“It was a lonely night, I was playing EVE online scanning some anomalies, and then suddenly received a message from a friend of mine, Kostyantin Dvornik - he asked if I had any ideas for games. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how it all began”, says BSK Games‘ Andrii Goncharuk as he shares the story of Anoxemia.
There weren’t many team members at that time, only Kostyantin, our genius visual designer Eugen Dranev and I. We started searching for ideas, and came up with a great variety of those: from little tap-oriented tablet games to full big games for PC. After researching different mechanics, various ideas and approaches, weeks of prototypes and concepts, we eventually found something that we could call a start.
We didn’t have a full vision of a game yet, but what I learnt from this development is that any idea, almost any idea, can be developed to the level when it can work. The real problem when you’re starting from scratch is that you have too many of these ideas. The best decision here is to first take several of them, then select (randomly or best) one, and stick to it. You can alter some parts but the main idea must be that chosen one, and you must follow it. Our idea was about underwater exploration and adventure.
Let’s pick an idea!
We set to work in that direction. Eugen started designing the main character (that didn’t make it to the release but it was crucial for us to have him). I will explain why so. When you’re making a prototype of a game with boxes and sticks, you probably won’t see a full image of the game, or, what’s even worse, you’ll get the vision of the game that seems too good to be done by team. This is why we first spend some time working on the main character and environment, and just then move on to mechanics and gameplay. It helped us to alter the mechanics and add new ideas in the future, based just on the environment and character. Remember that a ready environment design and character will not only give you ideas for gameplay, but, what is most important, will narrow the range of those. Before you have these designs done, you’ll have too many options, too many ideas, and it will be hard to pick the right ones and implement them. While having those parts ready will make you work with something given. This will also will help you gain the skills you’ll definitely need if you plan to work for a big company, since in this case you won’t have full control over the project, but will have to do your best working with what is provided, not just what you want. I can say it’s a crucial skill in gamedev today.
give the game to someone else to play
After we decided on and made the environment and character, I started developing levels and obstacles. It’s hard to maintain the balance between hard and easy here, if you usually test them yourself. So, in order to make the game more enjoyable, it’s better to give it to someone and watch them play. Don’t ask them what they think - just watch! This will be much, much more effective to see what they struggle with most of all. We are now working on porting Anoxemia for consoles, doing some improvements, and most of them are based on “let’s plays” and players’ comments.
Let’s make A story!
It’s really interesting how the story was building itself. Do you remember me mentioning that when you work with something given, the results can be really cool? So we already had a character and environment, as well as some mechanics, and even found a goal for our character to progress. While working on the levels I made up a little story around places that I was building, starting from basic ideas of places, times and events, and also with reasons. Building a story, you need to make sure it’s consistent, logical and understandable. I developed a story of a stranded deep diver who was picking plants for his team that was on the surface and needed to gather information about the place. Here’s another interesting twist: we decided we wont have ANY UI elements. If we even go for those, they should be in-game objects. We came up with the idea of a little drone that helps our diver to survive and also shows his status. Working with this drone a lot and adding features to it resulted in revision of our whole gameplay and story.
Let’s reverse mechanics!
Sometimes you get an idea in your head that popped up for no reason. In my case it was to reverse the roles: in the beginning you’re playing as the diver, and the helping drone is just a way to introduce the UI. This decision brought us a new range of problems to solve, but also interesting mechanics.
You control a little drone and a guy follows it, and then we decided to go even further and let the drone talk with the player directly. We explained that the player is an operator controlling the drone deep underwater, and the main character is not in control of the situation. At one point, the player stays away from the problems of that little guy deep, deep underwater, but on the other hand they get more involved in gameplay, since they’re actually playing as someone sitting in front of the computer screen. *sound from Inception trailer placed here*
concept art makes the game recognizable
It would be a crime not to mention Mark Makovey with whom we started working in the middle of development. He is an freelance illustrator/concept artist, and the fact that he has worked on Anoxemia has given us a lot of exposure thanks to his talent. His art helped us to make the game the way it is now, almost any piece that you will find online related to Anoxemia is probably done by Mark, there’s nothing else to say other than that he is a genius at work.
Let’s try to hear something!
When we had all major parts done, I saw a game called Thomas Was Alone and was inspired with the way voice was used there. I even wrote some text for the main character and hired a voice actor Tim Simmons whom I found at voices.com (you can find a lot of talented voice actors there for reasonable prices, use it!).
When the whole script was ready, Tim recorded each piece of the main character’s monologue. But this was not enough - I realized that the story had become too important to leave it as is, so I made a few drafts for comics and hired a small comics studio to draw them. They also eventually set the main character’s final look, and this is how all story elements was established.
Making it live!
Having all this done we put the game on Steam Greenlight. It was a surprise, but after reaching 3000+ votes we got a pass to the Steam store. Working with all the papers and information, as well as setting up a webpage took a lot of time, more than I thought it would. Nevertheless, after all this was done we released our game.
Now, having done some work after release, fixing bugs and listening to people - why they like and don’t like Anoxemia, - the team is working with the Badland Indie based in Spain to make their game even better and move it to current generation consoles!
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