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Interview recorded via cell phone from Singapore to U.S. Subtitles added due to sound quality.
For me, most of my favorite 2D games come from the 16-bit era.
Back then I think I was playing Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Back then, the games were a lot simpler.
So if you compare it to Gears of War and all of that kind of stuff, it's a lot simpler.
The graphics are also a lot simpler, but the games have a lot of different worlds from stage to stage...
...and through the whole thing you feel like you're going through a very big adventure.
Comparing the Triple-A titles today, they have all these 3D fancy graphics.
I think it's harder for them to make every single level completely different, you see.
Back then, for me, the games were much more fun. They are very different from one to another.
Well, I think the recent game I played most was Spelunky.
It was also an indie game, also about a cave explorer and all that kind of stuff.
I played that game halfway through the development of my own. They share a similar theme.
So, the game had fantastic controls and everything like that, and...
...it has inspired me to work on ideas for my next game actually... not the one that I previously released...
...things like going even more hardcore than it was.
Right now, other games are going easier, casual, and all that kind of stuff, but that game actually made me want to do more hardcore games.
You know, harder, and... back then when you had all the instant death and that kind of stuff.
Essential ingredients... I think for me, since I'm doing indie games most of the time, I have to think about creativity, new ideas, and stuff like that.
I think for me, most of the time, I make sure that I have a lot of time for myself to polish the game.
Creativity is the first thing that you realize will set the game apart, but when it goes into the game...
...I think that how polished the game is that gives you [the desire to] hang onto the game, you know, play for another hour or two.
So, tight controls, stuff like that.
The whole idea was to make it not exactly "new". It was a game to pay tribute to the whole 16-bit era itself. So the idea was to bring back lost elements.
When games progressed from 2D to 3D, a lot of old genres were actually forgotten.
And I think that a lot of elements shouldn't be forsaken. And so when I made the game, I tried to bring back all these retro elements.
Like the "warp" environment. You walk out from the right side of the screen and reappear on the left side of the screen, stuff like that.
The game can work without it, but it brings back all the memories from the past.
So even all the visuals and all that kind of stuff...
...I think the difference here was actually to not just make a game that is different for the sake of being different...
...but the idea of bringing things back again. A tribute to the 80's and the 90's.
I am actually an artist rather than a programmer.
I think that most game developers are actually from programming backgrounds, but for myself I don't know much about programming.
So in my games - in this case - I focus a lot on that work.
So for me, how my educational background actually affected the game is to make a simple game...
...but at the same time it has to be smart enough and the puzzles all work.
We have 2 programmers, 2 artists, and a musician... so that's 5 of us.
The workflow... we have a lead programmer, though I'm the artist and also co-producer myself.
So I have to go back and forth, throwing around ideas, and instead of being able to experiment with my own ideas...
...I actually have to go through with them and make sure that the idea is something workable before we can try things out.
So we do prototyping, quick prototyping is actually important, so we in fact are going back and forth.
So I try to create games that center around what works, rather than very complex gameplay.
And I think in this case it works well for us, because when it comes to indie games, if you make things too complicated, it may get lost.
If [players] want complicated stuff, they can spend their $60 and get their Xbox game or Playstation game... stuff like that.
The art style was pretty straightforward. From the start we knew that we wanted to make a game that was a tribute to the whole 80's and 90's games...
...the 16-bit era, like I mentioned. So we went for pixel art, where you have to draw all of the characters and all that kind of stuff.
Most of the games have very beautiful landscapes, but with ours you have to make it slightly more graphical.
The game has to be made out of a very obvious tile base so that we can duplicate stuff...
...and make use of the fact that it is graphical-based.
It looks nice and we're still able to construct the image of what we were trying to show.
For example, we were able to draw small little rocks to form up a whole cave, and then we just duplicated them all around.
As an artist, the hardest part was the amount of artwork that I had to come up with, because the other artist that was helping me out was...
...working on very minimum stuff… just animation for the main character.
So I alone had to come up with the rest of the stuff. So that's quite a bit, because we had all of the cutscenes.
I was trying to push for as many cutscenes as I can. At the same time, I had to change the style.
If you realize, the cutscenes are in a different style than the in-game graphics, so we didn't actually use the same graphics there.
And the in-game graphics had to be drawn, and then put into the game to try out before we know if everything's working.
So with only one artist working at a time, we had to go back and forth...
You find that If you do it in an animation sense, it makes sense, but when you're throwing it into the game, it will sometimes slow the game down.
So that was the part that really made me lose my hair, and all that kind of stuff.
I'm working on a survival-shooter game. It's a slightly bigger game. I'm hoping that this is going to be my next big game from my last.
It's going to be on Flash, but it's all in the really early development stage. We are still in the designing stage... prototyping and all.
So that's pretty much what I know about the game myself. But it should be something that we're able to finish by October or November.