We’re ready to start talking about who we are making Year Walk with, and of course we want you to get to know them. So in this three part blog post series we will let them introduce themselves.
As we have hinted at, the story and this whole project came to be in a quite unusual way. This game started with a strange little movie script. So we thought it would be fitting to start off these posts with an introduction by the man who it all started with. Ladies and Gentlehorses: Meet Jonas Tarestad – the man behind the story of Year Walk!
the script that started it all
Greetings Simogians!
I come in peace. I am one of the mysterious collaborators: A scriptwriter named Jonas Tarestad. And this is my story:
Back in December 2011 I felt like writing a short movie script in Swedish. I knew it had to contain snow, folklore and some darkness. When the script was done, I thought it was good but I did not really know what to do with it. Its length was awkward and it would be expensive to shoot. In January I showed it to my good friend Simon who said that it would make a good game and there we are. I am pretty sure it is the first time a handheld adventure game in English is based on an unfilmed short film script written in Swedish. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Besides having written the original script I assist Simon in adapting the story for the small screen. I am the text guy.
This is the first time I work on a videogame but I have played games since the late 80’s. Especially ones involving pirates.
Questions!
1. Jonas: What were your first thoughts, worries and/or revelations on transferring your idea to video games?
2. Simogo: How does a more, I assume, elaborate narrative/mythology alter the creative process for you? (In regards to new mechanics and game iterations)
3. Simogojo…? I guess that’s nor really a question.
1. I was of course very excited by the idea of turning the story into a game. As a kid I dreamt of making games.
One revelation is that things easily done on film are hard to do in games and vice versa. I always had budgetary restraints in the back of my head when I wrote the script for film. But effects and weird creatures do not cost more in a game than say a car or a dog does in a film. Therefore there will be a lot of effects and strange creatures but no cars or dogs (There actually was a dog in the screenplay)
There has been a lot changes made to fit the medium. Characters have been cut and scenes have been dropped. Certain scenes might be moving or atmospheric on paper but they might not be good for gameplay. The overall story is more or less the same but very few of the scenes are intact. The biggest change…I can’t really get into. But it made everything a whole lot stranger.
I think the pirate mention is very, very possitive.
2, then!
It is pretty different because building a game that is based around a single mechanic is easier to iterate. So the process has in some ways been somewhat less iterative this time. since this is not a “system driven” game like Beat Sneak Bandit for example. That said, we have iterated and changed stuff along the way (quite much acually), because stuff never turn out exactly the way you had imagined in your head.
It is also a different mindset. In the previous games it has been a question of weaving in the gameplay to a believable universe, whereas in this case we have to come up with gameplay for specific situations instead.