Tuukka Virtanen is one of a pair of twins (alongside his brother, Erkka, whom also develops games), who has garnered a solid following in the GameMaker community and a somewhat smaller one in the larger indie community. His releases range from the Seiklus-influenced Painajainen to the offbeat puzzlers Virtual Silence and The Manipulator.

Age?

I’m 19 years old.

Location?

Finland.

Development tool(s) of choice?

What do you do?

I just got out of high school and currently study for a university entrance examination.

How did game development come about for you?

My cousin introduced me and my twin brother to game making over 8 years ago when we were about ten. We had always been creative and we had made board games and such as soon as we could read and write, so making computer games was the next logical step.

What are your goals as a game developer?

My goal is to keep making fun and original games that more and more people enjoy playing. It could be cool to make games for living in the future.

Who or what are your influences? Having worked with Game Maker for so long, are there any Game Maker developers that you look up to?

Cactus is one developer whose doings I closely follow. His games and style had a very big influence to couple of my more experimental games like Seven Minutes, Virtual Silence and the Manipulator and you could say I’m a fan.

Kaipuu and Painajainen seemed to be influenced by Seiklus. Are you a fan?

Yeah, I’m a fan. Seiklus was one of the Game Maker games that I played it blew me away with its beautiful graphics and wonderful atmosphere. Painajainen was a tribute to Seiklus; I wanted to show how much I appreciated it.

Having used GameMaker for so many years, what do you feel are its strengths and weaknesses as a game development tool?

The strength of Game Maker lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness. It’s so easy and quick to get something showing up on the screen instead of spending hours to get one sprite appear with real programming languages. So far I’ve been fairly satisfied with Game Maker’s capabilities but it could be faster and have the option to port your games to other platforms.

How do you approach the game development process - what comes first, what comes last and how do you keep yourself motivated to keep on a project?

For me, ideas come first and they are the most important part of the design. If the idea doesn’t work or doesn’t sound interesting enough, the game wouldn’t probably work. Ideas come first and everything else comes after that. The main idea of the game rules what the graphics look like and what music sounds like because they have support that idea in order to make it work.



And the best part of ideas is that they are free.



Finishing a game is always tough. It’s probably the hardest part of game making or any other art. You will get bored of your project and sometimes you just have to force yourself to finish it. But in the end it’ll reward you.

What are the rewards for you?

There is also a sense of accomplishment that comes from creating something new all by yourself. It’s a really wonderful feeling that alone makes this worthwhile.



The feedback is also something I look forward to. I love to hear what people think about my games. It tells me what I’m doing wrong and what I got right. In game making it’s also always easy to update your game and try to constantly better your game.

When your at the idea stage of a game, how do you develop your ideas?

I usually start building the prototype as soon as I get the idea. Of course I scribble something on bits of paper but usually nothing concrete.

Some of your game in recent years have been more experimental in nature - what influenced the change in development direction?

I wanted to make something different for a change after all these standard platformers and I had all these off-beat ideas floating around. At the same time, there were many other experimental games released by, for example Cactus, and it was just the perfect time to express myself in this way.

What time frames do you feel comfortable spending on a game’s development process?

It depends on the game. Some games are made in a week, like Seven Minutes and some games take over a year, like Animal Blast.

How do you know when something is going to work and when something isn’t?



It’s pretty hard to tell if something works or not. There are some games where you can see from the first second that they don’t work or if they are rare gems. I think that in the end it boils down to personal preference and then you just have to keep your head if you think it’s good enough.

Do you and your twin brother always work seperately on projects or do you sometimes attempt to work together and collaborate?

Usually one of us gets the initial idea and then starts the project. After we have something to show we talk together about how to make it better.

I noticed that most of the games on you and your brother’s website are credited to you - are you more into game development then your brother?

I guess you could say that. I think my brother has started more projects than me but I’ve completed more.

Going through high school, what sort of obstacles did you face that possibly got in the way of game development?

My game release pace has slowed down during later years. It’s partially because of having more responsibilities and partially because of growing up. When you are younger, you’re fueled by this pure passion and incredible love for the project that makes you spend hours in front of the computer.

How much time do you feel comfortable (or would you like to be) spending each day on game development?



Nowadays I try to spend an hour a day on a game. I’ve been pretty good at balancing school and my hobby but last year was such a wild ride that I didn’t finish a single game. School comes still first, hobby second.

Sometimes there have been lengthy gaps in between the release of games. Are there times where you have to leave a project sit for months at a time, before coming back to it?