Deep-Rooted Games

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: Ein Interview mit Dominique Yakan Brand (Kiro'o Games)

Christof Zurschmitten — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 08:40:22 +0000

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: Ein Interview mit Dominique Yakan Brand (Kiro'o Games)

Christof Zurschmitten Mo. 27 Feb 2017 - 09:40

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES ist eine Serie von vier Interviews mit vier Entwicklern von vier verschiedenen Kontinenten, die eines gemeinsam haben: Sie haben sich inspirieren lassen von Sagen, Mythen und Folklore aus Ecken der Erde, die vom Medium meist ignoriert werden.

Dominique Yakan Brand ist Lead Designer und Mitbegründer von Kiro’o Games, einem Entwicklerstudio mit Sitz in Kameruns Hauptstadt Yaoundé. Ihr erstes international bekanntes Projekt ist Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, ein ambitioniertes Actionrollenspiel, dessen Setting von der lokalen Kultur und Überlieferung inspiriert wurde – und sogar in Hollywood auf Interesse gestossen ist.

Aurion ist – in euren eigenen Worten – das erste Rollenspiel mit afrikanischen Inspirationsquellen, angesiedelt in einer afrikanischen Fantasywelt. Habt ihr viel recherchieren müssen für den Hintergrund des Spiels? Oder seid ihr aufgewachsen in einem Milieu, in dem das Erzählen traditioneller Geschichten noch Teil einer lebendigen Kultur ist?

Die Tradition mündlichen Erzählens von Sagen, Legenden usw. ist tief verankert bei unterschiedlichen ethnischen Gruppen in Kamerun. Die meisten Mitglieder unserer Generation (die heute 25- bis 35-Jährigen) sind aufgewachsen in einer Epoche, in der man sich noch abends bei Mondschein versammelt hat und die Älteren uns Geschichten erzählten. Im Spiel gibt es eine Szene, die davon inspiriert wurde. Wir haben jedoch den Eindruck, dass diese Tradition heutzutage immer weniger praktiziert wird in Kamerun, auch wenn ihr in der Schule, im Fernsehen und andernorts noch eine gewisse Bedeutung eingeräumt wird.
Wir sind von dieser Basis ausgegangen und haben anschließend viel recherchiert, sowohl im Internet als auch andernorts, um das Szenario von Aurion zu entwerfen.

Kamerun ist ein Land mit einer sehr heterogenen Bevölkerung, mit mehr als 300 Ethnien und einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Religionen. Es gibt insofern vermutlich nicht ‚die Mythologie‘ Kameruns. Wie seid ihr mit dieser Vielfalt umgegangen? War das Ziel eher, eine Art ‚Essenz‘ herauszudestillieren oder war es ein eher eklektischer Zugang?

Aufgrund seiner geographischen Lage (ein wenig unterhalb des Äquators und im Herzen Afrikas) und seiner Vielfalt wird Kamerun oft „Afrika in Miniatur“ genannt – man sagt auch: „Wenn man Kamerun besucht, hat man ganz Afrika gesehen.“ Es stimmt also, dass wir eine enorme Vielfalt haben und dass es nicht einfach war, dem allem in einem Spiel gerecht zu werden. Tatsächlich wollten wir aber kein Spiel nur über Kamerun machen, sondern ein Spiel, das dem gesamten Kontinent oder sogar der ganzen Welt zugänglich ist. Darum haben wir uns für eine Mischung entschieden, die nicht nur inspiriert ist von unterschiedlichen Kulturen in Kamerun, sondern auch von solchen aus anderen Ländern (Südafrika, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Kenia u.a.m.).

Ich stelle mir vor, dass es nicht einfach ist, eine Balance zu finden zwischen dem Wunsch, eine authentische Geschichte zu erzählen und jenem, auch für Spieler interessant zu bleiben, die kaum Kenntnisse der Kultur Kameruns haben. Wie seid ihr mit diesem Problem umgegangen?

Die Handlung selbst ist leicht zugänglich und folgt bekannten Codes des Mediums Computerspiel. Es sind der Kontext, die Thematik, die Charaktere und die Spielwelt, die inspiriert worden sind von Afrika. Wir denken, diese Elemente fördern die Verständlichkeit und motivieren die Spieler, die Welt nach und nach für sich zu entdecken.

