Generation XX
Where the weird and wonderful converge, for mutual benefit
At PAX Australia this year, I cosplayed Killing Time at Lightspeed. I bought the tights and the t-shirt. I was yellow. Did it cross my mind I’d be dressed as someone’s game while trying to meet literally every other indie designer, as a reviewer? Sure, but I’ve already written up KTALS and John’s other game is one of two at PAX this year with my music featured. I’m press who connects games with players, a fan (with many t-shirts), and a composer. These communities are becoming one.
Being able to engage flexibly with designers relies on Generation XX being a place I can simply talk about what I’m playing and thinking. A Collection Aside takes an informal approach, including the absence of numerical scores. I consider every game I can for coverage and indie reviewers have to get involved, to understand context. If I hadn’t, the indie pages either wouldn’t exist, or they’d be much less useful, for potential players.
Like I said last month, about Snowflake Moon, supportive friendships and shared learning are useful. One of the best places I’ve been in the last five years is Failbetter’s Storynexus forum. My understanding of narrative improved measurably, through using the toolset and asking questions. Thanks to my project winning a Worlds of the Season competition, it connected with thousands of players. I prototyped music alongside Sunless Sea and met Maribeth Solomon, an incredible composer with a great many years of experience.
With this positive experience in mind, I contacted Failbetter’s
Whatever weird niche you’re making in, there are people to value it
Communications Director, Hannah Flynn, to ask after their Incubee and Fundbetter programs. On the first, she says, “We had the space and could spare some time to support new devs doing things we found interesting. Our current incubees are Harry, making House of Many Doors, and James, making Top Secret.” The incubees work in Failbetter’s London office, alongside an experienced team, but the benefit flows both ways.
Flynn says, “I’ve been able to talk through marketing plans and suggest strategies that are low-effort, but they have practical skills. James was instrumental in helping to get Sunless Sea onto Linux, and Harry taught us GameMaker, we taught him Unity.”
Given my perfect storm of appreciation for Failbetter’s effort, I want to use the rest of this page to tell you more about a couple of the games involved, in case they resonate with you. Firstly, if you enjoyed Sunless Sea, you will find that A House of Many Doors feels similar. Not steamships, though, kinetopedes and, as Harry Tuffs says, “The House is a parasite dimension which steals from other worlds.” The aesthetic is dark and there is vast, lonely space to creep through as you manage sanity and fuel.
I’m particularly intrigued by combat, which is similar to in FTL, allowing you to move characters, use weapons, and plan strategically. The narrative, explored through characters, locations, and unlocked with items or events, promises to be deep and enigmatic. Tuffs says one of the things he learned as an incubee was how to “successfully structure a story in which half the characters may have gone mad, died or been possessed by ghost of a city.” Not convinced yet? There’s also procedurally generated poetry.
Another Fundbetter, Astronaut: The Best is hard to describe, but I’ll try. Imagine a fluorescent visual novel with a plethora of statistics to manage, where you’re responsible for celebrity astronauts in a Hunger Games-style space race. Unsurprisingly, designer David Mershon says, “Since we started the project, we’ve had promising playtests but a hard time explaining what our game is about. Working with Failbetter meant we had to explain why they should be interested.”
And it is an interesting game. You’re working with high priests who provide money and, more likely, disapproval, for inscrutable reasons. The astronauts are a strange bunch. One writes erotic fiction. If that doesn’t sound useful, you haven’t been paying attention.
Asking Mershon what the most special thing about the game is, he says, “You don’t realise it’s a joke until it’s too late. It’s still a joke, but it’s still too late.” I get that.
So, whatever weird niche you’re making in, there are people to value it. Failbetter’s approach is to be commended. As Hannah Flynn says, “It’s a sad thing that a lot of development happens in isolation.” I agree, especially when we can do more for each other, like wearing our friends’ game T-shirts.