DIYgamer

The Man Behind the Gnome… Emberwind’s Erik Möller [Interview]

Recently we wrote our review of Emberwind, a delightful new platformer from indie developers TimeTrap, and, while we gave the game high marks all around, we still had some questions. Luckily one of the creators of the game, Erik Möller, was nice enough to sit down and go over some of the finer details that we had questions about, like why the game’s not available on Steam and whether or not we’ll ever see an XBLIG/WiiWare version.

Enjoy the interview guys, there’s lots of information to be had for anybody interested in this game.

Interview after the break.

Geoff Gibson: Where did the idea for your game, Emberwind, originally come from? Was there any sort of inspirational sources?

Erik Möller: It all started when I went to Chris’ office and said something to the extent “I’d really like to make a 2d-platformer… why don’t you write up a short game-design and we’ll play around with something after work?”. A few days later Chris handed me a 9 page printout of “Emberwind” filled with little concept images he’d googled up. It had the core game-play all plotted out, the gnome hero flying his owl between stages, the gremlin horde led by Candlefinger, unlit lampposts, the cane, the lantern and the snuff helmet. After that followed months of intensive iterative design. Features were implemented, tested, thrown away, reimplemented and tested more. That’s really how you have to do it if you want to come up with a fun game. People can be good or bad at _guessing_ what will be fun, Chris definitely being one of the very good, but to really know you have to try it out and not be afraid to throw stuff away if it just doesn’t work. I decided from the start to give Chris free reins on the game design and never complain about new features or re-implementations. I think that was really successful in terms of coming up with something that is great fun. It wasn’t quite as successful in terms of keeping to a schedule, but then again we never really had one. As to inspiration, we’ve both grown up with the awesome games of the 80’s and 90’s, Chris being a NES guy and me a C64 guy, so Emberwind is heavily influenced by all those great platformers that bring back fond memories. Golden Axe, Metroid, Castlevania just to mention a few.

GG: Why Kindle, the Gnome, as a hero instead of say… a knight, or otherwise more heroic figure?

EM: Designing the protagonist for a game can be a daunting task, you either end up going over the top or making the character too generic. Emberwind’s story didn’t need a Super Saiyan fighter nor a boy and his blob kid. The game required an unlikely underdog, from a fairytale roster. A knight has been done many times before and doesn’t have any innate magic prowess. Gnomes are treasure hungry and mysterious. Most importantly we wanted a hero that could harness the power of fire without having to put him in a varia suit. We have had a few people comment they don’t identify with the main character and that’s understandable since I bet neither of them are 4 feet tall in real life.

GG: If you could change one thing about the game right now, what would it be? It can be anything no matter the cost, resources needed, or time needed.

EM: I would’ve wanted to add even more enemies and creatures to battle, and another boss. I soon realized a 32-bit field to describe the different types of game objects just wouldn’t cut it, but there’s still some room in the 64-bit field we have now.

GG: About how long did it take to make Emberwind? Any regrets/mistakes in the development process?

EM: We started in March 2008, and though we never kept a good record I think it’s about 30 man-months all in all. We’ve learned so much in the process of making Emberwind and we’re planning on writing a post mortem sometime soon. I guess the only regret we have is that we didn’t spend the time to find artists that were willing to sacrifice the same amount of time as Chris and I did without pay. We paid our artists and that really made a huge dent in the personal finances. They did well beyond what they were paid for so I’m not complaining, but I wouldn’t be able to do it the same way again without taking out a mortgage on the house.

GG: What, if any, features did not make it into the game due to technical difficulties or simple time constraints?

EM: I think all in all Chris and I are pretty happy about what features made it in, the last feature, gremlin boats, made it in sometime in October this year. There were a few that never made it though; gremlin bicycles and “play as a gremlin” are the first two that springs to mind. Two of the four hidden stages never made it in either. “Rotwood” and “Cloudcastle” got axed because we ran out of resources.

GG: What goals do you have for Emberwind?

EM: Any sales number taking us beyond break-even if ever so slightly would be great as that’d mean our next game would be even better. Getting a nomination in some category for IGF in January certainly would make it all worthwhile, but we’re not holding our breath, there’s a lot of amazing games that have entered this year.

GG: What’s next for TimeTrap now that Emberwind is out the door?

EM: Right now we’re just taking a well earned break and sitting back to enjoy the ride, I think it’ll be at least a week of relaxation before the coding fingers start itching again. Chris rang me last night and said “I’m ready when you are!”. I think we’re going to do a small entirely free game next, just cause Chris has come up with a really neat game-play idea we want to experiment with. Apart from that there might be some porting work done on Emberwind as well as patches if anything should pop up.

GG: Is there any chance of getting a sequel to Emberwind?

EM: That’s entirely up to how much kudos and encouragement we get from peers and players. It’s all about motivation. We’ve toyed around a bit with some ideas and things we’d want to get into a sequel, multiplayer and introducing another playable character being the most obvious one. I definitely think we’d want to do something in-between though.

GG: Emberwind is currently for sale on your own store, why haven’t you released the game to Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive or any of the other digital distribution services out there?

EM: Well, we did take it to publishers, and we were offered both publishing deals and distribution deals. Some turned us down because we were too retro and some were turned down by us because we just didn’t think the deal was fair. I guess since it’s never really been about money for us we figured we could afford to turn down all the bad deals. For example, make a guess on how much we’d see of the retail price of Emberwind in the first deal we were offered. I’m sure your first guess wouldn’t be 15%! It is beyond me how anyone can think it’s reasonable to get handed a gold master without paying a cent for it, put it up on some portals, “stock keep” digital products, handle some visa transactions and do ever so slight marketing and for that shave off 85% of the revenue. I’m sure we’d have a much better chance of seeing some profit if we had Emberwind up there on the various portals just because of the extra exposure, but with the people doing all the creative work and risk-taking getting such a tiny slice, that just ain’t fair and we refuse to play by those rules. So, we’re probably going to pop up at a few of the developer friendly portals eventually, but we’re not running around like crazy trying to push it onto any site that knows how to make a buy button.

GG: Do you expect Emberwind to be a profitable title?

EM: It probably isn’t going to be anywhere near what we would’ve made if we spent all that time flipping burgers. But like I mentioned, I sure hope it’ll bring in enough for us to be able to do another game. We obviously work really well together so it’d be a shame to stop now.

GG: Emberwind seems like it would be a great console game, any plans to release the game on any of the three’s primary digital distribution channels( XBLA, XBLIG, PSN, WiiWare)?

EM: Emberwind has been running on both Wii and Xbox360 all along and we have an offer to “get it out on Wii and then possibly XBLA”. As soon as you’re talking consoles there’s suddenly a lot more politics involved so nothing is set in stone there yet.

GG: Finally, this time next year, what do you want to be doing in terms of game development?

EM: I hope we’ve released our little freeware game and are having a blast working on an RPG. It’s probably a bit ambitious to take on an RPG as an indie with no funding, but that’s something Chris and I have always wanted to do… and when developers are passionate about something and are having fun developing it, that’s when games turn out really well. Both Chris and I are old pen and paper RPG nuts and Chris has an RPG system he’s done himself and played for the last 15 years or so and it’d be a shame if more people didn’t get a chance to play it.

Big thanks to the guys at TimeTrap for answering some of our questions. I plan on doing a follow-up interview with these guys sometime in the near future, so if you have any of your own questions don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below.