war so it's cool exploring social issues or just making games about being nice to people which I'll continue doing. (Although my next game is not that at all...)
We met and volunteered with a lot of cool people on our travels including a head teacher driving progressive non-violent education in Nepal, an American lady looking after horses on Gili Trawangan, an eco warrior cleaning up the beaches and restoring coral on Gili T, an amazingly crazy lady in Mexico rescuing street cats and dogs and a family in California who rescue all sorts of animals. Life's 2 Short: Unhooked is actually based on Gili Trawangan, all the characters are named after people we met on our travels and the 4 wives are 4 of the most incredible women I've ever met! You can read more about them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsole/comments/15g2abk/lifes_2_short_unhooked_out_this_month_meet_the/
PU: Your next big game is Shadowgate PD, which will really do some things in Pulp that we’ve never seen before, even though the game itself and the style is decades old. Can you talk a little about how that collaboration came to be, and how working on a licensed port differs from making your own game from scratch?
PG: How this came to be is funny but simple… I remember thinking and writing in Discord that “Oh man, Shadowgate on Playdate would be so cool, someone should make that game!” and after a while I just started thinking “Why don't I make that game...?” I reached out to Dave Marsh (original creator of Shadowgate), asked if I could make the official port and pointed him towards some of my work. He liked what I had done, agreed to let me make Shadowgate PD and we signed a contract! He's been very supportive in letting me explore the vision for Shadowgate PD and I'm very pleased with how it's coming along.
The biggest benefit of working on a licensed port is that it has to be the best it can be. I will concede that on some of my games I probably released them before they were developed to their true potential (although this is also a process of learning and growing), but for Shadowgate I have to make sure it's great. I actually started off doing the art myself and after drawing a few of the early rooms I hit a block where I wasn't doing the art justice so I started working with an artist called Than from Brazil who has done an amazing job on the art for the game. You can see here where it was apparent it was time to switch up: https://x.com/Pixelghostuk/status/1751951858396975471
PU: Last one: you’ve gotten really good at being able to crank out a new Life’s Too Short game during the course of a weekend-long game jam. Does that help break up the longer dev cycle of Shadowgate PD, and can we keep looking out for more whenever there’s another jam, like PlayJam 6 coming up in October? Or maybe another big one after Shadowgate PD is finished?
PG: Absolutely it helps! I love working on Shadowgate PD and it's really helping me grow in terms of what I'm able to achieve with Pulp (I literally couldn't fathom what custom functions were before but now it feels so obvious) but I do miss writing and developing original content. I have a bunch of ideas in development with some of them having to wait until after Shadowgate but some might appear as shorter games for game jams in the future. I love telling stories so getting Hidden and On Reflection out during Shadowgate development has been great.
PU: That’s all for now, thank you for your time! Excited to get my hands on Shadowgate PD even though it will be like nothing else you’ve made and I’ll be so bad at it, just like when I played the NES version. Still excited to try! Thank you for making so many neat Playdate games.
PG: And thank you! I think you're doing a really great job with the website. The reviews and articles are short, insightful, thoughtful and entertaining. (Just like what a good Playdate game should be I think!) Keep up the good work :)