Tomi, Gergő, and Roland, the team behind Ghostboy, an intriguing tower-defense game that incorporates emotional and educational elements, answered our questions about the game, delving into its meaning and inspirations. If you haven’t heard of this title yet, “Ghostboy is here to challenge your heart and mind with action-packed challenges, while helping you to become a more balanced version of yourself.”
In fact, we really enjoyed the game and gave it a 4.5/5 in our review, giving you even more reasons to check it out. There are many mechanics to engage with in the game, such as dealing with mental disorders affecting family members, solving puzzles to upgrade items, unlocking new types of companions to play with, and strengthening the family’s mental resilience through mutual support.
Of course, we won’t drag out this introduction. In the following section, you will get to know the people who worked on this title, and you can definitely check out the game on Steam.
Where did the inspiration for Ghostboy come from and how long has it been in development?
Tomi: The inspiration behind Ghostboy came from an old painting of mine from my college years. I painted that story out of me at the time, but I felt there was more to it. Over the years, an idea began to form in my mind that this story could be developed into a game as well. TThe final push came from a brief but more confusing period when I was struggling with a fear of death. I was afraid and didn’t dare ask for help, so I started researching the subject more and realized that I was not alone.
I started working on the project around 2020 completely alone. Because I was an artist, I had to learn programming first to make the game a reality. The goal was to get the project to a level where I could show others what I was thinking about, and maybe get a team together.
In 2021, I met Gergő, and together we rethought the game from the ground up and began developing it. It’s important to note that we created the game in our spare time without any investment. It was our little passion project, which we (also) worked on through countless weekends.
This is your debut game as a studio, but how did the collaboration between developers and psychologists come about? What were the key challenges and benefits of this interdisciplinary approach?
Tomi: We wanted to create a game that accurately portrays the difficulties dealing with grief. And also wanted to include all the helpful tools that can be used in real life to help each other through these difficult times. From the start it was clear that we had to involve specialists to ensure the game’s integrity.
What is important to emphasize is that in order to process this topic as a game, we had to simplify several complex mental processes. This was perhaps the biggest challenge. That’s why this design process was one of the most exciting periods of development, it was very motivating for me to brainstorm how we could process certain diseases/illnesses as mechanics and make them intuitively tangible and perceptible. We had to work quite closely together, and if we felt that an idea was not psychologically relevant, we discarded it.
Gergő: Before I joined Tamas in development, he was already consulting Dominika. But when we started getting into the more professional aspects of the game; we started having meetings with her more frequently to discuss the specifics and nuances of mental health and grief. She suggested reaching out to other psychologists, so she wrote a post and Roland answered and he joined the team as a writer.
The benefit of having 4 entirely different perspectives on the game and what it should be was sometimes difficult to navigate but was a great motivation to achieve more with it then we could ever imagine. It was also interesting to see that our playstyles were also different, so we had a lot of work dedicated to catering to a wider audience.
How did the development process start? Did you initially have tower-defense elements in mind, or were you aiming to create something more educational or emotional?
Tomi: We were intending to hit all 3 targets, but from the first minute, the idea was to create a tower-defense game. On one hand, I like it when you twist a genre a little bit, push the boundaries. On the other, the framework of tower-defense as a genre inherently minimizes active violence, because the game mostly focuses on defense.
I think it fits very well with the theme of protecting family members from negative thoughts. But a game with a similar theme would have been difficult without the emotions. We wanted to make the player really feel that they have to protect that family member.
And the crossover between family members, a kind of management part, in addition to the strategic thinking, helps a lot to add psychoeducational additions. I am glad that this has been so professionally substantiated.
What specific psychological tools and coping mechanisms are taught through the game, and how are they integrated into the gameplay?
Roland: The whole genre of tower-defense is transformed into a mental map: the levels are set within the family members’ souls where the enemies are negative thoughts, and your job is to protect the soul from them. To do so, you’ll have to build towers, representing coping mechanisms. You are not allowed to build as many towers as you want; you need to pick them carefully, deciding before the level what could work and what might not based on the information you have.
Of course, you do not have all the info in advance when a new challenge emerges, but that is the way you learn how a coping mechanism you are used to can be less effective in certain life situations. It forces you to change your way of thinking, but there is always a way (actually, multiple ways, but naturally, you only need to pick the one that works for you).
