Gill and Gilbert Simulator post-mortem

"This game is too good."
                   -Brian David Gilbert

The Gill and Gilbert Simulator has had a great response from fans of theirs and we've received  a crazy amount of feedback in such a short amount of time. For something we put very little time and effort into, this is unprecedented and I wanted to post a few thoughts for posterity and to give proper credit all around.

Timeline of events:
Thursday  31st of May
Each Gill and Gilbert stream happens on Thursday mornings for us (we are Australian and there's a time difference.) We rarely catch it live so it's a little weekly breakfast tradition. On that episode they do magic tricks and Pat mentions they may not be back next week because their streaming equipment will be packed for E3.
Friday 1st of June
Alex posts this fanart:

It is very good.
Saturday the 2nd
I'm trying to figure out whether I should abandon one game idea and start another and Alex says "We should do a Gill and Gilbert Simulator and release on the day the next episode should be up." I love it because it's short and doable I especially love the small single joke which is: Lots of Unlabelled Buttons and They All Do Something. That night I throw some simple shapes in unity and make sure I know how to switch from camera to camera. It works and becomes this lovely blank canvas for us to stick silly goofs at.
Sunday-Tuesday
This is all a blur. Alex wants to model the boys and I don't get why because she is very good at drawing them. Check out this one picture from the very early days of the show:

As soon as I see the 3D models though I totally get it. Good, well illustrated representations aren't funny. The horrifying what-if-Pat-and-Brian-were-playable-characters-in-GoldenEye are the perfect representations of what this game is all about.

Secret Game Facts: The models have full bodies and every bit you don't see on camera is flesh coloured. Waist down, the behinds, all fleshy. We will never share pictures of that. Here's something just as gross though:


Alex went through old episodes and ripped out all the sounds you hear. I used maybe three quarters of them. People love the long clip of Pat's Allergy Corner and I have to say, there were even longer clips I didn't end up using. 

Wednesday 6th of June
This was The Day Everything Had To Be Finished. Time Maths was used to figure out that 11pm-ish our time was when New York people started their Wednesday work so that was our deadline.
Last minute stuff was the different audio clips depending on which camera you were on and the extra text speech (originally it was intro, outro, and other stuff tied to buttons).  That morning, I mouse-drew all the segment graphics that show up for that non-accurate shitpost aesthetic. 
Things that didn't go in as planned were the Frank Advice screen (this was a gif and that would have needed a bit more time) and the screen size was a mess because I was previewing it wrong as I was putting it together. The whole thing could definitely be "better" but that wouldn't equal funnier and funny was the only goal here.
The whole thing was done using the Fungus add-on for Unity. It's meant for visual novel type games but I used it not only for the text bits but to control everything that the buttons do. The buttons were drawn using Doodle Studio 95. I can recommend both and have to stress that just like Alex and me, these programs can be used for much more than what they were used for in this game.

We ended up releasing it and sharing it around (the Polygon Shitposting group on facebook were very receptive). The most I was expecting was to have fellow fans laugh at it and to maybe get a Gilling in the Name Of in the next episode whenever that may be.

Brian himself then replied suggesting they'd be playing it on the stream. Again, this was late night for us and I don't know if I 100% expected it to actually happen. We stayed up a little late watching reactions and liking every single feedback we got.
The next morning this abbreviated episode of Gill and Gilbert featuring Gill and Gilbert playing the Gill and Gilbert Simulator was streamed and ready for us to watch. Brian also tweeted a link to the game, bringing a lot of people to it. Me and Alex spent the entire day watching and rewatching it and making sure each other saw every little post about it. People were sharing gifs and videos and screencaps, it was wild. Just as it looked it was slowing down, twitter user @sgoast posted this video using the in-game green screen to make his own goofs and it all kicked off again.
All in all it was the best possible outcome. We made a game about a livestream show and they livestreamed it on their show.

Alex has ideas for add-ons and follow ups. My favourite is "A very good Allegra model but the boys' models stay the same."

Thank you, everyone.
This was our first real couples project and it's been great sharing all the praise. If this were a solo project from either of us, we would be so happy for the other but instead we are so happy for each other. The whole idea and lots of the little ideas came from Alex. Without her, the game, much like me, would be a big dull mess.

And obviously we owe a huge thanks to Patrick Gill and Brian David Gilbert. We would never had done this if we didn't completely appreciate and love Gill and Gilbert. They've given us so many laughs and the highlight for us was witnessing them laugh at this thing we made together. It shouldn't be so difficult to find funny, wholesome, un-shitty game related content, so thanks to them and everyone at Polygon for constantly providing.

If someone is reading this even though they're not familiar with them, please check out GillandGilbert.com

For more of me, there is this very itch.io page

For more Alex e Clark there is this Big Cartel

Thank you,
Ive Sorocuk