How I created my own PlayStation 4 game (and lived to tell the tale) Liad Abraham Follow Mar 2 · 8 min read

It started about a year ago.

My family was going through fire and water, literally. One day I’ll sit down and describe the exact events that lead to that point in my life, but for this story all you should know is, we hit rock bottom. And we hit it hard.

My name is Liad Abraham. I’m an Israeli guitarist and composer who writes instrumental guitar tracks. You can hear my music all over the internet and on every streaming platform. This is the story of how I wrote my first album, and created my first PlayStation game at the same time. It’s a story of rising from the ashes, reinventing yourself, and doing what you thought was impossible. It’s a story I’m proud of.

So, when everything started to crumble around us, in the midst of this hurricane that life threw my way, I suddenly felt a deep urge to create. Everything seemed broken and ruined, so I had to create something new. I thought, or rather felt it would give me some sense of control over my life. I took my guitar one evening, climbed up to the roof, and played all night long. I spent the entire night on one musical theme, playing around with it, chipping at it slowly until I had perfect 8 bars. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up to the turmoils of a new day, I made myself a cup of coffee and started humming this tune to myself. And I knew almost instantly: This is a soundtrack theme.

It has the characteristics of a soundtrack theme, it’s easy to write variations for, and it’s super memorable. Ok, what am I doing now? I drank my coffee. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I can’t write a soundtrack.. Or can I? A guitar soundtrack? Is that even possible? And, ok let’s just say I do it, a soundtrack for what exactly?

Just around that time, it was announced that early access for Media Molecule’s next big project Dreams (exclusive to PlayStation 4 systems) will start immidiately. Dreams was presented as a game engine with almost limitless possibilities, that basicaly everyone could learn to work with and design. Being an avid gamer since the age of about 5, I knew immidiately that this is the answer I was looking for. I signed up for the early access, and made up my mind to invest as much time as needed to learn the ins and outs of this game engine until I could create a playable game, and compose the entire soundtrack for that game on my classical guitar.

I dedicated about three weeks to learning the basics of the engine. One of the smartest decisions I made early on (and based paritaly on my guitar teaching techniques) was to divide the learning process into three main skills, and for starters dedicate a whole week to each one of these skills: One week for 3d sculpting. One week for animation. One week for logic. Let’s just make this super clear: three weeks is nothing really, and I was totally naive. After this short game design boot camp I would start work on my great project!

All that time, I wrote music on a daily basis. Expanding that first theme, creating variations for it, and started work on a game idea and script. I was starting to dedicate every single hour I was awake and not teaching to this project. Then, after the three weeks ended, and I had a ton of music ready and recorded at my assembled home studio, it was time to begin.

My vision was to create a game similiar to the quest games that rulled the nineties by companies such as Sierra and LucasArts. Being a guitarist, I decided to create the main character a lute playing bard, and make him my alter ego. I named him Dante and made him the the epitome of anti-heroism. Dante is mixture of many colliding conflicts: a masterful musician who suffers from stage fright, addicted to alchohol and tobacco, has severe daddy-issues, a really fragile memory and no manners whatsoever.

Then I had a crazy idea (I actually had a few of those). What if I could create a box. A magic box, that changes all the time. The game will take place inside the box, and the scenery will move and change depending on areas the player decides to visit, icluding day and night cycles. I had an image of the old pop-out books I used to read and love as a child. When that idea hit me, a lot of the game mechaniques and asthetics menifested themselves before my eyes. But that’s not the only thing I got that day. I also got a name. Around that time, the word “Lootbox” has become a source of great despute and controversy in the gaming community, with companies such as EA blamed for utilizing them in all sorts of malicious ways. My game had a Lute playing protagonist, the playground was a Box. Thus, “LuteBox” was created. Here’s a short video I made at the end of the first day of development. I just finished creating the working LuteBox (which was designed after my wife’s old phonograph), and used some simple puppets and assets just to measure perspectives. It’s quite amazing to see the changes the game made from this very early in development test, just keep reading and you’ll see at the end.

Proving to myself that my concept can work, I started creating all the assets I thought I needed for my game. I practiced hours upon hours on 3d sculpting until not only could I get good results, but I started getting them quick. At the beginning, I could hardly create a good looking chair, but about two weeks working on the platform, I found myself finishing half a dozen asetts a night, easily. I created hundreds of objects for my game, from lutes to trees, rocks, wine bottles, books, towers, icicles, mushrooms, caves, the list is endless. And from that moment things started to move really quick. I created a crazy ensemble of characters, recorded unique voices for them, and named each one by funny names my then 6 months twin daughters accidentaly made (made up baby words make the best fantasy names, I can tell you that!). So were created Hunks the troll prince, Punky the musical imp, and Herdy the neighbors kid (who looks like a 40 year old man). Here’s a short time lapse video showing the creation of one of these characters.

Let’s talk some gameplay elements and script here, it is a video game we’re dealing with after all. Dante the Bard lives in his tower in WinterGuard with Billy the Crow. The two share a bizzare love-hate relationship that develops throught the game. Dante carries his lute everywhere, and the human playing the game can play the lute at any given moment using the PlayStation DualShock 4 controller. Different chord combinations (all vividly recorded on my guitar) can have drastic effects on the world like changing night to day, making certain objects big or small, etc. This way puzzles are solved and Dante can progress in the story. On his path to pursue the vile woman who stole his treasured melody book he will meet peculiar characters, get lost in an ice cave, captured and imprisoned by a troll and get teleported to an ancient library for a secret task. A bard’s life is a hard one.

The biggest strength of the Dreams game engine is the amazing community behind it. I started sharing my still in early development game on reddit, and all sorts of Facebook groups, and quickly players and other creators started to take notice. The way MM (Media Molecule) incorporated community and social media elements into their game is astonishing, and allows players to experience your creation while you are still working on it, providing feedback, catching bugs or even join you in a number of collaborative ways.

This was an amazingly creative time for me. During the mornings I’d write music, practice and record it. Later during the day I’d work on social aspects, make connections with prominent figures in the community, read and answer comments and feedback. I even had an amazing American guy who played every update of the game just to make sure grammer and spelling were on-point (English being only a second language for me). Nights were dedicated to creating the game itself, usually streaming the process, rotating daily between YouTube and Twitch.

All in all, I spent approximately five hundred hours on this project so far. It is completely playable, has almost zero bugs. It was played for more then 200 hours by more than 1000 early access creators, and recieved amazing reviews both from streaming youtubers and community members. It’s still not done, some polish is absolutely needed, and the final two areas are not ready to publish, but I believe another three intense months is all I need.

Meanwhile, the first instrumental acoustic guitar single from the LuteBox soundtrack was released on 31.1.20, and it is by far my most successful release to date, passing 28K streams on Spotify alone in the first four weeks. You can listen to Journey right here, I am so proud of this track and the reception it got.

Dreams by MM is already out of early access and available for all to create and play in. Meaning every single one of you can that has a PS4 system near him (and who doesn’t) can try my still in development game, and enter the crazy universe I created. This is LuteBox. I love this game with all my heart. It’s ambitious, conflicted, strange and funny. And like it’s creator, it’s not perfect.

Thank you for reading, would love hearing your comments. If you enjoyed it you’re invited to share, or follow me on my Spotify artist page, I have some beautiful music coming soon. If you want to see some of my guitar magic live you can follow me on Twitch. And finally, here are 10 mins of edited gameplay. check out the beginning especially, which shows the updated box, along with the main title theme, those 8 bars that started it all. Heads up, it ends in a cliffhanger ;)