We have built in fifty tools, so we won’t list all of them, but they are separated into different sections: tools you can use for yourself and tools you can use for others. The idea is that you pick the regular towers you think you’ll need, but also pick other helpful tools to ensure your safety. For example, using the Arrow Tower is a good thing because it is cheap and reaches far, but bringing a healing flower is also a great idea in case something goes wrong.
However, the healing flower is named Journaling. Each time the player picks it, these words connect in his or her brain: journaling, healing. The more you use it, the better understanding you’ll have that writing a journal helps your mental state become more stable. To ensure that this happens, on the loading screen, you also see a sentence or thought explaining how exactly it helps you, such as “with each word written, it feels like I lose some weight off my shoulders” or something similar.
We have those sentences for all the tools. We are very proud of this invisible way to teach people about mental health without disturbance. We just let you play and hope that you enjoy it; the education happens unconsciously.
How do the choices players make affect the storyline and gameplay? Can you provide an example of how a decision might impact the outcome for a family member?
Roland: To improve replayability, we have included only three out of eight storylines for each family member. These are random events where you, as the player, will have to make decisions for each family member’s own crisis, however big or small they might be. Those decisions can have consequences of either gaining or losing energy points that are required to take towers to the TD levels, and to gain and sometimes heal mental disorders. When you get them multiple times, their severity also increases. The decisions can also affect multiple family members, so it is wise to consider your choice.
However, I wrote the storylines not to be too predictable. In fact, some of the consequences will probably anger you. That is intended, as we do not want you to feel like you have much chance to make good decisions when the grief is so overwhelming in the beginning. But then, as you progress, those storylines continue and you’ll see how you survived a bad decision, made corrections, and next time you’ll have a better chance of making a decision that could affect your family members in more helpful, or at least less harmful, ways.
Or, should you decide to go all in, make things a lot worse. The better you get, the more choice you’ll have to not ruin your life, but the choice is always there. By the end of the game, those decisions will probably not matter as much as in the early game, because you’ll have such powerful tools to help you that you’ll feel like you can beat any hardships whatever may come. And that feeling of empowerment is really something you will have fought for and can be proud of.
What kind of feedback have you received from players who have experienced the game? Are there any particular stories or reactions that stood out to you?
Gergő: We went to a lot of conventions somewhat early in development to showcase our demo. The story and art style were always our advantage on these events, and the players always praised the concept itself. From this came some emotional moments too. For example, one tester told us that he recently lost a close relative, and the game was a really emotional thing to play through. But despite his grief, he enjoyed playing the game and getting emotional about it.
One thing we always struggled with was the gameplay. We hit our obstacle on our very first convention in Dubrovnik. Our game turned out to be too difficult and complicated. This was really hard to hear, but on the same day we already started working on the solution to solve this issue. This wasn’t our last problem we had to overcome, but these obstacles made the game the best version itself.
What inspired the story of the grieving family in Ghostboy? How did you develop the characters and their arcs?
Tomi: The story of the family isn’t a classic grand narrative with an introduction, climax, and conclusion. Instead, it’s a loose collection of life events. We’ve tried to weave a thread through the family members’ experiences, focusing on everyday problems they might face at such a time. The events primarily address these issues, following the family members through situations that could occur in real life, particularly in relation to loss.
Whether it’s the back-to-school reintegration or the funeral arrangements, and death-related administrative tasks that the family has to deal with. Of course, along the events, we follow the characters as they change from phase to phase, slowly, step by step, coming to terms with their new life without their loved one. Interactive transitions between the game’s phases are also designed so that players can be part of significant grief events such as funerals and their first Christmas together.
How do you envision Ghostboy helping players in their real lives, beyond providing an engaging gaming experience?
Roland: Firstly, people often think therapy can only be done during therapy sessions. In reality, there are multiple ways to help ourselves outside therapy. They are simple to act on, yet in those difficult life situations, it can be hard to remind ourselves of them. Our aim was to teach the best practices and make the players use them as many times as possible until they start thinking of them as basic and necessary tools.
The second way, Ghostboy is there to help is through its difficulty. We did not design Ghostboy to allow you to beat all levels the first time you play it. We really want you to struggle, even get stuck sometimes. When that happens, there’s no other choice but to rely on others: though one family member might lose all energy, another can come along and help you. Grieving is one of the most painful lessons, teaching how difficult it can be to share our emotions and trust one another, although that is the most helpful thing to do. So, while it might seem like an optional mechanic to make the family members help out each other, it is a necessity really.
