Epic had a large presence at DWGE 2010, showcasing their latest development tool, the Unreal Development Kit. Their booth featured a workshop with tutorials on the basics of the UDK, and representing Epic at DWGE were Jay Wilbur, Vice President, as well as Markus Arvidsson and James Tan – two of the independent developers behind UDK-based game The Ball. I sat down with these fine gentlemen to discuss a variety of topics including Unreal Engine 3, the UDK, and games development in general. What follows is my conversation with Jay.

The Slowdown: The Unreal Engine has a long history of licensing and modding; how did the decision to launch the Unreal Development Kit only come about now after all these years?

Jay Wilbur: So, all the while, we’ve always made our games open and available for people to mod – Unreal Tournament 3, going back to the original Unreal. People would be able to use the tools to make their own mod. But that locks those creative endeavours to the game, so somebody else would need to own that particular game in order to play the mod. With the UDK, we’ve freed developers to create standalone applications, turn it into a standalone playable entity – asset, I should say, and then deliver it to anybody who wanted to play it. They wouldn’t necessarily need to own that game in order to play it. So the goal was basically to have more people use Unreal Engine 3 in the development and also have more people be able to play the end result.

Epic has been very regular with its revisions of the UDK, with updates almost every month. What is the process of updating and releasing the new revisions?

Our development team has a roadmap that they’re working towards, and they have several high-priorty features, some medium-priority features and some low-priority features. While we do listen to the feedback that we get, most of the time that same feedback echoes our internal priority list.

Having said that, has there been feedback or requests that you have addressed specifically?

There are times when we get that kind of feedback and it makes sense for us to reconsider our priorities, yes.

The November beta of the UDK basically marks a one-year anniversary for the dev kit – you showcased some of the new additions to the engine in a tech demo video.

It just happened to work out in that time-frame, the development team didn’t work just to make sure [the features in the trailer] were in this release, they just happened to be in the ‘birthday release’.

As of right now, the tools are still labeled as in the ‘beta’ phase. When do you plan to bring it out of beta?

Eventually, yes, it will be out of beta, and the engineering team will tell me when that happens.

There are quite a number of middleware solutions out there such as CryEngine and iD Tech, how does Epic plan to stay ahead of the curve?

We offer the best tools in the business, we have very flexible licensing terms, as far as the product goes, you’ll find none better in the marketplace – UE3 is as premium as it gets. We continue to provide excellent support, we continue to supply the kind of new features our developers are looking for – for example, we’ll be releasing support for iOS and we also have shown off support for Android. So UE3 scales from the very highest of the top-end PCs and consoles all the way to the handheld devices.

How did development for iOS come about? Had you already planned to support the iOS devices somewhere down the line?

It was more along the lines of, with the release of the iPhone 3GS, our engineers came and said “We can support this, these devices have now become powerful enough so that we can support this.” And they did a tech demo which proved the tech. “Scaling down” is not the right word to use, it’s now “powerful enough to support it.” And now with iPhone 4 it’s even more powerful.

Whose idea was it to make Project Sword, Chair’s or Epic’s?

We decided that iOS was a priority for us. Chair is part of the Epic family, so we asked the folks at Chair to come up with some design proposals for a really cool iOS game. And they came up with a couple and Project Sword was the one that we all decided was the best one.

The tech demo came out of nowhere, and struck me as a very polished piece of work for a demo.

There are a couple of things working towards that. One, they’re using UE3, which allows for rapid iteration of super high-quality products, which is another reason why UE3 is always the dominant engine in the marketplace. Two, the guys at Chair are just great, they’re geniuses – Shadow Complex was just genius.

How independent is Chair in the development of their projects? Do they come up with their own ideas for games or are they directed by Epic?

They’re part of the Epic family, so everybody is walking in the same direction, but they’re independent enough, so they come up with their own designs. We didn’t say “make a sword game,” we said, “tell us what kind of game you’d like to make.” They spent their time coming up with various game ideas, from which Infinity Blade was the one that was selected.

Are there other commercial projects in the works for iOS, by Epic or any other studio?

We are working on UDK for iOS so that people developing for UDK can port their games to iOS. We’ve licensed UE3 to several development groups who are making iOS games, none of which I am at liberty to discuss.

How does porting work? Can developers who already have a PC build of their game made with UDK easily port it over to iOS?

They can use that as the starting point. Whether it will port well to iOS really depends on a number of different factors. In particular, depending on the control schemes, so if you’re going to use a tilt control mechanism, or multitouch or tap to control. If you’re using a lot of physics, or doing a lot of advanced lighting effects that a PC with a high-end video card would be able to handle, you may have to scale some of those back on the iPhone, just to take advantage of what that platform has to offer. But if you do have a game on UDK for the PC and you want to bring it to iOS, you have a great starting point.

How do you think developers will approach the handheld platform, with regards to the different challenges posed by aspects such as the controls?

It’s up to the developers. We’ve selected a number of different input methods. With Epic Citadel we have the dual-thumbs or tap-to-go. Infinity Blade uses finger motions to control the sword, and you use gestures to create magical symbols on the screen.

What do you think will be the deciding factor for gamers when it comes to touchscreen games? What makes a game competitive in the touchscreen gaming space?

That’s a good question. I think it’s going to depend on the quality of the game. In any entertainment marketplace, it’s going to be the quality of the game that predicts the sales. If the game is really really good, you know, you look at Gears of War, Unreal or Halo, those kind of games are really really good, and they sell a lot of copies.

The iPhone is great, but I’m an Android kind of guy. [Waves around the Nexus One phone being used to record the interview] Will we ever get to play UE3 games?

[Takes out a Galaxy S, shows Epic Citadel running on it] We’ve done some development on Android. That’s Epic Citadel running on Android – now, this is not for public release. It’s on iOS first, and then once the iOS version is released then we’ll start considering Android.

