THE MAKING OF . . .

How a ramshackle gang of indie developers formed over three continents to produce an epic reverse western

By Jon Bailes

Format PC, Switch

Developer Franek Nowotniak, Max Cahill, José Ramón García, Antonio Uribe

Publisher Panic Inc

Origin Poland

Release 2024

Disparate characters, each from a different background and with their own personal aims, banding together for a common cause. This is the premise of Arco’s story, but it could just as well be a description of how this indie RPG/western came to be. Set within a reimagined Latin America, each chapter follows a new protagonist from another regional tribe, seeking revenge against murderous colonials, until plotlines converge and the survivors decide to combine their skills. Meanwhile, the making of this game brought together a group of four strangers, all hailing from different lands.

Our tale begins some years ago, in Poland, with Franek Nowotniak. “I had a shitty restaurant job that I hated, and I was desperate to do something else, so I started doing pixel art after work,” Nowotniak tells us. That art drew attention on social media, leading to small commissions and then, after about two years, a contract with publisher Raw Fury, to work on the Norse Lands expansion for strategy game Kingdom Two Crowns. “It was a very big jump from spending 12 hours in the kitchen,”

Nowotniak says, “to being able to sit at home and look at your screen, and they pay you.” Having broken into game development, making one of his own was the inevitable next step – so he began to dream up ideas and seek out like-minded individuals.

Today, Nowotniak lives in Australia, which is also where we find programmer Max Cahill. Older than his colleague, Arco was far from Cahill’s first game development rodeo. After starting out making games as a pixel artist, he went on to get a computer science degree; in 2011, he worked for Transhuman Design on a multiplayer game called King Arthur’s Gold. “That was my first non-Flash game,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘This is a real game – it’s got an executable and everything’.”

It was also the thing that brought Cahill and Nowotniak together. The latter first played King Arthur’s Gold when he was 14 and became a presence on the game’s community forums. “He was very vocal about being very good at the game,” Cahill recalls. He also made some mods, featuring his own pixel art. Years later, Nowotniak got back in touch, hoping that the developer’s multiplayer experience would fit the game he wanted to make.

In early prototypes, combat played out too slowly, as you defined your next move then watched your character enact it