Ihr seid vom Ministerium für Kunst und Kultur unterstützt worden. Welcher Art war diese Unterstützung? Und gab es von dieser Seite Vorgaben dazu, wie die Kulturen Kameruns dargestellt werden sollen?

Der Minister war der Meinung, unser Projekt habe das Potential, die Kultur Afrikas in all ihren Facetten zu repräsentieren und hat uns deshalb gefördert. Ganz konkret hat uns die Förderung auch Zugang verschafft zu einer Datenbank, die wir für die Recherche nutzen konnten.

Gab es Werke – Bücher, Filme, andere Spiele – die als Inspiration für das Spiel mit seiner Verschmelzung von genre-typischen und traditionellen Elementen dienen konnten?

Filme und Spiele konnten nur beschränkt als Inspirationsquelle dienen, da diese Industrien in Afrika nicht sonderlich entwickelt sind. Es gab aber einige lterarische Inspirationsquellen. Wir haben verschiedene Sammlungen von afrikanischen Sagen und Legenden konsultiert (Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba, Contes et Légendes d'Afrique, Fables des Montagnes, etc.). Außerdem dienten der Neuvième cercle von Jean-Christophe Chaumette oder auch Chroniques de l’empire Ntu von Momi M'Buze als Inspiration. Tatsächlich sind wir ironischerweise bei Chaumette, einem französischen Autor, auf den Begriff ‘African-Fantasy’ gestossen.

Denkt ihr, dass interaktive Medien ein Potential dafür haben, die lange, vielgestaltige Tradition des Geschichtenerzählens fortzusetzen?

Spiele wie Year Walk zeigen offenbar, dass Games auch ein Träger der Kultur sein können und in der Lage sind, Traditionen und Geschichten zu überliefern. Für uns war es durchaus auch ein Ziel, Wissen über unsere Kultur in diesem Medium zu vermitteln. Der Großteil unserer Generation hat ja sein Wissen über die nordische, griechische oder japanische Mythologie ebenfalls von digitalen Spielen oder anderen Formen von Populärkultur.

In Aurion gibt es nicht nur einen Helden, sondern auch eine Heldin, Erine. War sie von Anfang an Teil des Konzepts? (Ich frage unter anderem deshalb, weil in Kamerun im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Regionen der Welt traditionellerweise Frauen die Rolle übernehmen, Erzählungen vorzutragen.)

Erine war tatsächlich schon seit 2003, also von Anfang an, Teil des Projekts. In Afrika wird die Frau generell als Sockel der Familie betrachtet, als Fundament der Gesellschaft. (Dies ist allerdings auch einer der Gründe, weshalb in manchen Dörfern die Vorstellung vorherrscht, die Frau solle daheim bleiben und sich um die Familie und den Haushalt kümmern. Diese Situation ändert sich aber allmählich mit der Globalisierung und dem Aufkommen der Massenmedien, da alle Arbeitskräfte benötigt werden, um die Entwicklung des Landes zu garantieren.) Im Spiel ist Erine eine Frau, die an der Seite ihres Mannes kämpft. Wir haben als Namen für ihre Ausrüstung „Le Mur du Coeur“ (Die Mauer des Herzens) gewählt, in Anlehnung an das afrikanische Sprichtwort: „Der König schützt das Königreich vor der Welt, die Königin schützt den König vor sich selbst.“

Welche Spiele verwenden eurer Ansicht nach Folklore in interessanter Weise?

In Afrika kommen gibt es kaum Beispiele dafür. Die meisten Studios auf dem Kontinent konzentrieren sich auf Smartphone-Spiele, die recht simpel sind im Hinblick auf die Erzählung. Aurion wird aber oft verglichen mit Never Alone. Beide Spiele vermitteln ein Universum und eine Kultur, die nicht oft repräsentiert ist in Computerspielen. Grundsätzlich sind wir aber ohnehin alle Gamer und holen uns unsere Inspiration bei allem, das uns begeistert.

Was sind eure zukünftigen Projekte?

Wir haben selbstverständlich Pläne, aber ob und welche davon wir umsetzen können, hängt ab vom Erfolg von Aurion. Wir würden DLC für das Spiel entwickeln. Darüber hinaus würden wir gerne weitere Welten erkunden, vermutlich in erster Linie mit Mobilspielen. Falls die Umstände es zulassen, würde es uns aber auch reizen, die Herausforderung eines MMOs in Angriff zu nehmen.