What are the challenges in developing for Android? The demo there seems to be running great.

It runs really well and really fast. One of the problems with the Android marketplace is hardware fragmentation, that’s a really big issue. The other thing is marketplace fragmentation, there are so many different appstores out there. The Android marketplace is a little more difficult [to develop for] because there is less control. I think the Android marketplace is robust … I find it very easy to buy things on it, it’s just that Apple has very tight control. So anything in the Apple world is perfect. It’s just perfect. We like that, we like that a lot. We know that it’s just gonna work. Sometimes that’s not always the case in the Android marketplace.

Google are continuously updating the Android platform, particularly now the OS is on the cusp of a major update; are you waiting on any particular change on their end?

No, right now all our development activity is focused on iOS, it has nothing to do with anyone else.

How did your relationship with Teotl Studios come about and how did The Ball come to be a showcase title for the UDK?

They developed their application and we became aware of it just because we watch the marketplace. We see who’s developing stuff. We actually have one of our support guys in the office just every once a week look over the internet and see what cool new stuff is out there and he sends us a little note and says “hey, this is a cool new thing.” And when something is really cool we reach out and say “hey, we want to put you in our showcase, we want to show your stuff off.” And the Ball was one of the applications we showed off. They were born from the Make Something Unreal contest and they did very well. We have haven’t set plans but we’d like to eventually probably look at doing another contest like that with the UDK. That’s how developers get noticed. The best way for a developer to get noticed using the UDK is to make something really cool, and release it!

The UDK’s licensing model seems to be more affordable for independent developers. How did you decide on that model?

We sat down and thought, what’s a good, fair and equitable set of terms for what we’re offering? What is the right model for the UDK developer? I think we settled on the right model.

What have you seen here at the Dubai Games Expo? What do you think of the local gaming development scene?

I’ve been traveling to Dubai since the beginning of the Dubai Games Expo. I see a vibrant, a very interesting yet under-serviced marketplace – under-serviced by Western game developers. I see a wealth of talent and a wealth of consumers with nobody connecting them. My goal here is not necessarily to sell games, it’s not necessarily to sell engines – though don’t get me wrong, I want to sell engines. My primary goal is to teach the talent how to create games so that they can create companies and build wealth of their own then eventually we can come back and sell licenses to them. I think right now the ecosystem needs development and my goal is help build that ecosystem. I’ve been over for the last three years when the show started and I’ll be back next year.

What are Epic’s plans for PC gaming? The Gears of War series seems to be very much focused on the consoles.

Bulletstorm will ship to the PC. Gears of War is published by Microsoft, so the direction that we take for Gears of War is set mostly by our publisher. But Bulletstorm is scheduled to be released on the PC.

What is your relationship with People Can Fly and how did Bulletstorm come to be?

Epic and People Can Fly came together with Gears of War. PCF was that team working on Gears of War 1 on the PC. They did such a great job, so we got closer and Epic became a partner with PCF. PCF developed the Bulletstorm intellectual property, then we stepped in to help them find a publishing deal with Electronic Arts. We did all the legal and business work to make it all happen, and now that it’s in full development we help in the production. We help wherever we can. We have a full-time producer, Tanya [Jessen], who is assigned to work with PCF, and we send people over from Epic headquarters to Poland to help PCF on a regular basis. Bulletstorm is awesome, it really looks like a lot of fun. It’s like Burnout with guns.

Thank you, Jay, enjoy your stay in Dubai!

We are grateful to Jay for his time as well as to Dana Cowley and Sarah Asby at Epic for arranging our meeting. Stay tuned for the next part in this series of interviews, in which I talk to James and Markus about developing The Ball and go into further detail about the independent development scene.

In addition to this interview, we have also simultaneously published our review of the first chapter of the game here at The Slowdown. “Over the Edge” can be downloaded from Skygoblin right now.

The Slowdown: Starting off, I would like you to return to the origins of the series for a minute: In the manual provided with “Over the Edge,” you reveal how the game’s origins actually lie in brainstorming sessions with your colleague, Mathias Johansson. How big a catalyst, though, was simply finding the correct tool to work with?

Theodor Waern: There’s no point denying that when me and AGS first laid eyes on each other, we both knew it was love. I realized right from the start that this was THE tool for me. The learning curve was perfect. I had a problem, I banged my head at it, I solved it. I had another problem, I banged my head some more, and I solved that one too. It has been that way ever since I started production on the game and I doubt I will ever come to a complete stop.

For a guy like me who knows what he wants, knows a little about basic scripting, and doesn’t mind the fact that making adventures actually is a bigger adventure than playing them, AGS truly is the perfect tool. We have had a rather stormy relationship though, me and AGS. But in the end my bugs have always been solved and we’ve made sweet, sweet adventure game love again.

l think the Journey Down might have had a chance without AGS though , the setting and characters just needed to get out of my brain. It would however most likely not have been a game. Maybe a graphical novel or just a large series of paintings or something. I’m incredibly glad it turned out as a game though. I have learned so much from the experience it’s just ridiculous.

The game’s storyline has seen quite a few revisions since 2005. When you finally hit on the current plot as we players will get to know it – what was it that made you go “This is it!”? Four chapters of storyline is no joke to commit to, after all.

Honestly, I think what made me finally lay down the script and say “this is the way it’s going to be.” was the fact that I felt I just kept pushing things around and never actually got around to finalizing the first chapter. Let’s face it. Four chapters, as you mentioned is a HUGE effort. I certainly hope I will release all four of them but who knows?

Now at least I can be certain part one got released. I would however not have released, had I not finally landed in a version of the plot that I felt comfortable with. Simplification was the key here. Strangely I found that the more twists and important characters I removed from the plot the better it became.

