Interview with Rick Lee, Developer of Saul of Tarsus: Bible Game

Hi, my name’s Rick Lee, I’m the creator of Saul of Tarsus and the founder of Song of Nature. I’m a lifelong artist and writer, but I only became a Christian in 2012 at the age of 22. In the time since, I’ve slowly been shifting my life to surround my faith, making several faith-based short films and stories. I attended Seminary at Liberty University, where I received an M.A. in Theological Studies and an M.Div. in Homiletics. I stay active in ministry as a Sunday school teacher and occasional worship leader, but my primary ministry at the moment is in creating Christian media such as Saul of Tarsus and my newest game, Goliath.

My hope for Song of Nature is that it will become a publisher known for high-quality Christian content, including games, books, and even movies. In order to do this, I hope to continue my own work, but also partner with other passionate individuals who are interested in creating high-quality personal Christian content that might reach and inspire other believers around the world. Right now, it is still only a dream, but it is a hopeful one.

Well, along with developing games like Saul of Tarsus, I also work a full-time regular job, and do a good amount of volunteering with my church as well. So things stay pretty busy. On weekdays, I work an early shift at a factory, then after work, I try to get in a few hours on my game. I get a lot more done on the weekends, though. Right now, I’m in full swing, finishing up my newest game, Goliath, so a lot of time is spent on it, and I’m only able to give a little time to continuing to promote Saul of Tarsus. After I release Goliath, I’ll probably shift gears a little more towards promoting both of them and finishing up the next update for Saul of Tarsus.

I’ve been writing faith-based stories and producing short films for a while now. I find that when it comes to creating a large project, you need something foundational to drive you. It’s the only way you can keep your momentum going through it. For some people,that is a dream of becoming successful or some sort of personal ambition, or a cause that they care about. For me, my strongest motivator has been my faith for a long time. So when I decided to try my hand at making a video game for the first time, it wasn’t long before the idea of making a Bible based game came to mind.

In all honesty, the project started off as just a small hobby. Something to do for fun to play around with. But when the idea of making an RPG based on the life of Paul came into my mind, it quickly began to grow as different ideas for the possibilities began to emerge. I started to get that excited feeling, like I might really be onto something. So I just kept working on it to make it as good as I was able.

I wanted to have some sort of gameplay element in the game that tested the player’s growth. I didn’t think it would make sense to give Saul a sword and have him go around beating people up, so I started thinking about the kind of interactions that Saul would have in his journey. In Acts, it says that in Damascus, Saul was arguing with Pharisees in the temple. I thought that might be a good place to start. Having had a lot of opportunities to evangelize myself and having had a lot of conversations with non-believers, I had a lot of ideas as to the different styles of rhetoric and persuasion that people often use when conversing and debating about Christianity. So I thought it might be fun to work some of those into something like special moves.

I chose “Testimony” as Saul’s first special as a Christian, because it’s a move that every Christian can use. We all have a testimony of our faith that we can share with other people, and there’s really no way to argue with it since it’s our own experience that we’re sharing. For this reason, I think it’s a great starting point for every believer to begin sharing their faith, and if people learn nothing else from the game, I’d love it if they picked that up. Oh, and a humble disposition raises your defense stat. That’s a good one, too.

There were a lot of challenges bringing Saul of Tarsus to life. The first being that I started the project with no coding experience, and very little experience making pixel art. I pretty much just started making things, and looking back at my first drafts of the game, the only part that was good was the story. Fortunately, I had the next three years to refine the rest and learn what I was doing.

I made the game in RPG Maker, which is easy to get started with, but the more complex you want something, the more the engine starts to fight you. By the end, I had over 30 plugins and a lot of dirty edits directly to the game engine because I didn’t know what I was doing well enough to make my own plugins early on. On top of that, I actually ended up remaking the entire game 5 different times, each for different reasons, only carrying over whatever events I was able to. It was as much a learning process as a creative process, but I definitely learned a lot. That being said, I plan on making games in Unity from now on.

The other challenge was releasing the game, which ended up being a lot more than I anticipated. Google Play requires you to have no less than 12 playtesters, and it checks to make sure that a lot of them are actually playing the game on a daily basis. Getting 6 to 12 people to play a game every day for 2 weeks was a challenge that I had not prepared for, but I was very grateful for the handful of friends and family members who were good sports about it. I think they were all very tired of me bugging them about it by the end.