Thirdly, Ghostboy is not just about grief but also other mental disorders. Disorders that you probably have heard of before but maybe never experienced firsthand. Or maybe you did and felt like no one understood you. Well, not anymore, because we have invented gameplay mechanics to represent the extra struggle in ways never done before.
If someone gets drunk, the towers start missing the hit. If you are struck by a panic attack, you are forced to pay attention to yourself and not your surroundings; otherwise, you’ll feel like you can really die. The fear of death is all over the place, and it is a feeling many people try using inefficient methods to deal with. But then again, that’s why we’ve included the tools mentioned in the first paragraph: to not only take your bad habits away but also give you new more useful ones.
How does the inclusion of different Buddys and their strategies impact the player’s approach to Tower-Defense levels?
Tomi: The buddies are an add-on that makes the game world a bit more like a fairy tale, and their presence determines the outcome of the levels. In addition, the four characters are designed so that everyone can find their favorite to suit their play style, but, for example, for certain maps or situations on harder levels, which character you choose can be an important strategic decision.
The gardener is one of my favorites, we can distract the opponents by knocking down walls, perhaps he fits the tower-defense scheme best. He used to be the starting character, but many players had a very slow build up to the game because of this, and in the beginning they couldn’t take advantage of his ability.
So, a more active friend, the Hunter, became the starting character. He is one of our dps characters, we can shoot with him and distract nearby opponents with dummies. For shooter players, he’s a comfortable way to start. The Knight is the tank character of the game, he can be quite powerful in certain situations, especially if we take advantage of his passive ability, his aura, which boosts clayman knights.
Our last unlockable character is the King. His secondary ability is that he can corrupt opponents so they fight on our side, but his main ability is that he can neutralize disorder on the field, if deployed at the right time it can be fatal. We thought a lot about whether buddies should be upgradeable, or maybe get a skill tree, but we felt there were already a lot of factors in the game, we didn’t want to complicate it at the moment.
Let’s talk about the card slots. There are significant management elements in Ghostboy as you mentioned, whether it’s helping other family members or choosing the right towers. How did you ensure it didn’t feel tedious?
Gergő: This card system was one of our innovations during our first convention. We had difficulty connecting the mental health management system outside and the tower defense game loop. We came up with these cards, that can be towers or abilities that can help or hurt the characters.
This created a problem of the player having too many options to choose from, so we introduced the Energy Point and the Slots. These ensured the player of having an interesting choice before the level starts, and making sure they feel the pressure of real-life mental health professionals. Of course, we had to separate the cards to the phases, so players can slowly try out every card and understand how they work, without being overwhelmed.
Tomi: The management part was probably the most redesigned. At the beginning it was too much for the players, they didn’t understand what it was really for, and they got lost in the tools. We have hopefully fixed this and refined it a lot until we got to this final form. What we still had to be very careful about was to dose the introduction of the tools in phases. We’re starting with a narrower set at the movement, and new cards will gradually become available, so there’s time for the player to get to grips with them.
We have divided the help into several groups, working quite closely with the psychologists on this. There are groups that affect other family members, for example, we can use them to cure another family member’s disorder. The tools in the escape group are very powerful tools, but their use reinforces certain disorders. Alcohol is a very powerful tool, but repeated use of it increases our alcoholism.
An interesting addendum is that the tools are randomized at intervals, so some help is not always available outside the basic towers, just like in real life, the player has to adapt to the toolkit of the current situation; you can’t always pull out the usual solution. This was not only to reflect real life, but also to encourage players to experiment and not just stick with their usual strategy.
There are many enemies in the game. Where did you get the inspiration for them, and how significant are the different towers in dealing with them?
Gergő: We had many brainstorming meetings about the enemies, levels and towers. A lot of ideas came up, but only kept the ones that fit into the systems and worked well with each other. The ideas molded during development of course, and each enemy and tower received some levels and scenarios where their abilities shined the best.
The enemy-tower connection is not that direct as one might think. For example, there is no good tower against the Bear. But because Bear eats the little Claymen, I always use a mushroom tower near the spawning point to eliminate the Bear before it reaches more Clayman-centric points of the level. But there are more direct connections too, like plant-based towers are more effective against mother’s enemies.
