Mike Mood and TheMeatly were hard at work yet again.
They’d had a brief bit of rest after Bendy and the Ink Machine chapter 3.
For all of a few hours.
The game’s third chapter had been finished just three minutes before it had been released
online.
Now, they were excited to continue their work, and make Chapter 4 a far less hectic experience.
They were going to throw everything they had into making an even more polished, seamless,
enjoyable gaming experience.
There was just one problem: there wasn’t enough of Bendy to go around.
Fans were calling out for more.
They wanted merchandize, additional games, animations.
There was a high demand for everything Bendy, and the small team at TheMeatly Games simply
couldn’t keep up.
It was time to rope in some additional help.
Bendy was about to be outsourced, as he began appearing in spin-off games and crossovers
with another popular indie game.
This is the story of Bendy and the Ink Machine Chapter Four, and how Bendy conquered the
world.
The foundations of Bendy’s new career as a merchandizing tour de force had begun while
the team was working on The Ink Machine Chapter 3.
The small studio that was working on the game had grown rapidly in an attempt to expand
their scope, and this had meant beginning to develop toys, clothes, and other items
that bore their mascot’s face.
All of this was a lot for a single studio to manage, and getting these things through
the pipeline had taken time.
But as Mike and TheMeatly continued to push forward with their game development, the also
saw their character begin to hit toy shelves.
This was a surreal experience.
It was clear that there was an appeal to Bendy beyond his horror game roots.
Eager to put this character into new situations and scenarios, Mike had also been working
with his former employers at Karman Interactive on a wholly unconnected Bendy spin-off title.
The head of Karman Interactive, John Keon, had originally given Mike his big break in
game design.
When, fresh-faced and eager to try new things, Mike had originally started working in the
games industry.
Karman had provided him with his first regular gig.
This had continued even as the popularity of Bendy and the ink Machine took off, leaving
Mike struggling to complete his contracted assignments at Karman while also completing
work on early chapters of his iconic game.
Finally, Mike had finished working for Karman, and instead decided to get them to work for
him.
He and TheMeatly had decided on making a mobile game based on Bendy.
As they didn’t have time to make the game themselves, they figured they needed to outsource.
As Mike already had a good working relationship with the team at Karman, he contacted them
and asked if they’d be interested in building the game.
Mike enjoyed this reversal of fortunes, as he’d now become his former boss’s client.
Every week, Karman would send TheMeatly Games a build of Nightmare run, and they’d give
their feedback, making points about what was on-brand, and what might need to be altered.
Luckily, there was no conflict of personalities here, and Bendy in Nightmare Run was released
to the world while TheMeatly games continued to work on Chapter Four.
This new chapter of the game was, yet again, bigger and grander than anything the team
had done before.
Again, TheMeatly and Mike streamlined their creation process, putting into place the kind
of production structure that had been lacking up to this point.
They’d learned a lot in the past few months.
There was no more panicked flapping around as they haphazardly threw their game together.
Or, at least, that was the plan.
Things didn’t entirely work out that way.
Before long, the pressure began mounting up, as deadlines drew closer and closer.
Besides, seemingly unable to stop themselves, the team had begun to overcommit to a slew
of side projects that made things even more complicated.
As well as all the work on Chapter Four, the team also threw together something very special.
It was during work on this chapter of the game that Halloween came around, and everyone
wanted to do something that their fans weren’t going to forget.
For just one weekend, Bendy was going to crossover with Hello Neighbour, another upcoming indie
horror game that was drawing attention from similar crowds.
It was time to create Hello Bendy.
In retrospect, Mike couldn’t really recall where the idea of Hello Bendy had come from.
He’d been in contact with Luke Bertis from game publisher TinyBuild, and they’d been
chatting back and forth.
At some point, they ended up agreeing that they should crossover Bendy with the then
in-development Hello Neighbor.
There was just one problem.
At this point, Halloween was just two weeks away, so if this was actually going to happen,
it would need to be thrown together immediately.
TheMeatly games began crunch mode as soon as possible, throwing things together to try
and build a version of this combined game that would play like both Bendy and Hello
Neighbour.
Meanwhile, on the other side of things, Hello Neighbour’s development team at Dynamic
Pixels tackled another part of the project.
The two teams swapped art assets and shared their work back and forth.
After some hectic work and a lot of long nights, the collaboration was finished on time.
Halloween weekend saw the release of the special build of Hello Bendy, and fans of both games
responded positively to the extra content.
Mike felt good about this.
It was nice for indie games developers to help each other out, and to swap ideas like
this.
The collaboration was deemed to be a huge success.
The next big things that fans began asking for was a similar crossover with the indie
darling of the moment, Cuphead.
While Mike would love to do something like this, and was even friends with some of the
people that had worked on Cuphead, he conceded that there were probably too many legal hoops
to jump through to make a crossover with an Xbox exclusive work in practice.