Bwana, Kito and Lina

A major part of development for you indeed seems to be polish – especially in terms of pacing and balance. We already know, from your deleted scenes thread, how you ultimately decided to scrap a considerable portion of material from the game. On the one hand, how hard is it to leave materials behind, and on the other hand, how important do you consider it for a designer to be able to swing the axe?

Making games is all about swinging axes. I work with online games for a living, mostly making content. I know for a fact that when we develop new features, try unproven techniques and new ideas, 80% of what we create is thrown in the trash. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was for one reason or another, just mixing up the experience and blocking the parts that really mattered. I am convinced that throwing away stuff that confuses the player is incredibly important, and learning to do this is a must if you want to deliver a game with good flow and pacing.

To my surprise, you had stated before that “Most characters in the Journey Down are based on African masks of one sort or other”; while playing the game, I was almost certain you were utilizing Maori Tiki and/or Polynesian Moai as the foundation for the game. So, my question is this – you’ve actually not utilized a specific culture or mythology, instead going for a more eclectic mix of influences?

Kito is based on a east African style called Makonde, while Bwana, Lina and the main bad dude are all based a central African style of carving called Chokwe. Most of the other characters are actually just a big mess of different ideas and influences. There are definitely some Tiki and Moai influences in there somewhere! I have a couple of African art books that I like to skim through a couple of minutes before I go to bed now and then.

I haven’t copied any masks from them but I’m certain they have influenced me greatly. When it comes to designing characters for such a low res game though you really need to cut a lot of corners and remove a lot of the fine details, this changes everything a lot, so in short, let’s just say it’s a big mess.

What about the names – like Bwana, Kaonandodo – are these broadly African too?

Most names were just randomly given to the characters without any research whatsoever. There are however some exceptions. One of the two goons name’s is “Bunga” (not sure if this is mentioned in chapter one) his name, Bwana’s and Matoke’s are all Swahili words (Tanzania, Kenya). There are probably more of them in there somewhere I just forgot they have a meaning heh. So to actually answer your question: Correct, it’s a mess of different styles/mythologies/cultures.

While many players have already pointed out various parallels to Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the first being thematic, the other stylistic – I strongly felt the episode also carried a Monkey Island feel to it. Apart from Kingsport, there are seven bays that surround St. Armando; will this maritime aspect return in the forthcoming chapters?

Yep. For some reason the maritime theme and adventure games go well together, no point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?

Aye aye! What probably reminds people most of Full Throttle, then, is probably your skilful combination of 3D CGI with 2D animation. How early in development did you make the decision to complement 2D with pre-rendered 3D?

It is fun that people have spotted the similarities with Full Throttle visually. This was my number one source of inspiration when it came to mixing 2D and 3D. I have looked at those cutscenes many a time and wondered why on earth they looked so damned good.

I think the first 3D item that appeared in Over the Edge was the crane. I knew what I wanted the puzzle to be like and I realized I would never have the patience to draw the crane in all of its angles so I made a simple non-lit 3d scene and without any real effort it melded nearly seamlessly with the 2d art. That’s when I  realized I could stick 3D in there and get away with it. After that I just kept going with the car in the intro and the airplane. I even had a quick go with Bwana as a 3D model but I gave that up fast. Character rigging and animation is a whole other science in itself and I would have no chance making that look as good as I wanted it.

Over the Edge’s puzzles gelled and rolled like no other adventure game in my recent memory. Is there a specific game or series that would exemplify the tradition and style of puzzles that you’re aiming for?

Adventure gamers in general won’t agree with me here, but my personal opinion is that a good puzzle is an easy puzzle. They make things flow and since they are easy they are more common and hence give the player feedback more often. It keeps people engaged and interested when things are happening. The only downside with an easy puzzle is that you need many of them to compensate for how fast you solve them.

What makes a puzzle a good one to you, then?

Admittedly a good difficult puzzle can be a lot of fun if it is well written and perfectly balanced, this however is seldom the case. I think the mood in an adventure game is totally ruined by “rub all items on all items” brute force puzzle solving. It flattens the whole experience. So do walkthroughs. If the player resorts to either of these, it is my opinion that the game has failed in keeping the player within the game world and has let them wake up from the experience that is the game. That is obviously a bad thing.

However, all games no matter how well written are full of moments when one resorts to brute force though, I’m sure people playing “Over the Edge” have done so as well.

A Waern puzzle!

One thing that does set your game apart from many other AGS-built adventures is your use of the 1995 “big” sprite style that is principally more about lines, shapes and forms and less about individual pixels – something that I’m sure is not lost on players. Did it take you long to discover a suitable workflow for doing art and animations in the very modest resolution of 320x and, more importantly, as a developer, what do you like best about the miniature work space?

The small workspace is great for efficiency. I love having those kinds of limitations. The more limitations you got the faster a project can be finished. On the character side however, I honestly think work might have gone faster if I had higher res and better alpha, as I would have less of a headache battling sharp pixel edges, so I’m not quite happy with the workflow I ended up with on them. Had I aimed for a more of a “pixel art” style, low res would be a blessing, now though… it mostly slowed things down. The best part with going low res is definitely how much faster work goes on cut scenes and backdrops, and the lovely retro vibe you get from the low res certainly adds to the mood as well. The low file size of low res games are nice as well.

I’d like to know a bit more about the background music. Beyond D’souza’s bubbly contemporary reggae stylings, what really stands out to me is how there seems to be a specific theme for every location, no matter how quickly they may be traversed by the player. It would be very interesting to hear about the way you two come up with a suitable tone and style for each scene.

Once I had explained the overall mood I was after, the reggae mixed with the jazz, Souza just went balls out crazy and started churning out tunes like mad to the different environments. We had a very simple workflow there where I made some short notes on what I wanted focus to be on, he made a first test, sent it to me, I give him some simple response (usually regarding what tempo things were in), he made the fixes, and we stuck it in game. He has been great at handling my feedback and implementing it immediately, just amazing.

