OK, the making of the game began with me realising that I didn't have the technical skills to make it myself! I flirted with Klik 'N Play and The Games Factory 10 years ago, but even that felt rusty now, and given the timeline I had set myself for the release of Howard Glitch: the game, the book and the musical EP, I needed it done within max 2 weeks...
So I aimed very high, by contacting some of the best developers online, but for one reason or another, they decided they wouldn't or couldn't build for me what I originally coined "an Existential Platformer!!"
So I gaveup! I decider to retain my focus and energy on the rest of my multi-media project, but for one reason or another, the game concept kept sticking in my mind.. A week later, I decided that I would build the game myself, though I had no idea how it was possible, but the core concept was so fun and wicked, I let that technicality become secondary!
I made a massive MP3 playlist, and then what began on my humble Acer Netbook, was an impromptu jam of artwork and animation thrown between Sony Vegas Video Editing software and a version of Adobe Photoshop used only by prehistoric man! To retain the main story of Howard Glitch, I had to scrap it from the game and instead rebuild a tangent storyline on the spot.
It became clear early on that Youtube would be my medium, but the degree in which you can program and actively create, is nothing more than a few annotations. I think I then realised that there was this gorgeous resonance of futility in both the game story and its medium, and that is when inspiration hit me. My options were no longer available to make a platform game -as I had desired- but simply to innovate and attempt to squeeze blood out of the rock, so to speak.
Integrating some of the wilder philosophy was the easiest part of making the game, and all done on the spot. Real challenges along the way, were things like running out of hard drive space mid-way through production, trying to actively build the rest of the multi-media project whilst video rendering was a constant and eating up all my memory.
For the game music, I wanted something old school not too far away from Shadow of the Beast (megadrive). So, I had pre-loaded some fantastic VST plugins along with a really good MIDI keyboard and freeware DAW software. However, with less than 24 hours to go of my deadline, I wasn't exactly pleased when all the VST's were running glitchy -excuse the pun- and I really ran out of options...
Until I noticed the ancient Yamaha Portasound PSS-470 gathering dust in my apartment!!
I turned it in on and within half an hour, it was just creating the most beautiful crystally-fuzz tones. I slapped an audio cable in the headphone socket, straight into my netbook line-in. I then had about 2 or 3 hours of just improvised playing, with actually more focus on the tonal quality of the pieces then the melody. Unquantised and lo-fi, the audio just sat really well with the game and really helped add a creepy ambience....
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Since the games' release online it has been featured on Indiegames.com, Reddit, DIYGamer, GamrFeed, and will be in the October edition of the magazine GEE, as well as the UK newspaper The Guardian. Denver Westword gave it "browser game of the week."
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