But Bendy wasn’t the only thing on the team’s minds.
Mike and TheMeatly had been making game prototypes for quite a while together before their big
break with this episodic game series, and now that they were into the thick of working
on Chapter Four, they were still looking for new ideas.
One game prototype spoke to them in particular.
There wasn’t any time to develop it further just yet, but they knew that this would be
their next big project.
They just had to get Bendy finished first – no matter how long that took.
But as the world of Bendy continued to expand, the team began to contemplate the possibilities
for the future of the series.
Thus far, Bendy and the Ink Machine had only appeared on PC, as this was the simplest,
easiest platform to both build and publish new content.
But TheMeatly Games wanted to see where else they could go.
Would it be possible to release Bendy on console as well?
And so, the team began talking with David Eddings, head of indie publishing at the similar
grass-roots gaming company Rooster Teeth.
David was a particularly big fan of the style and setting of Bendy and the Ink Machine.
As a child, he’d grown up watching early Disney and Fleisher cartoons, and had a particular
love for their wacky, sometimes creepy appearance.
One of David’s most cherished childhood memories was a time that he and his parents
had met Chuck Jones, the legendary cartoonist behind many of the original Looney Tunes animated
shorts.
Chuck had even drawn David a Daffy Duck on a napkin, which he had proudly taken to school
to show all his classmates, before ultimately losing it.
David was excited about bringing Bendy and the Ink Machine to console platforms, and
along with Mike and the rest of the team at TheMeatly Games, he set Rooster Teeth to work
on porting the titles to the Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
The team were so enamoured with David that they even hired him as the voice of the mysterious
Joey Drew within the game.
This felt like a particular honour considering David’s voice acting portofolio, as he was
already established as the voice of Claptrap in the Borderlands series.
With a dedicated team now working on console ports of their work, Mike, TheMeatly, and
the rest of the team were free to continue pushing forward with their work on Bendy Chapter
4.
They had somehow, inexplicably, managed to form an enormous media empire around this
character, all completely by accident.
But things weren’t over yet.
The April deadline for Chapter 4 was approaching, and there was still a lot to do.
As much as the team had managed to outsource the specifics of their growing Bendy franchise,
they’d still created a lot of extra work for themselves.
Plus, the greater scope and scale of Chapter 4 simply meant that it was going to be a challenge
to complete.
And, in a constant drive for perfectionism, the team were yet again reworking and improving
previous chapters in the game, trying to make the entire experience shine like never before.
In spite of all their best efforts to create a streamlined, sensible production schedule,
everyone at TheMeatly found themselves rushing around in a panic as they attempted to complete
work on the latest chapter of the game.
Just days before Chapter 4 was due to release, Mike found himself trapped at the PAX East
gaming convention, greeting fans and showing off a prototype of the latest chapter of the
game.
All the while, he couldn’t help but dwell on the mounting pile of work that needed to
be finished.
He didn’t have time for this.
The game needed to be finished.
In spite of their growing industry clout, TheMeatly games was still very much a small
indie studio.
Upon his return home after PAX, Mike essentially moved into the house of fellow programmer
Matt Gole so that the pair could work on finishing the game.
There, Mike slept on Matt’s couch, subsisting on a diet of energy drinks, and staying up
until 3am every night.
The real pain was bug testing and quality assurance.
The team didn’t have a dedicated QA division, so they had to replay their game over and
over and over to find all possible glitches and errors.
“I swore I’d never work like this again!”
Mike commented at the time.
As they beat Chapter 4’s boss for the millionth time, Matt turned to Mike and asked, “Am
I having fun right now?”
The pair couldn’t help but crack up with laughter, they were so exhausted.
The team had promised that Chapter 4 would be release in April, and as they pushed forward,
they realised just how unlikely this was becoming.
Their scheduled date of the 27th of April drew nearer, and there was still so much left
to do.
Ultimately, there was nothing they could do.
The Friday date slipped past.
Instead, the team tried to publish the game to Steam over the weekend, only to discover
that this was impossible.
In a heartfelt apology letter, TheMeatly explained to his fans that they literally couldn’t
convince Steam to publish the game on a Saturday or Sunday, and so, the next chapter wouldn’t
be available until Monday.
Finally, on the 30th of April, the very last day of the month, Bendy Chapter 4 arrived.
The team had managed to keep their promise, if only by the skin of their teeth.
What mattered was that the game chapter was finished, and that their other various Bendy
projects seemed to be going well.
Bendy was conquering the world.
But there was no time to rest.
The team still had one more chapter to complete…
The moral of the story is that sometimes, working hard isn’t enough.
You can put all your time and effort into a project, and sometimes, you can still find
that this is too much for one person to achieve.
It helps to team up with others.
Whether through collaborations such as Hello Bendy, or through relying on people to help
with your big challenges, such as Rooster Teeth porting The Ink Machine to console.
Teamwork makes everything better.
Don’t underestimate the value of sharing with others.