In the opening moments of Obscurant, I don’t immediately understand why what appears to be a typical top-down adventure game is set on a grid. Why every step of the android-like, amnesiac protagonist walking through the desolate sands of the first desert feels labored and rhythmic, as if they had to stop and think before each step.
Then I met “Little Round Boys”.
They are strange little creatures, not unlike the most basic machine enemies in Nier: Automata in appearance. They go back and forth in a pattern – two steps in one direction, then two steps back the way they came, then repeat. After a few cycles of this, they pause midway to recharge for five beats, before lighting up again and continuing their pattern. If they see the enemy, aka me, they give chase. They are faster than me and will always catch up to me.
That is, immediately, where my character’s grid and hesitant step movements snap into place. When I move, so do they. Every step is a “turn” and I can stand in one spot and wait for my turn with the push of a button. At first, I’m using Necrodancer-like rhythm to sneak past enemies. Then I found a broken Little Round Guy on the ground and stole its costume, and here’s the main Obscurant loop: to avoid being observed and killed by multiple Little Round Guys, I have to become Little Round Guy and effectively tricked them into believing I was masquerading. Two steps in one direction, back the way I came, then rush past them while they recharge. Repeat the pattern when they wake up again. Beep sound. Beep sound. Booop.
(Developer King Brick Games didn’t name Little Round Guys – I did, via an in-game diary that allows me to freely record the names and notes of every enemy I encounter in the area. wasteland and beyond, and even applied the names I give to my enemies myself as I see them in the world. for Very Serious Enemies with Super silly names like crawling creatures I named Buffy Bufferson).
The clever and effective imitation of Obscurant is something I’ve never seen before on any scale, let alone a small, novice group of players. It started as a college thesis project for creative director Liam Harwood, and was originally a side-scrolling platformer. Sometime after graduating, while working as a full-time software developer outside of games, Harwood picked Obscurant again and tried a top-down approach. After a couple of months, he got it working well enough to warrant asking three of his close friends from school – developer Max Vitkin, artist Eri Caferra and sound director Brian McCarthy – to join in. with him for the rest. None of them have any experience in game dev at this point except Caferra, who has done some work on very small game projects before. Vitkin was working in financial services at the time, McCarthy was also developing software, and Caferra was a freelance artist.
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The closest thing I’ve played to the ideas of identity, stealth, and deception that King Brick explores in Obscurant is the Hitman franchise, even though both are wildly different games. Harwood tells me it was Hitman who inspired him in the first place. He loves the disguises Agent 47 wears to gain access to closed areas, but thinks it would be more interesting if he also had to play his disguise to fool those around him. .
“The first important thing we had to figure out was how the real mimicry would work,” says Harwood. “We will calculate whether anyone will suspect you or not? Because it’s a fantasy if you think about it.”
They start with basic movement, like the Little Round Guys I described above. Going further, Obsession extrapolates the concept in other ways, such as exploring interpersonal relationships between enemies and even mimicking dialogue in later domains. It’s all quite challenging on a conceptual level only, they tell me, because there are very few other mechanical imitations in the game to follow.
“What we struggled with was mostly explaining to players what mimicking like a mechanic really is, because I think this isn’t really something that’s been explored much in the game,” says Vitkin. explain. “I don’t think it’s something super intuitive, so what a lot of people struggle with is in the beginning, when you’re dealing with that first enemy. At the time, we didn’t really have much in common with our teaching around what imitation meant. We try to imply that because we don’t want to necessarily hold your hand through it, and we want players to try to figure that out for themselves. But a lot of people will try to abuse the vision, which is not possible, or just try to overcome it by force, which is also really impossible. “
But mechanics isn’t the only challenge for the team. Caferra says that Obscurant went through an “artistic transition” during development where the entire game was originally in high-resolution format, but then they decided to make the background all art. pixels so that the entire team can help create them. It also helps the characters “float” more – something the player turns out is necessary for the player to follow the action in a game that is mostly about blending into the surroundings.
“In my mind, it also feels like it adds to the weirdness of Obscurant, because Obscurant is supposed to be a weird game, and having this blend of art styles is real. weird,” said Caferra. “So the fact that the pixel art background is almost blurred that way visually, compared to the animated and animated characters, adds to this confusing nature of the game.”
Caferra added that their designs for the characters began with written descriptions from Harwood of what he thought the characters would look like and their personalities. They would then draw several silhouettes from that depiction for the rest of the team to vote on, and Caferra would develop art from the winning silhouette.
It’s a process no different than Caferra used to draw comics for the group’s college D&D sessions based on character descriptions given to them. “They’re going to take it out of our minds and put it on the page,” Harwood said.
As for McCarthy, who has never composed a soundtrack before, he says he has to rely on what he knows: the guitar. He’s been playing for many years, and although he doesn’t have much experience in composing or recording, similar guitar-focused work by composers like Darren Korb’s work on Bastion and Andrew Prahlow’s soundtrack to Outer Wilds reassured him that he could do the job well.
“I played Bastion when I was in high school and I was so used to well-choreographed movie soundtracks, and so when I heard this very guitar-heavy soundtrack that came from a singer-songwriter background, than, I think, something happened. , like, ‘Oh, I can do this.’ “There’s more to the music in the game than just the scores being staged,” said McCarthy.
With the Obscurant completed and no longer active, the future for the four members of King Brick Games seems vast and unpredictable as the main character of Obscurant in the desert awakens – but in a bright way. much more. They want to keep making games, even if they can’t do it full time. Currently, they are exploring multiplayer co-op game ideas, but they seem equally happy if their experience on Obscurant opens up opportunities for team members to work with studios. , groups and other game projects. They, like the main character and the Round Boys, are just taking one step at a time.
Rebekah Valentine is an IGN news reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
