INTERVIEW with Mason LindrothHylics
How did you end up designing games? Was it a childhood dream to begin with, or something that gradually started appealing to you at some point?
I’ve always liked the idea of designing games but until recently I was too intimidated by the technical skills required.
I initially intended to do comics or animation but I found the modularity of game design preferable. Also I generally have more ideas about designing environments than writing plots, so, that also makes game design appealing.
Do you aspire at a career in game development? Would you become a professional in the video game industry if you had the opportunity to do so or would you rather stick with smaller-scale, more personal works?I imagine I’d prefer to work with a small team. I’ll continue making weird solo projects for the foreseeable future though.
Hylics is not your first game : you've already completed a handful of projects, most of which were made during Game Jams. What impact did this experience have on the formation of Hylics as a lenghtier creation?Well, it definitely gave me an unrealistic idea about how long Hylics would take to develop. Part of the appeal of game jams is that developers can get away with cutting a lot of corners… in that context a certain amount of shoddiness is endearing. But with larger projects, all the little bits of polish that are expected require a huge amount of time.
How were your games in general and Hylics in particular made? Do you program from scratch using, say, C++ language or do you use RPG Maker-like tools? What kind of softwares and workflow are you used to working with?So far I’ve used amateur software like Stencyl and, for Hylics, RPGMaker. For future projects I intend to use Unreal Engine, which should be more relevant for commercial work.
The game's title refers to a religious concept usually associated with Gnosticism - an ancient set of beliefs that emphasized selflessness, detachment from the material world and a relentless quest for spiritual union with God. "Hylics" were a lower rank of humans despised by Gnostics - they saw them as falling for an ungodly, Demiurge-created world of matter, flesh and time. What is the relation between those Hylics and the game's content?Actually, I don't have anything more to add... I mostly chose the title because it sounded cool. ⛄
Ten minutes into the game, I was already being reminded of a lot of different games. The all-around weirdness, especially the psychedelic battle backgrounds, are reminiscent of MOTHER2; the J-RPG structure as a vessel for unusual narration, of OFF; and the after-life mechanic, of Eastern Mind. What are some of your favorite games? Could you cite any that had a substantial influence on the creation of Hylics? Somehow, it doesn't feel like the game "is" a J-RPG as much as it is an experiment that happens to heavily borrow from the genre. Even the game's description as a "recreational program" seems to hint at the genre-defying "non-games" of the '90s. Could you elaborate on that?The appealing aspects of Hylics are its unusual graphics and droll humor, i.e. content rather than gameplay, so “recreational program” seemed more appropriate. The JRPG battle stuff is very simplified; it adds some variety and pacing, but doesn’t pretend to require some deep strategic thinking. Tedious grinding tends to be conflated with difficulty or complexity in JRPGs, so I instead focused on making the battles aesthetically appealing.
In more historical terms, I first noticed the phrase “recreational program” on the Wikipedia page for “Cosmic Osmo” (Cyan, 1989), which is a point and click game by the creators of Myst. Unlike Myst, it has no serious puzzle-solving or game progression, and seems instead like a collection of weird toys. Uh, anyway it’s a big favorite of mine.
Of course, the game's signature are its hand-made-looking visuals, mainly in the form of claymation. Did you use actual clay and stop-motion animation techniques, or was it computer-generated? Where does you apparent passion for clay come from? Are there any specific artistic currents to which you would say your art is indebted?It’s a combination of claymation, CG models, and hand-drawn stuff. I use basic green-screening to make the clay models usable as game assets.
I enjoy the ease of using clay. Even really messy and off-handed stuff can become coherent graphics with a little editing. I can then juxtapose carefully sculpted clay models with much trashier & offhanded ones.
A lot of games that are part of the recent Western indie wave pay homage to retro gaming, more often than not in the form of sprite art. Rare are those, however, who go as far as to embrace the actual technical limitations of times gones by. Hylics uses actual low-res display, 4:3 aspect ratio, graphics compression and monaural sound. Was this a deliberate move and, if yes, why?By maintaining a low resolution it’s easy to blend a lot of different graphic styles. The limited palette also helps with that. I used low res art to maintain a cohesive look.
A lot of the limitations are inherent to RPGMaker… I found the engine sort of irresistibly kitschy. I find it interesting to reduce very fluid and organic graphics to low-res pixels, and adjust them for grid-based collision; doing so creates an exciting tension.
One of the game's most unique feature is its randomly-generated text. There basically is no storyline or dialogues - it's almost 100% procedural gibberish. NPCs in video games are usually expected to give clues or set an area's tone, but here they mainly wander around spouting nonsense. What's the rationale behind this very peculiar dimension of the game?I started development with no plan for a storyline… I expected that a plot would somehow organically coalesce as I worked on the game. After a few months I had zero plot; I was really concerned about it.
Most of the easy tricks for writing text for RPGs have been used already by other developers. I mean, people have fully mined most meta-fictional gags, like NPCs commenting on the game mechanics, or spouting tired references to older games (“it’s a secret to everybody” et al). So random text was the only remaining option. Maybe I've read too much trite NPC dialogue and laborious exposition, so I thought it could be refreshing to treat the dialogue and cutscenes in a more cursory fashion. Progression through the game’s environments remains coherent via visual cues like map icons and distinctively animated sprites.
If I'm not mistaken, you also produced the game's soundtrack, which mostly consists of abrasive yet aetheral guitar jams. I happen to be a noise rock enthusiast and one seldom hears that kind of sound in video games, so it was a nice surprise to see Hylics decided to opt for it. Are you an experimented musician? How did you create the soundtrack? Are there any bands or albums you drew inspiration from?I like to make weird noises whenever possible. Through trial and error I can occasionally squeeze out a minute or two of something resembling music.
My specific inspirations aren’t especially exotic. I like the loose & improvisational songwriting of the Butthole Surfers; for a while Locust Abortion Technician was my favorite album... I think the tone of "22 Going on 23” influenced my recordings a lot.
I admire the jazz musician Sun Ra’s tendency to shift from pleasant cool music to totally messy, manic noise. The eclectic instrumentation and costumes also help.
For the afterlife theme and a few others I tuned all my strings to the same note like in some Velvet Underground songs.
I also like using novelty instruments like the theremin and ebow… I’m currently fantasizing about dabbling in electrical engineering to build new toys for myself.
So, I’ll become a de-facto noise rocker in a couple more years.
Are there any projects you're working on right now? What are your plans for the future as a game creator?I’m currently in the, uh, pre-conceptual phase.… I think I need ~3 months to work out a new visual style.