The cut scenes were a lot more work though. I had to film the movies and send them to him so he could synch the music 100%. Also, the music in the cutscenes is split up in lots and lots of small bits, so the music wont break if people start skipping dialogue etc. I’m very proud of how well we made that work. Next time though I’ll most likely disable clicks during cutscenes, the result was good, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

The swift-but-sweet sax interludes, then, how did those come about?

That is a pretty interesting story actually. These sax samples were the first I added. Why? Back then I didn’t have any music, and I desperately wanted some. I headed to freesound.org and started hunting for jazzy little tunes to go with my slapstick animations to give them some punch. Just something temporary. When I thought I was starting to wrap the rest of the game up I figured it was the right thing to do to send an email to the author and ask if it was ok that I used his samples for a game. Amazingly enough he answered: Sure. Do you need anything else? My simple response to this was:  I need an entire soundtrack. He charged into the project head on with no sign of hesitation whatsoever and has produced things like crazy for me since. I owe him a lot.

Finally – and this is something that is very often brought up with AGS titles with great production values – what’s your take on voice acting and indie adventure games? I personally kept on reading Bwana’s lines aloud along the way, mon!

Heheh, me too, mon. I love it when games have good voice acting, it adds so much depth it’s just mad. There are actually lots of good freeware games out there with quality voice acting. Where they get the talented people from, I have no idea. I would love a voice over version of “Over the Edge” but I really don’t have a clue how to pull that off. It’s a BIG project, and honestly voice acting needs to be good, simply “ok” voice acting sinks a game in my opinion.

Hopefully, some time in the future, a voice acting solution will come my way. I too would love to hear Bwana’s nice relaxed attitude pour out of my speakers. One day this might come true!

Thanks again to Theodor Waern for his time and answers. While chapter two of The Journey Down, called “Into the Mist,” is slated for a summer 2011 release, “Over the Edge” is available right now at Skygoblin.com. Finally, if you didn’t yet get your full share of information on the game, our review can be read here, and there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes from Waern.

Maro Hüllen, with Pet

In today’s interview, we talk to the original designer and primary illustrator of The Whispered World, Marco Hüllen (on the right), in the hopes of shedding more light on the curiouser details of the development process of the game – especially, on details that are still left uncertain for non-German audiences.

After all, German fans of the adventure game have had the privilege of reading Marco’s posts on various adventure gaming forums – as well as having already played the game. For those of us not yet in the know, the interview below should hopefully reveal some further facets of the make-up of the wildly imaginative ride that is the six-year development process of the game.

Finally, please do remember to take a look at our introductory post to The Whispered World – the article, written in conjunction with this interview, details the game’s history from inception to conception, between the years 2004 and 2010, and should by all means get you better prepared for the game’s release on the 23rd.

A special thank you goes to the very genial mister Hüllen, who braved our questions despite a minor language barrier. Therefore, the interview has been translated, from German into English, by Martyn Zachary and Richard Scary for The Slowdown. The original answers, in the German language, will also be published on the website later.

The Slowdown: After having worked so long on a project that began way back in the first half of the 00′s as an university project, are you feeling any fatigue now that the game is finally coming out?

Marco Hüllen: A little, but the joys do outweigh the fatigue. When I first started work on the game, I never expected it to become such a marathon for me. Much has been enjoyable, and a lot was equally frustrating. In the end it all came together nevertheless, and with that in mind it has all been worthwhile.

How long have you been working on the game, exactly?

Oh, it has already been quite a few years: I started work in the year 2004, with The Whispered World as the topic of my diploma thesis. When I completed my degree in late 2005, I made the decision to develop the game further at Bad Brain Entertainment, for whom I had done graphics on some other titles during my studies.

Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt after about six months and I did no further work on the game. After that I became lead artist at Independent Arts Software, where I worked on games for the Nintendo DS and Wii. In 2007, I came in contact with Daedalic Entertainment by chance, who then inquired if I would continue to work on the game at the studio. Thus my work at Daedalic began in September 2007, where I worked on the game, together with the rest of my colleagues, for almost 2 years as lead artist and game designer, up until its release in Germany in August 2009.

Was your graduation project more a visual arts or a game design project?

I did graphic design and illustration at the Rhein-Sieg academy of arts. Though my diploma thesis focused more on illustration and advertising than on game design, I nevertheless wanted to put on display as much actual game as possible, and developed a story, a trailer and a demo for the game in which important features of the game’s design, like Spot, some puzzles and characters were shown.

A Background Sketch

There is some mystery as it relates to the original playable demo you released for the game back in 2005. How close was the game to a full release at that time?

The demo was part of my dissertation and really just a snippet from the game. Since I did the demo completely alone it only had 4-5 rooms, but did already contain basic animations for the main characters, Sadwick and Spot. In contrast, the game now contains 60 rooms, many people have worked to improve the game and the character of Sadwick underwent a complete redesign.

How does the 2007 German-only trailer figure in all this, then? What was its function? Did you design the trailer all by yourself, as a marketing vehicle, for instance? It still contains the previous version of Sadwick, and borrows music (“Ano natsu he”) from Miyazaki’s renown anime, Spirited Away – do I see a Studio Ghibli influence there?

The trailer was, like the demo, part of my thesis and was not meant for public consumption, as it contained music from the film Spirited Away. Miyazaki’s films have been a great inspiration to me and the music was only meant to illustrate where the direction of the music and the atmosphere of the game should go.

We’ve come to understand that Bad Brain’s Wolfgang Kierdorf effectively owned, at one time, the licensing rights and the characters of The Whispered World. How did that come to happen, and how did Daedalic eventually get the license?

