Also, I wanted him to appear a bit more vulnerable so he needed that softness to support that. But in order to make him still fit into this world, I had to keep the overall shape and design very geometrical and simplified. Most games are either entirely low-poly or the opposite, so I feared that this break in style would be disliked by many people – but it didn’t, so I kept going. Without even animating him, I started prototyping. I had the mood, the experience in mind, I knew roughly how the game could look like and now I had to find an engaging gameplay that combines everything into an actual game. The rest of the story is pretty usual game dev stuff I guess. Testing, failing, testing, failing, testing, not failing that much – building up on that, testing, failing, etc… Most of the time I just moved him (stiff as he was) through the test landscape randomly, turned on some moody music and scribbled all the ideas that came to my mind.

While building the actual gameplay I try to iterate as much as possible. I don’t like writing game design documents, it feels very static and simply does not fit my creative way of thinking – I love production plans and organization though. Over the years I learned that ‘talking less and trying more’ is a very efficient way of getting the best results. Losing the fear of a blank sheet of paper, so to speak.

Environment design

First of all, I think about how the character progresses throughout the game because the landscapes are important as the playground for his skills. Depending on that, I think about which landscape theme fits the most at certain points and I jump right in and try to capture the essence of what the player is supposed to feel. As mentioned before, it is a very atmosphere/mood driven game, so I focus that from early on.