One of those friends, Jess Harvey (who is making Tangiers and made Paratopic) would constantly tell us about how incredible Thief was. As two designers with relatively stubborn opinions, we would debate game design with a lot of other dev friends. Over time we would just spend hours talking about game design and how best to squeeze the most life out of our worlds. Originally, we both became friends because he thought Gloomwood looked neat and I thought DUSK looked neat. TR: How did you first come upon Thief? How has its design influenced your design philosophy? How much of that influence may show in Gloomwood, and how?ĭillon: So, a lot of my current tastes in games developed from my friendship and collaboration with David Szymanski, who is the designer behind DUSK. Let's explore this some! Love of Thief and Indie Collaboration But you have intrigued me by saying Gloomwood did not begin with immersive sims as inspiration, and that you had not played Thief yet. You ask what kind of feelings you want the player to have based on the gameworld they explore. The goal has always been that the player is a newcomer to this town, and they have no idea whom to trust or how they're going to survive as they learn the layout of these streets and tunnels and encounter the inhabitants.Īs a stranger in an unsettling city, you must learn your way around - and how to deal with the locals. This has been the guiding light since I first laid the groundwork for the game, and through multiple revamps and redesigns. Crazy, huh? When I go about designing games, I usually come at it from the angle of, "Okay, what's the world I want to represent?" And then I design the game around fulfilling the emotions and tone of that world.įor Gloomwood, I wanted to put the player into this uneasy position of feeling like a stranger. When I started this game, I hadn't even played Thief: The Dark Project. So what is your style? How will Gloomwood represent that style?ĭillon: So, this is probably going to surprise you when we start talking about Thief and such, but I actually did not originally design this game with immersive sims in mind. TR: That's quite an intriguing description! It gets right to the point- I'd definitely want to play it! That's usually enough to be like, "Huh, that's not really a setting you see often!" I'm a sucker for that kind of “Jack the Ripper,” foggy London aesthetic, but also wanted to combine it with my own interests in the supernatural and the bizarre. TR: What's the elevator pitch for Gloomwood?ĭillon: The pitch I usually tell people is that it's a first-person shooter set in a warped, foggy Victorian town full of top-hat wearing phantoms and plaguemask-wearing ghouls. That stuff gets me excited about how players are going to experience it. ![]() ![]() ![]() Like when you see an AI wander about a level or search for you after you made a noise. Part of what let me work on Gloomwood so long is that it's been challenging enough to make that I'm continually working towards minor goals and not getting bored, and also those milestones can be super rewarding. Sometimes it would be simply "I can't look at this project anymore.
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