FACEMINER Dev Interview: Gamified Data Harvesting at Your Fingertips!

We live in some wild, wild times. Imagine telling someone from 1999 we'd have LLMs and other AI-adjacent tools by the 2020s, for example, with their capabilities largely based on extremely pervasive data harvesting applications. Fun! Now, some of us hoped we'd have evolved our society towards a Star Trek-esque utopia by now... but that's got some grim implications we won't be getting into here. Back on track, 1999 is important because that's the year in which FACEMINER takes place, with players getting the opportunity to build an honest-to-goodness data harvesting empire at the turn of the century. How's that for an elevator pitch?

A heck of a predicament for sure, and so we're absolutely thrilled to have had the opportunity to talk game theory with the FACEMINER devs for a bit. That's right: we've got a fancy new interview ready to go, and it's with the good folks at the Wristwork game studio!

What is FACEMINER?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of Wristwork's awesome efforts in producing FACEMINER, we've got to go over the gist of the game. This newly released narrative-based clicker (yep, you read that right) takes some obvious cues from the likes of Paperclips, except it's a fair bit more grounded and with a story-focused slant. Basically, if you ever enjoyed something like Cookie Clicker, you're going to want to read this up.

"Set against a backdrop of 90s techno-optimism, FACEMINER is an experimental, narrative-driven management sim that tasks the player with building a biometric processing empire from scratch. The player must manage hardware and software upgrades, warehouse infrastructure, and crooked carbon offsetting schemes as they carve out their biodata empire," says the official description from the game's website.

With that out of the way, let's see what Wristwork's one-man-band got to say about FACEMINER!

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Exploiting the world and its inhabitants, one face at a time

For readers that haven't yet had the chance to play FACEMINER, how would you describe it in one sentence?

"FACEMINER is a narrative-driven clicker game where you play as a data processing employee whose rather mundane job gradually reveals itself to be part of something far more sinister," says Wristwork's solo developer Alex Taylor.

What was the original spark or inspiration behind FACEMINER? Did it start with the concept of mining faces, or something else entirely?

"The inspiration behind FACEMINER is some research into the resources and logistics that drive planetary-scale data processing: the physical server farms, cooling systems, and electricity bills that are obscured behind processes that we think of as being entirely digital," says Alex. "The clicker game format is a natural container for exploring the sort of runaway exponential growth seen with the training of the current generation of AI models – and it mirrors pretty closely the very real data annotation tasks that can go into refining some of these models, too."

Can you tell us more about FACEMINER's visual style? It's wildly distinctive!

"The game draws heavily from pre-millenium software interfaces. I spent a lot of time exploring old UIs from the period to try and inject as much realism as possible – ancient Windows NT task managers, early database tools, and so on. There was something interesting about mapping a very heated, contemporary topic onto this nostalgic, maybe even slightly eerie, era of computer interface. It introduces tension, and makes it easier for the player to shake off preconceptions."

Did any specific games, films, or artists help shape the tone or mechanics of FACEMINER?

"The first thing that comes to most people's minds when they play the game is the TV show Severance," Alex admits. "It came out a little bit after work started on the game, but its existence has provided a useful waypoint when talking about the game and some of its theming. Beyond this, Papers Please – the dystopian day-job simulator – and Cookie Clicker, were some core inspirations which the game certainly wears on its sleeve."

Turning clicks into dopamine

FACEMINER blends surreal horror, roguelike progression, and (data) mining mechanics. What were some challenges in balancing those genres?

"Mathematics has never been my strong suit, so balancing upgrades – figuring out what should be linear, what should be logarithmic, and so on – was pretty tricky; I wish I had a better system, but it was mostly done through trial and error. I later learned that more experienced developers set up spreadsheets where they can toggle values and immediately see the cause and effect of their changes, but my approach was much more vibes-based, which made the process of balancing incredibly time consuming, though I like to think it injected a bit of dynamism, too."

Are there any hidden secrets or Easter eggs players haven’t found yet?

"There is a ‘twist’ at the end of the game that, depending on how familiar the player is with the mechanics of AI model training, is either pretty easy to miss, or excruciatingly obvious. It never seems to be in between. Shortly after the game was released, some very comprehensive YouTube videos came out exploring every plot point. I was surprised and impressed by how thorough they were," Alex tells us.

Gamedev ain't neat, easy, or simple... but boy does it sometimes work out

What was the biggest technical hurdle during development, and how did you solve it?

"A fun fact about the game is that it’s all secretly a website; it doesn’t use a game engine in a traditional sense. This made it easier to develop in some respects, particularly as so much of it is UI-based, but there were many quirks when it came to packaging this up so it works on all systems, and integrating reliably with some of Steam's features such as Cloud Saves and Achievements," Alex explains. "Fortunately, tools like Steamworks.js have made this hybrid approach more viable, though there were plenty of late nights debugging platform-specific issues that traditional games don't face."

Tell us about one key lesson you've learned during this project, that you'll take with you into your next project.

"The development process was made richer by incorporating playtesting early, and being completely unprecious when it came to inviting people along for the development ride. I think the full game had something like 2000 playtesters towards the end, which is certainly on the extreme side for a small indie game, but I received so many fantastic tips and suggestions that really shaped the game over time."

Any surprising reactions from the players or the community? Share your favorites!

"I have been very happy to see the first speedruns of the game start to appear," Alex says. "This is something I had always secretly hoped would happen – I even added a certificate to the end of the game that has the completion time on – so it’s very satisfying to see. Already, I’m seeing techniques and ways of playing the game that I never envisioned begin to emerge."

The future of FACEMINER is bright! As for that of humanity...

Any updates, expansions, or bonus content planned for FACEMINER, by chance?

"Without wanting to reveal too much just yet, we are hoping to release two content updates by the end of the year: one offering a new perspective on the game in a literal sense, and the other in figurative sense. Both will be designed to deepen existing themes, as well as add more content and ways to play."

On a similar note, what's next for Wristwork in a broader sense?

"We have several projects in development! Our next game will be announced for the first time in September, and it's intentionally very different from FACEMINER. After spending so much time in the dystopian data processing mines, we think of it as ourselves coming up for fresh air, in a way. As a studio, we're drawn to creating these shorter, more focused experiences that tackle big ideas through specific, playable concepts, and this will definitely be in keeping with that."

Finally, please tell us what your team's music playlist is while working on FACEMINER!

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, the soundtrack of the game made for excellent listening while working on the game. As it evokes the themes and setting so strongly, it created a feedback loop where the music would inspire new ideas and keep us anchored to the game's vision. All credit to Madwreck, its producer, Alex concludes"

On a final note, Alex also has an invitation to share with all our readers: "Sign up to our newsletter on wristwork.com to stay in the loop about what’s next!"

And don't forget to stay tuned to the 2Game Community Hub, either! This is just the latest in a long line of exciting exclusive interviews, so be sure to check back in whenever you can to stay in the loop. Need a handy example? Look no further than our Beautiful Light developer interview, for example!

Get FACEMINER at 2Game today!