Bad Brain never did have the rights to the game: Only the portion of graphics and content that was created during my stay at the company belonged to them. Around the same time, the game’s story capsized completely, and really had hardly anything to do with my original vision. It wasn’t until Daedalic that my story was picked back up.

Daedalic then bought the existing parts from Bad Brain, and came to an agreement with me in regards to my rights to the game.

From what I understand, your relationship with Bad Brain Entertainment was never quite as poor as reported in the English-speaking press. For one, the contractual issues you had with them seem to have been overstated. In your opinion, does Bad Brain’s legendary bad reputation relate more to their high-profile issues with Autumn Moon and Bill Tiller?

While there were indeed many problems within the company, I’m very reluctant to talk ill of Mr. Kierdorf, who was essentially a great boss. I have never interfered in regards to his failings in successfully delivering on his promises with A Vampyre Story, and have only learned about the problems via the gaming press. It does seem that something went wrong there.

In retrospect, how would you characterize Mr. Kierdorf, who is often demonized and vilified among adventure game fans?

Ultimately, Kierdorf is just someone who enjoyed the adventure game genre as much as I did, and he had huge plans for huge games. Unfortunately, nothing ever became of it in the end, as we all know.

The absolute worst period during the development of The Whispered World?

When management of the game at Bad Brain completely changed and I was no longer able to see much of what I had once planned. I believe it’s good that that the game was not brought to completion at the time.

As the game’s credits roll, you are quite strikingly credited for a vast amount of different tasks and developmental roles; How large a percentage do you estimate your final contribution to the released version to be?

Most of my work was done with the backgrounds, which are largerly mine, and also the characters, which I have created myself with a few exceptions. Apart from that, I designed the entire interface, many items and some animations, like the running animations for Sadwick and Spot. Most of the other animations have been done by my colleagues at Daedalic, who have all done a great job.

Above all, I would like to praise Simone Kesterton and Gunnar Bergmann especially. There was a summary of my story that I had already done during my thesis, and together with Sebastian Schmidt and Jan Müller Michaelis Spitzname, we worked it out further.

I was also involved in game design as well as one or two 3D effects.

Claas Paletta’s FAQ for The Whispered World lists further influences than just the aforementioned Miyazaki: Classic fairy tales and adventure games like Monkey Island. Would you agree with these? Any other influences you had back when you first started work on the game?

Yes, Miyazaki was indeed the biggest inspiration for the game, but other fantasy films from my childhood, such as The Last Unicorn, or Labyrinth, had a great influence on me as well. The game even contains elements of the movie Fight Club, which inspired some of the plot twists.

What has most recently motivated you as an artist? A film, a work of art, an album?

I am an enormous film buff, and love stories with oddball characters; Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, as well as the wonderful music of Yann Tiersen, have inspired my newest hobby project, Limbus. For me, music is one of the most important things in being able to dive into a new, different world.

If I’m painting a picture or two, I tend to listen to the same music again and again – I know that might sound crazy to some, but it really helps me to convey the atmosphere I’m trying to imbue the images with.

Sadwick the clown, then. How did the transformation from the old Sadwick (on the left) over to the new design happen? The previous iteration appears to me more child-like and innocent, unprepared, with the colour red ultimately striking a parallel more towards children’s entertainment.

And what became of his tail?

We wanted to develop a look that would appeal to an older audience, and subsequently a character with which we could express more emotion, which was immensely important for the game. His lion’s tail, from that time, became a casualty in the process.

The character of Sadwick, in some ways, exudes the bitter-sweet melancholy of Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp in his 1928 silent film, The Circus. How did you arrive upon the character of the clown?

What I’m referring to here is the cruel existential position of the circus performer; the showmen and -women of the circus are also perpetually outside society, bound to their work and travel. Is Wanderlust the source of Sadwick’s melancholy?

Sadwick the character was meant to be very unsatisfied with his current life, completely ready to break free of its constraints. We often have to hide our true feelings in life, like feign happiness just to make other people happy, even though what we’re feeling might be the complete opposite of that. We all have surely smiled to a loved one in mourning even though we were full of grief ourselves.

Thus, a clown that is unhappy with his own life seemed to me to have fine contrast that would then distinguish Sadwick from other characters in adventure games, and breathe enough life into him, to make him sympathetic and tell an emotional story in a world that is just as fragile as Sadwick is. I hope the players will empathize with Sadwick enough, so that they can laugh with him at the end of the game but also feel a hint of sadness.

This all begs the question: How closely does The Whispered World of today resemble your original vision of the game?

Apart from a few exceptions, the game became what I had wished for. Though surely one’s never 100% satisfied – that would be a crying shame, after all, since you should always try to better yourself.

Now that the game is nearly ready and published, did it originally ever cross your mind that the game’s development could become such a wild ride?

Never ever!

A do-or-die question, a high-priority issue the ambiguity of which is torturing non-German players all around the globe. Which is it, yes, which is it – is Spot a worm or a caterpillar?

A caterpillar, with a few special abilities to boot.

Finally, now that the game is finished and released, are you going to be working on other projects with Daedalic?

I work as a concept artist at Related Designs at the moment. But you never know.

At this point, I would like to take the time, once again, to thank Marco for his answers, hopefully we all now have a better idea of what went down behind the scenes. Here’s to hoping that The Whispered World is not the last of Marco’s fantastic graphic design on adventure games.

For Hüllen’s personal website, check out Fantastic Creatures; The Whispered World’s official website can be found here. The game is out in the UK, Scandinavia, Spain and Italy on April 23, 2010, and on the 26th in North America. So far, the game is digitally available at Direct2Drive, GamersGate and The Adventure Shop. Daedalic also promise a release on Steam.

