Josh Devlin Talks The Paddock – Interview Series

Indie developer Josh Devlin has quite the colossal card up his sleeve—a survival-thriller that will reportedly mesh the story of a carnivorous dinosaur with a violet tendency of breaking the shackles of its habitat with nail-biting gameplay akin to Five Nights at Freddy’s. According to Devlin, the upcoming game, aptly titled The Paddock, will feature an hour-long journey, and not to mention a significant amount of CCTV-based challenges and other nocturnal thrills.

Curious to learn more about The Paddock, I caught up with Josh to discuss the project in greater detail.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Josh. Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers and telling us a bit about your journey as an independent developer?

Josh: Hello, my name is Josh Devlin. I’ve been studying game development for the last 6 years. Currently I am in my final year of University in which I am creating the game “The Paddock”. I’ve worked on a variety of prototype games, The Paddock will be my first commercial release as an indie dev.

Starting my game development journey I didn’t know what I wanted to be; there are so many roles. I settled on indie development last year when all of the layoffs were happening. With it being harder to find jobs, indie dev seems like the way forward for me. 

You’ve loosely labeled Jurassic Park as your all-time favorite movie, which is a fitting choice, given the theme of The Paddock. Tell us, did you always have your sights set on using this lifelong admiration for dinosaurs and fossils to create a video game? What’s the story here?

Josh: I’ve always wanted to create games based on my interests. The Paddock has gone through many changes, originally it was the exact same concept as the original Five Nights at Freddy’s. Now it's more of its own thing. Being obsessed with dinosaurs all my life definitely helps with creating the game and to be honest, it’s a genre that I wish was explored more.

In general because of how little new dinosaur games come out every year, creating The Paddock seemed like a no brainer. 

Let’s talk a bit more about the gameplay, as well as the challenges that we’ll have to face over the course of the night shift. Could you tell us more about these duties?

Josh: The player will have a variety of objectives to complete, excluding the tutorial objectives the player will have to find keys for locked areas, restart generators when they go down, find batteries for their flashlight, upgrade the cctv system all while avoiding a group of dilophosaurus that will find their way into the facility throughout the night.

As the game goes on the player will discover more of the story, unravelling how and why there are dinosaurs roaming around. With plenty of little secrets and easter eggs to find along the way! The game will take roughly an hour to beat. 

And there are the daytime responsibilities. Please could you tell us more about this portion of the shift?

Josh: The daytime responsibilities have been cut down a lot recently, the reason for this is because the game now takes place over the course of 1 day, the player will complete a small tutorial and some objectives with each objective bringing them closer to the sun going down. An example of a daytime responsibility would be “find the code for the keypad to open the front gate”.

Moving away from the daytime allowed me to focus more on the horror aspect of being outside in the dark, giving the player a variety of tools to use while they complete objectives in the dark with the fear of being hunted.

We’re suckers for a few great tips. Care to share some useful tricks on how to tackle The Paddock?

Josh: Honestly the best way to beat the game will be to play it, learn it, listen for sound cues and avoid the dinosaurs. Choose what to prioritize, the fence to stop the large dinosaur from getting in or avoiding the smaller dinosaurs causing chaos on the inside of the fence.

Always remember to collect as many flashlight batteries as you can, if you don’t have batteries it wont turn on and then you can’t see… 

Apologies in advance for jumping the gun here, but we have to ask, what’s the next step for you as an indie developer? Looking ahead—after The Paddock, in this case—do you think you’ll return to these roots to create another short horror, or do you have a different idea that you would like to explore?

Josh: After The Paddock I plan on working on 2 shorter games, I’m not ready to reveal what they are but both of them are different when compared to The Paddock. After them, I plan to return to the dinosaur genre.

We would certainly love to stay up to date with The Paddock, both in the near term and in future. Would you mind sharing a few useful social media links, roadmaps, or newsletters with us to help keep on top of things?

Josh: Any and all updates can be found on the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2972380/The_Paddock/

I will be doing a short update post about the game whenever the demo is due to be released for Next Fest. 

(Wishlist The Paddock haha) 

Would you like to add any final comments to this story before we begin to wrap it up?

Josh: Thank you for reaching out. I haven’t announced this anywhere yet, but currently the plan is to have The Paddock take part in Steam Next Fest, so be sure to check out the demo.

Thanks for speaking with us about The Paddock. Here’s to the next chapter of your development journey!

Josh: Thanks very much.

You can find more information on Josh Devlin’s The Paddock by following the official website here. For additional updates and pre-launch news coverage, be sure to add the game to your wishlist on Steam here.