Herzlichen Dank für eure Zeit!

DEEP-ROTED GAMES: An interview with Simon Flesser (Simogo)

Christof Zurschmitten — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:51:26 +0000

DEEP-ROTED GAMES: An interview with Simon Flesser (Simogo)

Christof Zurschmitten Mo. 20 Feb 2017 - 16:51

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES is series of four interviews with four game developers from four different continents who looked for narrative inspiration and found it in unusual places: In the folklore of their own people, region or family, and in other storytelling-corners of the world which are too often neglected by the mainstream.

Simon Flesser is one half of Simogo, a successful and widely praised development studio from Malmö, Sweden. Charateristic for their work is the emphasis on unusual visual design and the inventivness with which they find new uses for the mobile platform they mostly develop for. For their acclaimed game Year Walk, Simogo took inspiration from the ancient Swedish tradition of årsgång, a ritual that lets one see into one's own future. And yeah, we here at VGT are definitely fans.

Year Walk seems to be a bit of an outlier in your work, when it comes to mood (which is dark, not to say horrific) and setting. Let’s maybe start with how the game came to be. In his article “He Met His Own Funeral Procession. The Year Walk Ritual in Swedish Folk Tradition”, Tommy Kuusela writes that you came across the tradition of årsgång by reading a popular book on folkolore, "Årets högtider" by Ebbe Schön. Is this correct? If so, was it clear for you from the beginning that this would make for an interesting game setting and did it take a lot of effort to convince everyone to make this the next Simogo game?

That is indeed correct. Jonas Tarestad, who wrote the script that we, losely, based Year Walk on found it in the book you mentioned. So, when Jonas sent me the script, the first thing I thought was how very game-like the whole tradition seemed, and so I joked a bit about it over the phone with Jonas. But later the same weekend I started to sit down and try to imagine how a game like that would play out, and I later suggested it for Jonas and Magnus. It didn’t take much convincing to be honest. I think our biggest fears was making something that felt this large in scope.

What kind of research did you do for the game? Year Walk sometimes feels like a veritable compendium of Swedish folkolore. Did you find all your relevant information in Schön’s book? It would be especially interesting to know if you also spoke to people, or if it’s purely a “bookish” take on folk tales.

It’s a little bit of everything. We did some research, both in books and on the internet, but I think the great thing about basing something on folk lore is that it’s so much about hearsay, altering the stories, and so in that way we only continued the tradition of lying to children.

One thing that is of interest for me is what place folktales do have in your life. Year Walk’s “origin story” makes it seem like it was pure coincidence that you stumbled upon Swedish folk tales as a game concept. Is that correct or is there some sort of living “story telling culture” where you grew up?

I mean, it’s obviously not like our grandparents sat us down and told us lies to try and keep us out of the forest, like people did back in the day, but we very much grew up with the stories anyway. Be that in books, through children’s TV, kindergarten and so on.

This one is a bit of a longer question, but bear with me: When we exchanged letters on Year Walk on Videogame Tourism, I wrote that I was struck by the fact that ‘narrative’ of the game in tandem with the ingenious ways you used the functions of the iPad gave the game the character of some sort of lost artefact, or even a grimoire of sorts, thus deepening the intriguing character of the whole experience. Kuusela writes: „What characterises folklore is the tendency of traditions to change or alter shape in transmission from one generation to another. But even if details change, as well as the accepted reasons for different practices, the basic principles can remain and fall into a discernible pattern.“ Did you encounter any particular obstacles in adapting those “patterns” in a medium that is in some ways very distant from the stories that originated hundreds or even thousands of years before it came into being? And was that experience of holding an old artefact, a folkoloristic objet trouvé of sorts, in the hands by design?

Yeah, the reason we went with the two-app design, was for the reason you describe; to sort of make it feel like these old stories were physically entering our own world. I think in any design, adapting your vision into the medium you’re working with is always a challenge in some way. I think the meta perspective and the companion app of the game actually has more of the tradition of folk lore than the game itself. Just like the creepypasta culture of the internet, it’s folk tales in the digital age.