The marketing was the final challenge of it all, but fortunately, it was one that I was expecting. I gave myself 6 full months to dedicate to nothing but marketing, with the plan basically being to try everything I could until something worked, and keep going even if nothing worked. The first four weeks gave me very little return. I shared posts on social media, wrote letters to local churches, told everyone I knew, and even walked around neighborhoods hanging door hangers on people’s doors with qr codes linking to the game. After all of that, I still hadn’t broken 100 downloads.

Finally, after doing a bit of research, I made a visual ad to post on Facebook and Instagram, and began boosting it in different countries around the world, hoping that someone somewhere would be interested in the game. That’s when things finally started to take off.

It’s been really amazing getting to hear from a lot of different people in different countries who have enjoyed the game. I’m happy to know that it was able to reach so many people, and I hope to continue to share it alongside other games for people to enjoy.

Well, I have a much bigger update in progress that will take place in Jerusalem. It will continue to follow the story of acts introducing Barnabus, Peter, and James, and giving Saul a chance to visit a Hellenistic temple. There’s actually a lot of work already finished on the update, and I’m hoping to get it out by this Summer. Eventually, probably a long time after that, I plan on making a true sequel to Saul of Tarsus that will take place in Antioch and runs through his confrontation with Bar Jesus. It was after that confrontation that Saul began being referred to as Paul, so it seems like a natural endpoint for the series. Also, Bar Jesus should make for an excellent final boss for the game.

Goliath is almost finished. I exported the first testable APK file for it this week, and I will be in the Google Play Playtest phase before the end of the month. The game follows David through 9 levels, where he will be using his sling to protect sheep from predators. You start off with 4 sheep, and as you walk along the path, there are wolves, lions, and bears who will try to take them from you. You fire the sling by holding down the screen and releasing at the right time so that the stone in it will go toward the predator and scare them away.

It’s a challenging game because you have to practice the timing of the sling, and there’s a bit of a rush when the wolf is coming up on your sheep and starting to get close. The final boss of the game is Goliath, where you use the sling skills you’ve been practicing to take him down. Between rounds, there is a randomly generated bible verse. I have it so that every time you play through the game, you’ll get a different set of verses. This way, it almost plays like a video game version of a verse of the day app.

Unknown Disciple is still very early in development, but it is planned to be a much larger game, where you play as a member of the early church in Rome, in a somewhat remote city within the Empire. The main gameplay loop will revolve around gaining new members to the church through relationships built in town. You’ll also have a property that you’ll need to keep up with outside of the city, where you can grow crops and raise funds to improve the church in various ways. Think Early Church Christian Stardew Valley in ancient Rome.

I like doing things outdoors when I can get away from my computer. Going for hikes, and sometimes going tubing in the rivers, visiting beaches, and other large outdoor parks. I do a lot with my church as well, who are like family to me. I tend to be a somewhat introverted, reclusive person, but I still enjoy getting together with friends from time to time and enjoying good conversations, and maybe a movie or a board game or two.

I would recommend starting with a small project first. It’s better to start with something small that you can finish than something big that will eventually overwhelm you. Starting small gives you a chance to learn a lot of lessons quickly that you can use later for bigger games. It’ll also give you some more confidence in yourself that you can finish a project, if you’ve already shipped a small one. But even though it is small, I recommend making it something that you put a lot of care into and make as good as you’re able. Sort of a quality over quantity approach.

I post a lot on the Instagram page @songofnaturemedia. I also have a Patreon that I’ll be working on building up some in the future. The company website Songofnature.org has some good information on it as well, and I try to keep it as concise and up to date as possible.

Well, I’ll just say that nothing I’ve accomplished would have been possible without the grace of God. Without his guidance, I would have fallen into a pit long ago and wouldn’t have been able to experience the joy of sharing these stories with people. There are some people who may be able to get through life on willpower alone. I can tell you that I’m not one of them. I’m a great example of “if God can do something through me, he can do something through anyone”. So if anyone is out there struggling with belief in themselves, just know that in our weakness we find God’s strength, and through Him we can do great things for the Kingdom. I hope my work inspires other people to pursue whatever God is calling them to do.