Tomi: There are two groups of opponents, some are common enemies, while others are specific to particular family members. The properties of the common opponents are designed to allow for varied waves, providing a structural basis for the gameplay. We have the usual tower defense-type enemies, such as the Tank Skeeter, but we also created opponents that enhance the game’s atmosphere. For example, the Toxic Skeeter must be kept away from the family member, as it increases disorder and exacerbates the difficulties the family member faces. A toxic environment can further impact an already vulnerable person.
Special attention has been given to the specific adversaries of the family members, just as each family member in the story faces different problems, the adversaries and the world around the family members have been personified. We have attached them to the motif of earth, horizon and sky, as three interdependent elements of a closed world:
- Earth represents the traditional, masculine role, the greatest call: “I must keep the family together”. Dad’s tracks are therefore built on cave-wall-like elements, studded with machinery rusted with Romanesque building ruins. The tools that surround him in his room return as negative thoughts, the pillars that had previously given him stability and support attack him.
- A child on the horizon. Like the meeting point of heaven and earth. His world is characterized by the children’s room around him, his opponents are toys brought to life. We have tried to work with evergreen toys like the matryoshka. A tough opponent who also represents layers of personality. The teddy bear was initially going to be a children’s opponent, but we felt it was a more universal tool for us in the pitches, so we reclassified it as a general opponent.
- Mother Sky. Her world is a bit more sensitive, more spiritual than Dad’s. Her image is the caring sky, covering the earth from above. In her world, everything is a little leaner, more airy, more curved, interspersed with nautical motifs, she carries the spirituality.
Her opponents are the tools in the painting room, the safe place that has always been her is attacking her. Thus, the half-broken brush has become an adversary resembling a genie, unstoppable by the usual frames, it goes through every wall, it goes straight for the heart. And the corrupted painter’s palette creates tiny jellyfish-like creatures as negative thoughts multiply, one giving birth to another. Building on Mother’s Boss’s famous artwork, the familiar paintings become offensive, dark and whispery.
Let’s talk a bit about the upgrade system. There are three tiers, did you want to keep it simple, or is there more to it? Additionally, can we expect more content to be added to the game later?
Gergő: The upgrade was always something we wanted to keep simple. Only the memories complicate them, but because of the game complexity, this part was designed to be as easy to understand as possible. We started creating different towers instead, that was more interesting considering the limitations that the card system created.
Our last couple of months before the release were wild, so we all took some vacation time for a couple of months, and agreed to not talk about this until everybody is back. We have some ideas of where to move forward with the game, but it is still undetermined that we have the budget or time to continue adding content to the game.
Tomi: As I mentioned with the buddies, we had plenty of ideas, but we needed to set a framework that still worked well and was manageable. This was our first big project and we didn’t want to fall into the mistake of piling up. I still feel we got a lot more out of it than I expected at the beginning (thanks again to the team). We’ve talked a lot about the possibility of DLC, and we plan to do it if we can get it to enough people. We have a lot of ideas to expand the world of the game, hopefully we can make it happen.
What can we expect from you in the future, would you be making similar games?
Gergő: I can’t say anything for the others, but for me I would be open to creating these types of games in the future. But for that we have many obstacles in our way that we have to overcome first.
Tomi: At the moment, I don’t even know the answer myself. We’ve spent a lot of time on such a difficult subject as grief, and part of me would like our next project to be a little lighter. However, I am sure that we will still sneak in a theme or a twist that is worth talking about.
Lastly, what message would you like to give to the players who have played the game, or to those who have yet to experience it?
Gergő: Those who have not yet played it want to say: We have a public demo that you can try for free, so there is no obstacle in your way of getting to experience at least a small bit of the amazing game we created.
Those who already tipped their toes into Ghostboy: Hope playing the game gives you as much joy, as it brought us during the development. And if you want to reach out to us at any time, just join on any platform we are available and let’s connect and share the message of mental health awareness.
Tomi: Many thanks to everyone who played our game. I still get excited when I see someone playing our game, either streaming or live. It’s like when you get stage fright before a performance because you have to show off. I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of the game. And for those of you who haven’t played it yet. Our demo is available for free, give it a try.
But most importantly. If you feel you are having any problems, feel free to open up. You’ll be surprised how many people can relate to the problem that seems to isolate you.
Hrvatski 
English (UK)