Single player game ‘Exist’ that is being developed by Ansh Patel and Kimberly Koronya and targeted for PC and Mac users, is set to for its fir
st International debut at Toronto’ Bit Bazaar Spring Fair 2014
AnimationXpress.com caught up with Ansh to know about the interesting aspects of this game.
Hi Ansh, please tell us about yourself and what do you presently do?
Thank you for initiating this conversation for us. I’m the solo developer who handles all the responsibilities of game development. I am a full-time college student based in Mumbai who moonlights as a developer. For Exist, however I started solo but when the scope had expanded beyond a point, I teamed up with Kimberly Koronya, an environment artist and 3D modeler/animator from Toronto, Canada. Both of us have been making Exist for the past five months
As a solo developer, I participated in few game jam events and developed short experimental prototypes on real-world issues like depression (Into the Black) and anti-war game on the guilt of a soldier (To Shooter, With Guilt). I also developed a short interactive fiction on the difference in feminism between the West and the Arab titled Woman. Exist is my first major commercial project.
What is Exist all about?
Exist is a first-person horror-adventure on themes of philosophy and societal prejudice. In the game, you’re playing as an unknown, randomly chosen character exploring their surreal and strange dreams which have melded with the real world. You have to find out who you’re playing as (it will be a different character each time you play) and help them find answers to some of the big philosophical questions about their existence which are heavy on their minds.
How did the game showcase at Bit Bazaar Spring Fair 2014 in Toronto happen?
Kimberly, the artist with whom I am working on Exist is active in the Toronto indie development community and was aware that such an event was happening. So, we submitted for it and our application got approved. During Bit Bazaar, there will be a playable demo of the game and some weird merchandise on sale including diaries about the game world, hand-made key chains, a card game and a soundtrack among other promo materials.
How many levels is the game made up of?
Levels, is a difficult term since Exist doesn’t have a linear structure like most games. Instead it has a “sequence within sequence” structure which is initiated in different way depending on what the player is looking or interacting with. There are three major philosophical questions the game is tackling with – so essentially three different parts of the game. The characters you play will all be randomly created each time you start a new game.
Why do you feel this game play will work?
Because I primarily think it bypasses the form of many games and creates its own flow that is responsive to what the player is doing at each and every moment of time. On top of it, the themes are very unique to the gaming world and rarely explored, so the promise of a game exploring new territory might appeal to many.
What are the top three interesting aspects of this game?
- You get to play as characters that you have not been explored in games before like this
- Your character is a mystery and you get to participate in their thought process to find out their identity and help them find answers to questions burdening their minds
- The game’s world is a nightmarish mix of characters’ thoughts and our real world
What are the gaming controls like?
Right now, it’s only a simple keyboard + mouse combination as the control scheme but eventually we might work towards implementing controllers into it.
What kind of look and feel is given to the game?
The look and feel is very surrealist and strange to emphasize the dream/nightmare feel of the game. It also has hints of real world slipping into the dream world through newspaper clippings at various places in the world. We were greatly inspired by artists like Salvator Dali and Philip Igumnov when we conceptualized the look.
Did you go through any references or did any specific research for creating any aspects of the game?
Not really. There were inspirations from few films of Ingmar Bergman and novels of Virginia Woolf, but otherwise the only research that was done was reading through people’s experiences when they face societal prejudice or oppression due to who they are.
We would like to know about the animation technologies used?
We largely use Maya for animation and modeling because the game engine we use, Unity3D, supports FBX natively and that is a format which Maya can produce without any necessary conversions and we used Photoshop for any art or texture editing. Some of the animations are done via curves and Unity’s in-built Mecanim system because it allows a more hands-on approach to me as a designer and programmer on how I want certain parts of the game to play out.People who contributed music tracks for Exist used GarageBand or FL Studio
How did you test the game and how did you set the difficulty?
Since this is still in a pre-alpha stage, the entire testing has been done by both of us. The difficulty was set based on how easily a new player would perceive certain things. Overall, unlike many adventure games there aren’t any “real” puzzles and you can progress by approaching the different answers (to the central philosophical question) in different ways.
What are the emotions that you would like this game to instill into the player?
Fear, dread and oppression are common emotions and who you are playing as also affects the gameplay in more than few ways.
Please give the team credits?
Ansh Patel – concept, designer, programmer, writer
Kimberly Koronya – environment artist, 3D modeller and animator
Sumanth Srinivasan, Mowgli, Melania Valverde — music
What else are you working on?
Even if Exist takes up majority of my work, I am working on an unannounced project based on the history of post-Independence India, an interactive fiction on evils of human encroaching environment as part of an anthology and polishing a prototype of Bullet Soul Hacker, a shooter/checkpoint racer.