In our letters, we also talked about how from the distant perspective of people in Austria and Switzerland, Swedish (and, in some parts, Finnish as well) popular culture is often deeply moving and fascinating because it seems to be able to tap into an (often somewhat dark) vein of myths, tales and legends that is not that pronounced in other countries – for example, Tove Jansson’s work seems to have that kind of mood. Would you agree?

Yes, I’d say so. I think it’s just the culture of how people are. The weather. There are reasons to stay inside and tell stories, haha.

As graphically oriented artists, where there any historical pictures, images or other visual depictions that you used as an inspiration for the look of Year Walk?

I definitely looked at things like Bauer, Kittelsen and such, but in the end Year Walk’s look is a little more inspired by more modern, simple, illustratory styles. Animation of the 1960s, that kind of thing.

One very original component of Year Walk is the companion app and the fictional expert on folk tales you came up with. (Fooling a lot of hopelessly intellectual types into hitting their local libraries and/or Google to find his works.) When and how did you come up with this idea?

I think as many things it started as sort of a joke. I think Jonas and I were drinking beer, basically. I can’t remember the exact reasoning, I knew we were talking about that it would be good if we could sort of explain the background of the game’s universe, the creatures and such. I think it just rolled from there. I’m a big fan of meta-perspectives, where the work is self-aware and enters, becomes a part of, our world, so I guess I often try to find ways of that happening.

While arguablyJapanese videogames have a long tradition of more or less directly tapping into their country’s mythology and folkolore as part of the setting, in Western games, this seems to be less of a case; you often do get “popular” myths that are often not part of the culture the developers actually grew up in (Greek or Roman mythology, for example), or the second-order mythology that is filtered through the likes of Tolkien. Are there games you know and/or enjoyed that try to turn towards more “local” traditions and that could maybe even have inspired Year Walk?

I agree that it’s not common and that it’d probably be fun to see more of it – I think I’d be happy if I could see more original game universes overall, not neccesarily based on regional culture.
The games that springs most to mind that I enjoyed are the Project Zero games that feel very rooted in Japanese lore and such.

To give over the word once more to Kuusela: By the end of his article, he specifically singles out Year Walk and writes the following: „This tendency to market folklore and supernatural beings for entertainment serves another purpose: It makes sure that the old narratives and beliefs survive in a new environment.“ Kuusela explicitly is of the opinion that your game might be an important factor in preserving the knowledge of årsgång, which according to Kuusela was on the verge of being virtually forgotten. How do you feel about this? Was it a goal you set yourself when creating Year Walk to preserve that knowledge, that tradition? Do you actually do feel like a link in the long chain of telling stories about årsgång and the other creatures and tales you used in Year Walk?

No, that was never the reason or a goal, but I agree that we’re just continuing the tradition.

And last but not least: Could you imagine working with such “traditional” material again, or would it feel like repetition?

We already did with Bedtime Stories for Awful Children! Having made three very distinct versions of Year Walk now, I don’t think we’re super keen on returning to a similar universe for quite a while.

Thank you so much for your time!

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: An Interview with Arvind Yadav (Pyrodactyl Games)

Christof Zurschmitten — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 09:01:03 +0000

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: An Interview with Arvind Yadav (Pyrodactyl Games)

Christof Zurschmitten Mo. 13 Feb 2017 - 10:01

Arvind Yadav is a resident of Jaipur, India, and head of the international development team Pyrodactyl Games. Arguably their best-known game is 2014's Unrest, a Kickstarter-funded RPG that shets light on the political turmoil in a fictional city which is both inspired by Indian history and mythology. In the summer of 2016, Pyrodactyl's latest game Good Robot was published, a shooter with roguelike elements.

Could you tell me a bit more about Pyrodactyl Games? Your team seems to come from quite a few places. In what form do you do you work together, and how did you find each other?

We’re a group of people who met over the internet. I met them over the years and asked them to work with me. We work using online tools like bitbucket and google docs. We chat using hangouts, steam or skype depending on what’s needed.

Let’s talk about Unrest, then: Could you tell me how this game came to be and how you had the idea to create its setting? Pyrodactly Games obviously is eager to make games that are, to quote one of your titles, “atypical”. How much was the wish to do a “different” setting a point of motivation for Unrest?

I always wanted to make a game set in India due to not seeing any other games in the setting. After I had a couple of games under my belt, I felt the time was right to make Unrest.

Are there any books or works of art that you looked to for inspiration? And what kind of research did you do for the project?

