Gameplay

I wouldn’t say the gameplay is not necessary, but rather that gameplay should be tweaked in more interesting ways.

Videogames are a medium based on interaction, and because of the arcade roots we are always thinking “how can we make this mechanic fun?” instead of “how can we use this interaction to elicit an emotional response?”. Papers, Please is an excellent example of this; the game is not “fun” in the traditional sense, its gameplay is meant to convey what it feels to be the character inside the game, and that’s something not many understand in my opinion.

In Valhalla we included a management aspect where you need to pay your porn subscription and rent. Traditionally, doing good in a videogame means getting a high score or some form of instant gratification. In this game, a high score is used to keep a roof over your head. So you do a good job to avoid being homeless or run out of quality smut, not because you need to be the best on the online leaderboards.

What I want to say is that games don’t have to necessarily have combat, game over conditions, high scores or anything traditionally attached to the concept of video games. They can use any kind of mechanics to speak to the players in ways other forms of entertainment cannot. These mechanics can be as simple as walk and talk to someone or deleting a save file, and as long as that makes the player feel what the developer wants them to feel it will be perfect, just like a movie doesn’t need dialogue to transmit its meaning.

Challenges

Most of the challenges were technological. We didn’t know much about programming, so many quality of life improvements had to be abandoned because we simply didn’t know how to make them. One notorious flaw is the lack of localization support, which made it a nightmare to add more languages. So I’d guess underestimating the reach of the game was the biggest mistake of them all; always assume your game will be in more than one language!

I feel like most of these technical challenges can be overcome by just getting better, but I think it’s also important to have a solid vision. For Valhalla, we knew what we wanted to make, but some of the stories required heavy tweaking because we didn’t know how to reach certain events we had in our heads in a convincing manner. So a combination of knowledge and a solid direction can beat any challenge in the way, with just enough foresight to avoid making your future-self get stuck working forever in the same game.

Other challenges came in the shape of living in Venezuela; we didn’t have access to banking compatible with the rest of the world, which made working with a publisher an absolute necessity unless we were rich to make those problems disappear.

We were broke back then, so in the end, we have to thank Ysbryd Games for believing in us and helping us with the business side of things, since we basically experienced the number one reason there’s no industry for commercial games in this country.