Last summer, while feverishly finishing Saltwrack, I started drawing some strange characters in my notebook. What started as a design exercise became my first real multimedia project. I was increasingly compelled to bang together some art and sounds for it and, eventually, a story. Here’s a look at the making-of:
Images were dithered using https://ditherit.com/. The font was hand-drawn in the web tool BitFontMaker2TM. The sprites and backgrounds contain pen-and-paper sketches digitally redrawn in FireAlpaca, edited photographs (many taken by me, particularly for the backgrounds—sourced from abandoned building and cave exploration), and even polymer clay (Cynie’s head). I got a few compliments on the music, which makes me happy, as it’s not something I do much. It incorporates machinery churning, own vocals, the clicking of a spiked flail, water trickling in pipes, Der Erlkönig by Schubert, rain dripping off the roof of an abandoned warehouse, and a bunch of digital instruments, all assembled in GarageBand. No production value, high grime value.
The story was giving me issues right up to (and past!) the deadline. First of all, I did for some reason write the entire thing in a plaintext document, and trying to untangle nested Python conditionals and their associated narrative implications was an enduring headache. If I make anything else in Ren’Py I’ll use a code editing interface next time, I promise. Like Mike Russo noted, game progression isn’t gated by much difficulty, and the “good end” is pretty easy to figure out. There might indeed be a conflict between world-brutality and mechanical niceness here. Several reviewers, including MostImmortalSnail (whose thoughtful and detailed IFDB writeup I greatly appreciated!) wanted Crier to be longer. I also wanted it to be longer! I feel that, often, I run out of things to do with a narrative when I intended to be only partway through, and have to stitch together what I already have accordingly. This may be an issue with centering stories around their settings.
This was my first time publicly releasing a story with what one might call “sexual” “elements”. The rather sterile world of Saltwrack, in which occasionally the characters might lose their minds and be found naked, doesn’t compare to putting illustrated xenomorph ant phallus onscreen. And in many ways, the world of Crier is more explicit in its violence than anything else I’ve written so far. Despite this, the bad ends themselves are less cruelly detailed than in, say, Saltwrack, and—importantly to me—it’s a pretty lighthearted game, for all the torture and exploitation.
Consistencies from reviewers online and from my friends: Everyone seems to agree that Phenol Red is cute and beloved. (She’s based off my favorite test chemical, of course.) Everyone also seems to loathe the look of proxydrone. But I have to do what I have to do.
A long string of inspos: Porpentine’s more recent prose fiction, and their oeuvre at large. Fear & Hunger by Miro Haverinen. Vermis by Plastiboo. Jeff Vandermeer’s writing—but, surprise, specifically Veniss Underground, his first novel. Mad God by Phil Tippett (my favorite movie). H.R. Giger’s designs. The sludgecentricity of Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida. Disco Elysium, for character voices. The music of Coil, Pharmakon, and Die Form. And tunnel books, for the original concept of how this game ought to look.
If I may get personal for a moment: making Crier, and reading the subsequent responses to it, gave me purpose and happiness in the most heinously miserable time of my enduring postgraduate crisis so far.
Thanks for playing, everyone.