You think I would have been satisfied after we scored a solid hands-on session and brief chat with March Ten Bosch regarding his in-development puzzle platformer Miegakure, but I wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks, sounds, and feels great. Marc’s a pleasure to talk with too of course, but Miegakure is as mysterious as indie games come.

Subscribing to Jonathan Blow’s design philosophy (create a unique mechanic, and then fully explore it), it isn’t surprising that his title has been in development for over two years, and still is just a vague riddle thousands of gamers can’t wait to unwrap. While we’ll have to remain patient for a PC/console release, Marc was nice enough to enlighten us on all the aforementioned. Divulging a bit on a content creation system in mind for the game as well.

DIYGamer: Why did you select Feudal Japan as the setting for your game?

Marc Ten Bosch: The initial decision came from the name: “Miegakure” is originally a Japanese garden term and the game’s philosophy is strongly connected to ideas Japanese gardens have developed. Each level is a carefully designed section of land that needs to stand simultaneously aesthetically and in terms of gameplay. In order not to distract from the core idea, it needs to feature as few elements as possible; maybe only a few stones on a gravel bed. Through its contemplation it allows the player to reach a higher understanding of the world, a deeper truth that cannot be expressed in words. And yet it is not meant to look as though it was crafted by human hands, but rather as though it always existed. Etc… But I’m not trying to make a game set in Feudal Japan, like Okami or something, just take some inspiration from the architecture and philosophy.

DIYGamer: What created your desire to do a “4-D” game? Inspirations?

Bosch: I knew I would really enjoy programming the game. It’s a fun kind of challenge, with a lot of linear algebra and graphics programming.

Looking for inspiration I discovered Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. It’s a famous 1884 Novella that explains higher dimensions by analogy to the perspective of a two-dimensional character living in a two-dimensional flat plane “slicing” through a three-dimensional world.

The idea was to make a game that would generalize standard physical laws to a four-dimensional world, where if one were to take an arbitrary three-dimensional slice of the world, one would end up with a mostly normal three-dimensional universe.

DIYGamer: Are there any plans at the moment for a content creation system for people to create their own maps and puzzles?

Bosch: Yeah, that would be awesome and not too hard to do. The PC version will likely feature something like that.

DIYGamer: Obviously at the moment you’re focused on completing Miegakure’s development, but have you ever thought about expanding the concept of this game and apply it to other genres or perspectives in the puzzle genre?

Bosch: It’s certainly interesting to think about what other genres would work in 4D. But puzzle games are probably better at exploring crazy concepts like that. That’s because each puzzle can be about understanding some consequence of the crazy mechanic you’ve given to the player. If you made a racing game, or some other fast-paced type of game, crazy things would happen all the time and the player would have no time to think about what’s happening. And maybe that’s cool too, but it’s probably even more ambitious than making a puzzle game.

As for the perspective, I chose to put the camera far away from the player in order for a maximum amount of information to be visible at any moment. I don’t like the idea of the player having to look around everywhere to get the information required to solve a puzzle. It’s a bit frustrating sometimes in games like Portal for example.

DIYGamer: Shifting to game design… You shared an anecdote during your IndieCade panel discussing how you discovered you had a working gameplay mechanic with moving through a 4-dimensional space (both in theorey and later in practice.) Could you summarize it for our readers?

Bosch: It’s about swapping one regular dimension with the fourth one, but I don’t really want to spoil it! The thing is, the first part of the game is about figuring what exactly is happening when you press the “4D button.” I set up the game carefully so that it turns out to be rather simple, so I would rather leave the joy of discovery to the players. There aren’t many games that ask the player to figure out what the main mechanic is while playing. Usually, when you get the rocket launcher, or the rewind time ability or whatever, you have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen when you use it, but not here. I think that’s really cool and unique, especially because it’s not that hard in the end.

DIYGamer: Is there a specific point when you know the mechanic you’ve created/developed has been explored fully? Will that differ dependingon the developer/person?

Bosch: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think you just know it in your heart when you’ve explored enough. It’s not really possible to explore a mechanic fully, but it’s possible to get the low hanging fruits and maybe a large part of the rest of the tree. It gets harder the more you explore though so after a certain point it might be better to focus on a different mechanic to get more low hanging fruits. The important thing to keep in mind is that each different submechanic sheds some light on the same concepts the main mechanic explores, so it’s ok not to explore something fully from one perspective if you also explore it from many different perspectives.

Some designers might choose not to explore a mechanic to a large enough extent, but it’s always disappointing to me when they don’t.

DIYGamer: Miegakure has been in development for a good amount of time and has likely seen a lot of changes over that period. Did you begin your development process by setting goals that you absolutely had to reach by completion of the game? As in, no matter how far off the original road map you go, somethings are immutable? Or is it more of an abstract process than that?

Bosch: The main mechanic hasn’t changed, but a lot of work is going into fleshing it out and making sure the learning curve is smooth and pleasant. That’s been the challenge all along. How do you explain something in a game without just giving it away in a tutorial, paperclip style? “Hey, it looks like you’re trying to solve a puzzle!”

DIYGamer: Thanks for taking time out to answer our questions Marc. Miegakure is slated to arrive in 2012 for PC and other platforms. Interested parties can follow along in the game’s development on Facebook and Twitter.

[Image Credit: SpyParty]