Edwards, fresh off releasing a custom survival map, Dead Meat (his portfolio additionally includes a contest-winning level for the Steamworked Zombie Panic: Source) is no stranger to gaming horror, and while we explicitly wanted to hear his feelings on the more technical intricacies and design-related dilemmas present in developing Left 4 Dead content, Edwards also touches on broader conceptual decisions, issues and themes that are present in the horror genre, relating his vision to titles such as Silent Hill and Siren: Blood Curse.

We would like to thank Edwards for answering our questions, and for those with a keen eye, there are Yama and Dead Meat screenshots sprinkled amidst the answers after the jump! Dead Meat can be acquired from http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/abattoir.html.

How different would you consider the requirements, design-wise, for working on a L4D level compared to your earlier projects for, say, Zombie Panic: Source?

Design-wise it’s not that different, you block out the map, test with a small group of people and keep going until the gameplay works. The obvious difference is that L4D relies on AI, so you need to design the map with that in mind, and also remember that replayability is probably the most important thing in this game, so you need to give the player enough options to keep them interested time after time, or let them try a different tactic if they die and have to keep playing the same part over and over. It might need a bit more thought than a map for a game like CSS, but with enough beta testing you can solve all those problems.

There is, in my own experience, considerable variation with the difficulty level of Valve’s own survival maps. How importantly did playtesting figure for Dead Meat?

I’m registered on a couple of forums full of other talented mappers so I never have a problem getting feedback. With Dead Meat, I released a couple of beta versions on those forums to get feedback on how it played out before releasing a public version. I’ve also got a few friends who play the game so I test with them.

The good thing about Left 4 Dead is that it is very AI-centric: Although it doesn’t tell you everything about the map, I can just create a nav mesh and run through it with bots on my own. So usually I get to test the map in all the different ways it can be played. Once the level is public, and everyone has a chance to play, you’re bound to find the last few bugs that were missed.

Different people told me it was either too easy or too hard, but playing and testing I think I found a good balance. While some locations might be easy to defend, the layout usually forces you to move and whenever I play it I end up moving from room to room so the difficulty changes in a single playthrough.

Dead Meat is a professional entry to mapping for Left 4 Dead. What was your primary motivation for approaching the admittedly arduous and intimidating task of developing a full campaign in the form of Yama, instead of, say, another survival-based level?

I actually started Yama in 2006 when Turtle Rock announced the game. They ended up delaying it until 2008 but I worked on it over that time, mostly just making prefabs, textures, models etc, and getting more and more references. The setting and map order has actually changed since then, and I don’t think I knew as much back then how much work a 5-map campaign would actually be.

Dead Meat started out from some photos in my Yama references folder of an abandoned abattoir which I knew wouldn’t make the campaign, and that map was more or less a test to get used to working with the L4D content and the director, I think it only took about 6 weeks from start to finish. One of the problems with making a campaign is coming up with a consistent, realistic theme that can span 5 maps and anything up to 90 minutes of gameplay.

I don’t have any concrete ideas for another campaign mostly because of that. I do have another survival map planned, and even though a lot of people don’t like survival, the maps are far easier and quicker to make. Since I enjoy mapping even if no one plays them, that’s what I’ll be doing next.

The choice of utilizing Japan as a setting seems enviably obvious in retrospect, with a thriving tradition of survival horror in Japanese popular cinema and gaming. Would you say such geography is underutilized in game design overall?

I’m not sure if the setting itself is that important; Silent Hill is one of my favourite games series but that was more for the style of horror they used. There were a lot of unique things in that game but as it was set in the United States, I think that’s an unique trait of Japanese developers.

I prefer horror in games like in Siren or in movies like Audition but I think that’s more to do with the creators than the setting. When it comes to films I think that’s down to studio pressure and appealing to the lowest denominator in Hollywood, so I don’t think it’s the setting really, it’s just that the developers that tend to set their games in Japan are Japanese, and they happen to be better at creating horror.

The attention to minute detail, already visible in screenshots of Yama, is terrific. How much of your actual “mapping time” goes into researching textures and props?

Far more time than I should spend. When I get references I usually go overboard and find too many things I want to include. The first map in the campaign was going to be the same mountain setting as the others, but somehow I ended up switching it to Tokyo itself which means I now need dozens more textures and models. I’ve got photos of places I want to include and I sometimes change the map to work them in, but having so many photos means I get a good idea of the setting and as you mentioned, the kind of textures or models I could use elsewhere in the map.

Originally I had some photos of a cable car station, and looking for more photos of that place led me to other places that became maps in the campaign, like a hotel in the 5th level of the campaign. Even if I don’t end up using all my references, they give me a good idea of the look of a particular place and its architecture.

For me, the photographic hues together with the decay do vividly recall Japanese war photography from before and after World War II. Is this a source of inspiration for you?

That wasn’t a direct inspiration. I do think that like in a lot of other horror games, taking a recognisable environment and twisting it is a really good way of making a player feel uneasy. This is something that will work on every playthrough unlike, say, a tank bursting through a wall.

Siren: Blood Curse was a big inspiration for the village level and maybe Japan Studio (SCEJ) were inspired by war photography, but I thought the sepia tint works well for this map because after playing through the more colourful Tokyo and temple levels and then riding the cable car into a brown, desaturated, almost silent village, it gives that feeling of something not being right.

In relation to my previous question, I do feel that we are all accustomed (and even programmed) to seeing something inherently fearful and horrific about the destruction of Japan, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in recent memory. I’m definitely chilled by the screenshots, and the location seems ideal for survival horror. Dead Meat, however, does contain overtones of macabre humour as well. Do you think humour is essential for survival horror?

Going back to Silent Hill, I think Silent Hill 3 did this well with some of its characters and dialogue. I don’t think it’s essential but done in the right way it can be effective. Like how the horror itself is often subtle in those games, then subtle humour can work in the same way.