I mainly drew upon the mythological books I had read as a kid, along with a style of storytelling similar to the The Wire.

Your setting is inspired by a specific historical, cultural and ethnical background. Since your team seems to be pretty diverse, it’s likely that not all of you were equally familiar with that background. Was this a problem when working on the game? Where there any special precautions you took not to fall into the trap of cultural misappropriation?

No, everyone was completely on board with the vision of the game. Every team member took their time to research the setting and contribute to the game in a meaningful way.

Did you feel like having to do extra work to make the setting accessible to players not familiar with the historical, cultural and ethnical background you’re drawing from for Unrest?

I don’t think Unrest needed too much of that work - fundamentally, the story is about a group of people struggling in a kingdom under political turmoil. I feel a lot of us can relate to that!

While Unrest’s setting is fictional and historical, fantastic elements are used rather sparingly. The Naga, one could say, are mostly a cipher for The Other. Did you at one point in the development think about shifting the setting further into the realm of the fantastic and use more mythological elements? What was your reason for choosing this half-way point between a fictional historical and fantastic setting?

There were both practical and creative reasons for wanted to keep the story grounded and keep the mythological elements to a minimum. Not having too many set pieces kept the game’s budget low, which was necessary - but allowing a light mythological touch meant we had to get creative and get the maximum use out of that.

What were your reasons for choosing the mythological figure of the Naga to represent The Other in the game?

The truth is, there’s no particular reason behind choosing the Naga instead of something else. I suppose I felt they were the ones that could be integrated while maintaining the serious tone of the game.

While doing my research for this piece, I came across an article arguing that Simogo’s Year Walk may have saved the tradition of Arsgang from slowly being forgotten entirely. The game would thus be participating in a tradition of passing down stories through the ages. Do you think that games should aspire to doing this? Do you maybe even think that the interactive form has a “special” potential when it comes to passing down such stories?

Yeah, games can aspire to do anything they want to. I think it is too early to tell if games have the longevity of other mediums, because we often find it very difficult to preserve old games once technology moves on.

Could you imagine returning for a future project to a setting that is inspired by history and mythology? What are your upcoming projects, anyway?

I’ll probably make another game set in India soon enough, although it probably won’t be related to the story of Unrest. We released Good Robot in 2016, and I'm working on plans for my next game (it involves a heist).

Thank you for your time!

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: An interview with Kevin Snow (Bravemule)

Christof Zurschmitten — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 08:42:07 +0000

DEEP-ROOTED GAMES: An interview with Kevin Snow (Bravemule)

Christof Zurschmitten Mo. 6 Feb 2017 - 09:42

Kevin Snow uses the moniker Bravemule to publish games in collaboration with a group of like-minded artists. His platform of choice is Twine, which he uses to tell complex (if often short) stories adorned with unusually lush illustrations and soundscapes. His first interactive fiction game The Domovoi – distributed for free – took inspiration from Slavic folklore to ruminate on the nature of storytelling and truth. His second (still free) game Beneath Floes puts a creature from Inuit mythology front and center and was translated into Inuktitut, thanks to Kickstarter. Currently, Snow is raising funds for Southern Monsters, his most ambitious and most personal game to date, and another one strongly influenced by myths and (urban) legends. We talked with Snow about his background, his sources of inspiration and the potential of the videogame as a medium not only of storytelling, but of preserving age-old stories and tales.

Since you mostly work with Twine, I’d like to begin by asking you what you would call yourself: Do you consider yourself a writer, a game designer, a story teller – all of those things, or none of them at all?

I’ve started to call myself a narrative designer, because that title suggests a combination of systematic design and prose. I also code, direct the other artists, and a ton else, but that’s just how independent development goes.

Could you tell me more about your background? Considering that one of the piece’s focuses is on how people can rely not only on different cultural backgrounds, but also cultural backgrounds they are familiar with: do you have any Slavic or Inuit roots?

I grew up in the state of North Carolina, but I’ve lived in Arkansas ever since I got out of the military in 2010, so I’ve always lived in the South. I’m twenty-seven and a recent graduate of a college history program. I’m white, and have no Inuit or Slavic ties.

Do you know where you interest in folk tales and myths does come from? Is it purely a “bookish” thing or do you, by any chance, have a background in which story telling is a “living and lived” thing?

