‘Don’t toil away on the things that don’t really matter’: Peak creator says its rapid development cycle has ‘proved that there are definitely different, but maybe better ways to make games’

Red Dead Redemption 2 has some of the most precisely represented horses in the videogame industry. They have multiple distinct gaits, a realistic sense of weight, and miraculously, their little Arthur Morgans shrink in the cold. It’s an admirably attentive but kind of stupid detail touted as much by the game’s fans as its detractors, and it says something about triple-A game development that real man hours were poured into horse testicle simulation in a game as massive as Red Dead.

Peak is somewhere near the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s a small, focused idea, and originated as a four-week game jam project the team was hoping to push out and immediately move on from. They decided to stick around and support it a bit more when the game started selling like hotcakes, but co-creator Nick Kaman told Game File there’s still a lot of value in a short, sweet development cycle.