The interview additionally contains never before seen side-to-side comparisons of development sketches and exclusive versions of backgrounds – including unfinished art that never made it to the game – to allow readers more insight into Michalski’s development cycle.

Here at the Slowdown, we also noticed how some players have been on the fence with the amount of gore in the game, so we wanted Remy to clarify the true nature of the horror present in Downfall. In turn, we also learned how some of the game and its locations are really reality-based.

Finally, we intend to publish our complementary review of the game, with more in-game screenshots to go, in a matter of a few days; If you’re interested in the game, the easiest way to read the forthcoming review is to subscribe to us on Twitter or to our RSS feed. Downfall is currently available on Direct2Drive, and our thank you goes to Mr. Michalski for taking the time to answer our questions.

Your game, Downfall, is very much a one-man multimedia project. Was it a conscious decision to develop it by yourself?

Well, it’s not like I had much choice: None of my friends are into games. The game started as an experiment that turned better and better, and eventually the pieces started to fit together. It would be unfair to call it a one-man project though, as my brother Michal did a great job with recording the soundtrack, which – despite of being very different from what I initially imagined – fits the atmosphere of the game rather well.

Additionally, there was the AGS forum community, which occasionally lent me a hand with technical issues.  Having worked alone for most of the time, though, I had the freedom to develop the story and character design exactly the way I wanted, without other people telling me what to do.

I had to trust my instincts, and in the end, I do feel I made the right decisions.

Did the psychological nature of the game’s subject matter constrain the the potentiality (or potential need for) of collaboration, or do you simply enjoy working alone?

I definitely enjoy working alone. I suspect it wouldn’t be possible to create such a deep and personal story if there were more people involved in its conception. That may very well be the best thing about indie games: In some way, they do reflect their makers’ personalities.

That is not something you get with big-budget blockbuster titles developed by teams of a hundred or more people. They have to make sure their games are politically correct and inoffensive. If Downfall does end up offending someone, I couldn’t care less! At least I am being honest, and you can either love or hate Downfall for it.

I understand you worked on Downfall on the side of – even at – your day job. Did this inspire you, or was it ultimately a hindrance?

Large parts of the game were done during long night shifts in a nursing home I worked at. It was one of those places where mentally ill elderly come to spend their last years. I did my best to look after them,  but I also saw a lot of them perish. After a while you get used to it – try to help them make the most of the time they’ve got left; but the very fact of human death isn’t so much of a shock any more.

It gave me a great insight into what mental illness does to you and how it makes you behave… of course I was inspired by it! Some of the things Joe’s wife says in the game are based on real conversations I had with patients. Many locations in the game have been initially drawn in that building and basically some of the backgrounds are based on rooms that I’d known for years.

I found that with many litres of coffee and a packet of cigarettes you don’t need to sleep at all. The quiet gave me the opportunity to concentrate, which isn’t always the case during the day.

That begs the question, how did you actually come to settle on the format of an adventure game in telling this particular narrative – instead of, say, a novel, a comic book or a film?

It was going to be an adventure game from the start, there was no question about it.

I bumped into the AGS website a long time ago and I made my first little project for – and about – my friends only. They loved it. It was a damn funny game, but with rubbish quickly drawn graphics. I realized that I loved the platform though, and through all the years that followed I kept thinking about the ideas for a proper game that could attract a broader audience.

Comic books and films were never my thing, but games, of which I’m a real enthusiast, seemed like a perfect medium for me. I could finally fulfil my childhood dream of becoming a writer and combine it with some artistic skills which I possessed but never really used much. That way, I guess, I made the most of all my skills.

Would you consider Downfall a ‘return’ to tradition? Could you have imagined Downfall in some other format than low-resolution point & click?

Downfall is definitely a return to tradition, in regards to the puzzles, dialogues and the inventory. The phrase I used somewhere to describe it, “back to the roots of adventure games”, was not taken very well by some people though, who probably imagine that every game in the genre must tell a story of a wannabe pirate searching for a long lost treasure.

I also dislike how most adventure games these days are too easy and consist of strings of mini-games rather than making the players figure out how to achieve proper objectives in their surroundings.

The low resolution was dictated by the simple fact that I was working alone and it was easier for me to make it this way. It’s all very retro, but then again, once in a while there are scenes in the game that you would have never seen in games of the past: Full-screen animated sprites, camera zooms, multi-layered rain effects with each and every frame hand-drawn individually.

The game is currently a Direct2Drive exclusive. Are you planning on extending its availability to other channels of distribution like Steam?

I am thinking about it. Direct2Drive have been very helpful, as they guided me through the publishing process – which I had no idea about – and I am most grateful for that – so I’m going to keep the game exclusive to D2D for a little longer still, and then expand to other portals.

I doubt Steam will be one of them though. They turned me down in the past without even having a look at the product. They said their audience would not like this sort of game… I am getting lots of offers from other portals now, though, and eventually I will start thinking about it.

The marketing discourse for Downfall has firmly established the game as graphic and ultra-violent; Would you agree with me, though, that the real ‘horror’ aspect of Downfall isn’t all about the gore?

Downfall is a very scary game, but not because of the gore. It’s the combination of all its elements that makes it a one-of-a-kind experience about someone trying to help, but unwillingly causing more damage instead. The violence isn’t there necessarily to scare anyone; we are all used to seeing blood and monsters in games, after all.

It’s the little things in Downfall that you might find more disturbing: The sound of a crying woman in one of the rooms, the fact that you can kill someone, by mistake, and they will stay dead until the end of the game. The dreams. Strange figures in the cellar, hidden under dirty sheets… they don’t always have to mean or do something. They’re just there to make you think, to create images in your head that can be more frightening than any monster in the history of games.

As we mentioned before, Downfall is a very personal, invested work. Keeping this in mind, does the game scare you in some (any) way?

