Have you heard of After Death? You probably haven’t. This game, released on Steam on October 5, wasn’t an instant hit. That is unfortunate because After Death is a pretty good Metroidvania and, while it could be an exaggeration to call it the second coming of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, it’s certainly a game that will fill nostalgic hearts with joy when they play it.

In After Death, you control a nameless amnesiac skeleton that wanders in a world constructed by a mysterious being called the Sculptor. On his search for answers, his only allies are talking souls that manifest themselves through gargoyle statues. Soon, the nameless skeleton discovers that his mission is to open the gates to the outside of that world, while he wonders if this mysterious Sculptor is an enemy or a possible ally.

Not only the game has amazing gameplay, which plays much like a mix of Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night, it also has an amazing story that rewards you for your curiosity. After Death is definitely a labor of love and, because of that, I interviewed its creators, Nolan Duluiyog (artist and designer) and Vincent Deraët (coder).

The duo met in High School more than 17 years ago. United by a common passion about games, they started to make games together and never stopped. Vincent remembers that “game developing was very different back then. Information on how to develop games was not easy to find. There were no tutorials on the internet and almost only AAA companies stood a chance in the market”.

They started to develop several games, but their plans were often frustrated because they intended to make games that were overly complex. “There was this game, Timeworld, that was in a pretty advanced state. It was an FPS/Puzzle game, much like Portal, with time travel elements. Several levels were complete, but we called some friends to test the game and they were totally lost”, explains Nolan. Finally, in 2011, they decided that they had to complete a project and After Death came began soon after.

The development of the game lasted seven years with both the developers working part-time and living apart. “We learned a lot”, affirms Vincent, “it was a challenge for me to code a game from scratch, without any existing engine. It was easy to be motivated, but hard to find the energy to work on the game after a long day of work”. The biggest issue in the development, according to Nolan, was the distance. “I live in Lyon, while Vince lives in Paris. We met sometimes regularly, but it was pretty hard for us to develop a game like this”.

Being both SNES and Megadrive fans, they decided to develop an old-school Metroidvania game. The two biggest inspirations of the developers when they were making the level design of the game were, not by coincidence, the two most famous Metroidvania games of all time: Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Super Castlevania IV was also a very big inspiration, but more in the way of the mood and style of the game, which can be clearly seen in the initial areas of the game. “In the first area, there were candles”, Nolan explains, “and had to resist the temptation of making the player able to destroy them to get items, as the reference would be too obvious”.

The game began without a story. Nolan admits that the main character was only a skeleton initially because they were easier to animate. Soon, though, when the project started to move on, Nolan wrote the full story. He states that it has some inspiration in Silent Hill 2. “The main character of SH2, James, seems totally lost. While playing the game, you understand something tragic is happening and the situation could be understood in different ways. I loved the way in which you can interpret a scene, a dialogue or a situation differently, both Silent Hill 2 as in After Death, when you know the story”.

After Death is more than a sandwich of references, though. The areas of the game are very varied and include a pirate ship sunk in midst of the desert and an underwater abyss. The developers aimed to make something original and memorable, mixing classic gameplay with some twists and original style. In this point, the design of the bosses is also something noteworthy. All drawn by Nolan, they reminisce the player of death all the time and have a neat design. He used to search for real places like deserts and images from abyssal sea creatures to inspire him to design the graphics of the areas and enemies. There is even a boss that was drawn after a real human skull.

They also tried new things with the gameplay. While some of the abilities gained by the main character, like the ability to turn into a spider, are clearly inspired by classic abilities like morphing into a ball in Super Metroid, abilities like the Ice and Fire Armor are original ideas added to make gameplay more interesting. Nolan really liked the Ice Armor, he states that it helped using the water as an active element of gameplay and added something new to the game, but Vincent remembers that it was very hard to code the spread of the ice inside the water and that caused many bugs.

Several steps were taken to prevent the gameplay from getting boring. The first enemy you encounter, a skull-like creature, can’t be hit with normal attacks, so you have to crouch and then attack. Nolan states that “was done to make the player notice that he always had to pay attention to the enemies. He couldn’t just spam normal attacks and be done with them”. Also, when the player killed a certain number of bosses, areas like the main hub of the game would have more and fiercer enemies than before so they could continue to be a challenge even after the player was already powerful.

Because of the complexity of their last attempts, it was important for the developers that After Death was easy to play at first, with its complexity growing with time. They built a straightforward path initially, but as the player gained new abilities, he was more and more free to explore the game the way he wanted and to find all the secret areas. The developers felt that the Metroidvania design was a pretty good choice because it uses new abilities to both encourage exploration and restrain the player in the beginning.

When the game was in its later stages, the musician Francisco Cerda was hired to compose songs for the game. This was the only part of the development that was outsourced during the seven years of development.

The developers state that the game reception was very good after the release last month. Unfortunately, they also admitted that it was very hard to get people to actually play After Death in the first place. They didn’t have specific numbers or goals about how the game should have sold, but they admit they thought it would be easier to get attention. “We don’t have a consolidated fanbase or any money for marketing and there are several games on Steam, so it’s pretty hard to be noticed”, affirmed Vincent.

“We have tons of ideas for the future and we would love to develop games as our main job”, Nolan affirms, “but for now we are focused on gathering feedback, getting people to notice the game and spend more time with our families”. You can buy After Death on Steam and help the developers to fund other interesting games like this one.