Development of Closure, their puzzle game

Tyler of Closure talks about their game, Closure

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/closure-gdc-2010-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]rclMSvjEciw[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco at the IGF Main Competition and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Tyler: I’m Tyler Glaiel and I am the designer and programmer of Closure.

Interviewer: What’s Closure about?

Tyler: It’s a puzzle platformer game where if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

Interviewer: What inspired the idea?

Tyler: It just came up when I was trying to think of a way to do, like, an interesting lighting game because there’s this cool lighting effect. It just needed something special to go with it, rather than just having some basic platform.

Interviewer: You were in the experimental game design platform then, or I mean, experimental game design workshop last year at GDC.

Tyler: Yes.

Interviewer: And what’s changed since then in terms of your design methodology and what you’ve been thinking about in terms of design since last year?

Tyler: Well, we restarted the game since last year. We restarted over in C++ and written an engine this time rather than using a pre-built one. We’re just taking all the feedback we can get and improving the game from then on.

Interviewer: Why did you restart? Obviously, you did it in Flash initially, right?

Tyler: Yes.

Interviewer: It’s way more accessible.

Tyler: Flash sucks. Well, I mean, it doesn’t have the power we actually need to make an interesting game with this mechanic. It was too much stuff we had to cut from the Flash version to get it to actually run right.

Interviewer: You guys were nominated and won the Excellence in Audio. Why do you think that is, and can you talk about the audio process?

Tyler: Well, what’s special about the audio in this game is it’s dynamic and it changes very subtly with the rest of the game. So, you’re not necessarily going to notice a drastic change in the song, but it does evolve with the game to make it a dynamic experience.

Interviewer: Was there anything else you had to do to make the audio just a more powerful part of the game, aside from the dynamic–adding dynamism? Was there anything else that you did?

Tyler: Well, I got my uncle here to do all the audio for the game this time. He’s a professional musician. He’s great. So, there’s a good soundtrack behind all the interesting effects, too.

Interviewer: What other games are you working on? Are you working on any games? Are you working on any other design spaces that you find interesting and compelling?

Tyler: Just Closure right now. I have a lot of ideas I’m throwing around but not really. They’re just ideas right now.

Interviewer: Where can the listeners download it or play with it?

Tyler: They can play the Flash version at closuregame.com, but the version I’m working on right now won’t be out for another year and a half, at least.

Interviewer: Why is it going to take so long to release this version?

Tyler: Because it takes a lot of work to make a game.

Interviewer: I wasn’t sure if there was something else that was holding it back?

Tyler: Just a lot of work making the game.

Interviewer: Is there a website that folks can visit to just find out more about the game?

Tyler: Yeah, closuregame.com.

Interviewer: OK. Thank you.