Toodee and Topdee

The result was Toodee and Topdee, a clever genre-bending game where players switch between Toodee, who explores the world as a side-scroller, and Topdee, who navigates the same environment from a top-down perspective. The innovative mechanic created intricate puzzles and challenging platforming, and the game became an unexpected hit. Out of 3,045 entries, it placed 15th overall, drawing praise for its creativity and unique design.

The success inspired the duo to turn the prototype into their first commercial release, launching Toodee and Topdee under the Diet Zribi banner. Two years later, they released another game, TROUBLE JUICE, a side-scrolling shooter-roguelike. These days, Gonen is working on a new and innovative game called UVSU and Ori is studying filmmaking.

• Toodee and Topdee is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Playstation.

• TROUBLE JUICE is available on Steam.

• Wishlist UVSU on Steam

We caught Gonen to talk about his experience, read the full interview below:

Diet Zribi / Gonen Gutholtz

How did you become a game developer?

“As any 90s kid I loved playing video games and I really wanted to make one myself. I started by drawing sketches by hand and creating point-and-click quest games with Microsoft PowerPoint as a kid. That led me towards game development and became my dream, to make games” Gonen explains. “Later on I learned to work with Flash and a very early version of GameMaker, not sure which came first. It’s amazing to me that I still use GameMaker to this day”.

“I started developing a mobile game during my college studies, but it didn’t see the light of day eventually, which is a bummer because it was a really good game. After I graduated I worked as a programmer for a couple of tech companies, but I really wanted to get back to game development, so I signed up for a game jam along with my brother, which was our first of many. I remember being surprised to see other Israeli developers participating and making games, and I started attending local events through GameIS every now and then. I would take a couple of days off, make a game and my brother would make music for it, we made many games like that. I saved a bit of money and quit my job to pursue game development.”

Toodee and Topdee

How did Toodee and Topdee come to be?

“My brother and I worked together for about a year on a very ambitious project, and I was really trying to make everything perfect but nothing was good enough for me. We decided to pause it and work on a small scoped project that we can release quickly, so we thought of taking the game jam version of Toodee and Topdee, which people loved, expand it, and release it quickly in about two weeks" he says and laughs. “It took two years.”

Why Toodee and Topdee?

“It got really great feedback, people really liked it and we felt like it was the easiest of the bunch to market, because you could see a gif image and instantly understand the game and what is so cool about it, even before we added the dimension transition animation. It was really easy to see how it can become a full game, with more levels and mechanics.”

“But the biggest challenge was creating all of the content and having it feel worthy. We aimed to create a game such as other great games we knew and loved, a really polished game you can enjoy for hours, with a great story, boss fights and all. Writing a story, for example, was tricky, like figuring out how it works with our mechanics, different worlds and secrets. We set a really high standard because we compared ourselves to the best games out there.”

What was your process for making levels?

“I would create a mechanic and play around with it and that would spark an idea for a level. Some levels were specifically created to teach players mechanics, for example making both Toodee and Topdee need to go through a portal to finish the level.”

“Sometimes I noticed a neat trick I didn’t think of when I played a level or watched somebody else play it. So I would patch it and expand it to be its own level. A lot of times when I had a specific idea for a level, I would build a basic version of it and then start thinking how can I make the core idea more interesting by adding limitations for the player. I had a giant list of ideas for levels from playtesting and watching other people play it. Either way, I never sketched with a pen and paper, I always found it much simpler to use my level editor for lots of experimenting.”

“Toodee and Topdee have around 100 levels, separated into five different worlds, including some bonus levels and I am really proud of all of them. The game isn’t perfect, I think it is a hard game in both the puzzling and platforming aspects and you need to be really good at both to finish the game, which in retrospect I think may be too difficult and there are levels I might have removed today, but we added some options to make the game a bit easier if you feel you need it.”

How did you know when the game was done?

“After almost two years, I set a deadline to myself that I had to release the game before my son was born, as my wife was pregnant at the time” Gonen shares. “I did manage to release it less than two months before that! I remember not sleeping during the launch week, watching streamers play it all night and on top of that we needed to pack and move that same week, that was really tough!”

Launch and Reception

Toodee and Topdee launched on August 4, 2021 for PC on Steam. The game introduced a local co-op mode, allowing friends to tackle its creative challenges together, and people loved it. Critics and players alike praised Toodee and Topdee for its innovative mechanics, challenging gameplay, and charming pixel art. On Steam, it is ranked “Very Positive” with an impressive 94% positive out of 752 reviews.

Toodee and Topdee was featured by GameMaker, the engine that powered it, as a standout example of indie creativity in the Showreel "Made With GameMaker 2021" on YouTube, and as a splash cover on the official GameMaker website.

Eight months later, Gonen released the game on the Nintendo Switch. “Seeing the game run on the Nintendo Switch for the first time was an incredible feeling, but that feeling quickly morphed into the frustration of making it work: it was slow and buggy, and I had to get into intense optimizing and profiling to fix all the performance issues with my game that I never noticed because the PC I ran the game on was much more powerful than the Switch” Gonen describes.

What’s next for Diet Zribi?

Gonen’s next game, UVSU, also began as a game jam entry—this time for GMTK’s 2023 “Roles Reversed” jam. In UVSU, each level is played in multiple iterations. In every round, you control a different character with a new goal. First, you might play as an angel trying to reach a door. In the next iteration, you take the role of an imp trying to stop the angel—who now replays your exact previous actions. With each loop, the puzzle deepens, and your past choices come back to challenge you. The innovative concept ended up winning 3rd place out of 6,717 entries.

“I had this idea for a long time,” Gonen shares. “I tried making it a few times before, but it never came together. When GMTK revealed the theme, it was a perfect match and I had to get this game out of my system.

“I wasn’t sure how the mechanics would land, because they’re pretty complex. So I built a quick version in a few days just to test it with real players. The response was amazing—lots of people played it and loved it, and Mark Brown even retweeted it! I quickly set up a Steam page before the jam results were even out. It ended up placing 3rd, and was featured in The Best Games from GMTK Game Jam 2023 video. That’s when I knew I had to expand it. Of course it ended up being a lot bigger than I expected, but the core loop is mostly done and I’m now focused on finishing the game.”

Lastly, any advice for aspiring indie developers, particularly those working in Israel?

“Take everything I say with a grain of salt, my opinions keep changing, and I’m always learning. The usual advice is true: start small. But the biggest thing I’ve learned is to just start doing. Focus on finishing things. Don’t worry about getting everything perfect. Research and learning are great, but nothing teaches you more than actually making games. Go through the whole process, from idea to release. You’ll make mistakes, but you’ll learn way more from doing.”