click on it more than if it was particularly good.”
Amid the rash of pixel-art sidescrollers that
were being funded at the time, Park’s use
of top-down perspective stood out, too; the
trailer’s striking piano soundtrack was perhaps
another factor. Comparisons with Dark Souls
and Zelda did him no harm either. With screens,
further score samples, details of power-ups
and even a diagram of the map’s structure,
all in all, it’s a pretty solid pitch document.
“Maybe I just captured the cultural zeitgeist of
the time. I really don’t know,” Park shrugs.
Yet if Park was technically capable of making
an entire game on his own, his inexperience
soon began to tell. The money, he says, did
have an influence. “There was some pressure
there. I know it’s not much in terms of
gamedev now, but back then I thought I’d make
a little bit of money, work for maybe a year on
a simple game, and then I’ll go back to school
or something. And that put some pressure
on me to make something better than I had
originally imagined.” But the workload wasn’t
the main issue, he says. “As you improve,
whether you’re doing art or music, you start tobe able to do it faster and faster. But it’s really
the organisation. That really provides the
setbacks because you don’t always know what
you’re doing. When you’re just working on
music or art, you can’t see the whole picture.”
Though he’d made small games before,
creating something of this scale was a new
challenge entirely, and managing that became
overwhelming. “A lot of features that I added
resulted in more maintenance work, code-
wise, than I expected,” he says. As his one-year
plan became two, three, four and more, he
began to suffer from serious burnout. For
a while, he took a part-time job to make
ends meet, but a combination of low living
expenses and a smart initial investment from
a financially savvy friend meant that the
Kickstarter money has stretched farther than
he anticipated – enough to drag Radio The
Universe over the finishing line later this year.
It’s looking in good shape, too. “At the start
I marketed it as like a 2D Dark Souls, but maybe
that’s not such a powerful marketing line anymore,” he grins. It’s not an inaccurate one,
mind. Combining an enigmatic mystery with
brooding, slow-paced exploration and pacy
combat that recalls the brilliant Hyper Light
Drifter, Park’s game would be an attention-
grabber even without its unusual aesthetic –
his use of chromatic aberration gives his pixel-
art a distinctive two-tone look. By and large,
his backers have been patient and supportive,
too – a result of his willingness to respond to
their questions throughout development. And
despite the time it’s taken, Park is looking
beyond launch. “I hope it does well enough
so that when it comes out I can maybe do
another one.” From what we’ve seen so far, his
confidence does not appear to be misplaced. QWireless
communication
Park is playing coy
about the story,
believing that it
would detract from
the game’s surreal
mood if he tried to
explain too much.
“There are certain
things I’ve tried
to leave in the
shadows,” he says,
“But the main plot
is pretty simple.”
What’s clear is that
your unnamed
protagonist finds
herself in a place that
seems isolated from
the real world – the
precise setting will be
left unknown until a
certain point in the
game, Park suggests –
before finding a
character who leaves
her questioning her
own reality. “There’s
an implication that
spacetime is
fractured, because
there are rooms that
don’t line up quite
perfectly,” Park says.
“And then... let’s just
say strange things
start happening.”LEFT The protagonist can
dodge incoming attacks with
a brisk jump that feels almost
like a short-range dashThere’s a rough 50/50
split between combat and
exploration, Park says.
“Though there is a way
that you can play the
game where you can
maybe sneak past things”
TOP LEFT You return to a hub
area between levels, which
is where much of the story
plays out.
ABOVE You’ll gain abilities
as you progress, and Park
says they’ll have a
significant effect. “I don’t
want that thing you get
in RPGs where it’s like
a two or three per cent
increase in something
and you have to compare
stats for everything”
“Maybe I just captured the
cultural zeitgeist of the time.
I really don’t know.”