Since I’m from a rural area of the South, I lived and breathed folktales, superstitions, and monsters as a child. I never believed in them, and that interests me. My dad controlled the household I was raised in (my mom and I weren’t allowed to have friends, and he spied on the neighbors with binoculars), and I didn’t even recognize that as abnormal or abusive until I left at nineteen. Folklore exists in this kind of liminal state of truth I find emotionally calming. Sounds like an abstract connection, I know, but I’m fixated on how stories are told over time, and their power to change people.

How did you come up with the ideas for the The Domovoi? And what kind of reserach did you do for the project?

The Baba Yaga has some presence in the states, and she was my gateway to Slavic folklore. My research for The Domovoi focused on Soviet folklorists, especially in the late 1930s when they started to rebrand folklore to fit ideological trends.

You said that Slavic folkolore is not part of your heritage. Since you are not “of the culture” you are tapping into for this project, do you feel a responsibility to be careful not to fall into the trap of cultural misappropriation?

Cultural appropriation must be at the front of any outside creator’s mind. It’s not enough to read books; Western academia is tied up with colonialism and appropriation. Outside creators should never feel comfortable with themselves or their work.

According to the Kickstarter page, Beneath Floes started as a collaboration with Pinnguaq. Could you tell me more about how that collaboration came to be? Was it you who approached them or the other way around? And how did the collaboration work exactly? Also, was the idea to translate it there from the beginning?

I contacted Pinnguaq because I knew I’d need a collaborator to have any chance of writing about Indigenous history in a way that didn’t perpetuate colonial depictions from the past. I did a few months of research and made a prototype, then cold e-mailed them with what I had, my mission, and how I’d do all the work and run a Kickstarter to fund their localization if they were interested in overseeing my work and distributing playtester builds to folks in Nunavut for feedback. Luckily, they were incredibly generous and genuinely seemed to believe in my approach. I knew from the start that Beneath Floes would need to be available in Indigenous languages.

Do you think that the interactive form has a “special” potential when it comes to telling folk tales, or to continue the long, polymorphous tradition of story telling? If so, what would that be?

You know, I’m cautious about applying any specialness to games, because I’m afraid people overlook what games can learn from novels, theatre, sculpture, and other forms of art. Most games take too much inspiration from Hollywood films. But I do believe interactive games can contribute to folkloric traditions … I’m just not convinced it’s different from other forms of art. A painting of a domovoi is interactive, too.

Both The Domovoi and Beneath Floes do tell seemingly “traditional” stories set before a more “modern” background -- 1962 in the case of Beneath Floes, and post-revolution Soviet Russia in the case of The Domovoi, with its unreliably narrator who basically slaughters the “old superstitions” in the name of progress. How important is it to you to “update” traditional stories? Is it something that makes them more interesting to write for you, or do you think that it is vital for the survival of those stories to change and adapt? Could you imagine writing a “folk tale” set in your own present age?

Both The Domovoi and Beneath Floes are about how stories are told, so it made sense to include narrators who are emphasized as historical actors themselves. There’s a risk of a clusterfuck when you have a narrator from 1938 telling a story set in 1920, but I think it was essential, and it also de-legitimizes myself. Like the fictional Soviet folklorist, I’m another writer in the chain with some thoughts about old stories.

The idea for this piece came with my frustration with how “mainstream games” endlessly reproduce the same generic tropes (which, ironically, are often based on reinventions of folk tales themselves), while ignoring the endless richness of folk tales, legends and myths of different cultures (even the developers’ own). Are there any games -- commercial or not -- that you like for the way they deal with those kind of story elements?

Let’s see! Of course, all of Emily Short’s work comes to mind. Meg Jayanth (Inkle Studios) does amazing work decolonizing genres like Steampunk with historical research. I don’t think Michael Lutz (the uncle who works for nintendo, my father’s long, long legs) would be too mad if I said his work is about modern folklore. A more commercial example, I love the Witcher franchise’s deep love for Slavic folklore. That game has a vibe unlike most studio games, because they don’t mimic Hollywood.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

I just launched a Kickstarter for Southern Monsters. It’s about a disabled person in South Arkansas who posts on a messageboard for cryptid hunters. The scope is larger than my first two games, it’s much more overtly autobiographical, and it’s about the folklore I grew up with.

Good luck with your Kickstarter and thanks for your time!