It only scares me when I think how very personal it is! Seriously speaking, no, it does not. There was just that one time… I had my headphones on, and there’s a part of the game where a lamp gets smashed and the whole room goes dark…

The sound of broken glass, very loud in my ears, made me jump out of my seat as I completely forgot it was supposed to happen! Ultimately, I spent too much time working on the game to be scared of it any more. It’s a shame. I know one player had a really bad nightmare after playing Downfall, though. It was something to do with the cellar I mentioned earlier.

The game does contain themes – eating disorder, child abuse, the loss of love – often absent in computer games. Was Downfall’s conception motivated by a desire to discuss these topics in the interactive realm?

Yes, these topics have been often exploited by the films, but rarely (never?) used in games. In this case, I tried to talk about the things I have some knowledge of. I believe this is what makes Downfall unique. There’s way too much repetition in games.

There should be more games for adult players, and Downfall is definitely a mature title they will enjoy on an intellectual level. I didn’t want to discuss problems I’ve never experienced or witnessed because they’d feel fake. And the horror setting is pretty much just a metaphor used to emphasize situations that can and do happen in real life.

Joe, the primary protagonist, seems motivated by the need to keep his life fixed “as is”, in a stasis. Would you say this tendency is fuelled on by his closest relationships in the game?

Of course. All Joe wants is to get his old life back. In the same time he’s fooling himself thinking that it was ever good. This tendency is very typical to him. At the same time everyone he meets on his way tries to drag him away from it…

It’s quite enthralling how the aforementioned facet of Joe – the need to fix, mend and repair – makes him, really, the ideal character for an adventure game. Was Joe always the focus of the game?

Joe is obviously a very important character, but I think it’s his wife, Ivy, who’s even more important to the story. She provides the reasoning behind his every action and she is his ultimate downfall. To some players it might seem that she goes missing early in the game, but really, if you look closely, there’s a little bit of her in every person you meet as you explore the hotel…

A protagonist in an adventure game needs something to drive him or her forward, to explain the constant search for clues, and in a way that’s how Joe is; His goals are very clear. I was afraid that compared to other, more complex characters, Joe would appear to lack his own opinions and originality in general, because it’s the player who chooses for him and his behaviour might change according to player’s decisions.

But in the end, that’s what makes him seem more human. He’s not perfect, he makes wrong decisions, he hesitates, gets angry or tired. By the time the credits roll, you will have your own picture of Joe, and it might be quite different from what other players have seen.

How important do you think it is to have multiple playable characters in Downfall? How early did you settle on the idea that Joe’s perspective is not all there is to the story?

I think it’s quite important. Without it Downfall would be just too heavy and depressing. When the perspective changes to Agnes when you least expect it, the game suddenly takes on a more relaxed approach, a moment to breathe and unload the tension.

Not for long, mind you, because you soon realize that it’s too late to go back and change what you’ve done as Joe, and the consequences of your actions can be rather horrible. Another, more obvious, reason for including this feature is of course to explain the story a bit more. There are quite a few twists in Downfall, after all.

Did the design for the game change during the development process? Do you have any examples of changes that occurred since its inception?

To be honest, the only thing I had to go back to and change was Joe. About halfway through the development, I decided I didn’t like how he looked… it effectively meant I had to draw this character again and change most of his animations too. Because I based “New Joe” on the “Old Joe”, you can occasionally see few frames left from the old design in some of the animations.

In regards to the location (Devon, UK), how did the setting come about?

This is where I live! [Ed: GASP!] It doesn’t really matter much. All that’s said in the game is that Joe and his wife come from London and Devon is where they wanted to take some time off and relax. The empty rainy town where they decide to stay for the night is completely fictional.

Your treatment of the topos of the haunted house greatly differs from the usual; how important is the Quiet Haven Hotel for the actual narrative?

Quiet Haven is more than a building. I can only tell that it is a metaphor, and definitely NOT one of those haunted houses “built on ancient Indian burial ground”. It’s a mental trap and a journey to the Joe’s past.

Apparently, some people think the hotel’s name is a tribute to Silent Hill’s “Silent Heaven” hotel. I do love Silent Hill, but never really thought about that this way. The name has a deeper meaning. The first words Joe says in the game are: “Great… The storm is coming”.

But it’s more than rain and thunder that are coming. It’s a storm that takes place inside Joe’s mind more than anywhere else. He seeks a shelter and there it is, a hotel, a safe haven. He tries to run away from his problems, lying to himself, because he already knows something very bad is about to happen…

Earlier, I asked about the choice of utilizing ‘game’ as the vessel for the story. We’ve established, over the course of this interview, that Downfall does contain themes atypical to games. What do you think of the games-as-art discourse? Do you consider Downfall an ‘art’ game?

Yeah, it’s definitely an art game, even though the gamers’ first impression after watching the trailer was that it’s a game that uses violence as a selling point. The truth is many artists used violence and that’s okay as long as there is a good reason for it and it means something more than just blood and guts.

It would really surprise me if someone who finished Downfall didn’t get that message! I think art is the right direction, we just have to make sure we don’t label every new game as “art” because the producer said so, and I’m afraid that was the case with quite a few titles.

I understand you’re preparing an updated version of the game. What would you like to tell new potential players about the forthcoming version?

A new version, 1.4, is done and soon available on Direct2Drive – if you see version number “1.4″ at the bottom of the page it means it’s available. The patched version includes spelling corrections, some major bug fixes, a new font and is generally more polished. Those who have bought the previous version can email me for an update.

Finally, what are your immediate plans for either Downfall or for future projects?

I’m still focusing on Downfall at the moment, but there will be a subsequent project, of course. It’s still in the planning stages though, and I can’t tell you much about it, apart from it being another horror story.