ARON’S GIFT

Sam: All right, so first question, tell us your name and the name of your game.

Kristin: Okay, I am Kristin Shiraef and the name of our game is Aron’s Gift. It’s done by myself and my husband. 

Joseph: And I’m Joseph Shiraef, I’m the lead developer and programmer on Aron’s Gift from InkTale Studios. 

Sam: And if you could, give us a little summary about the game. 

Joseph: So Aron’s Gift is the first game from InkTale Studios. We’ve been working on it for several years. It’s a completely original, hand-painted, hand-placed 2D action-adventure game. It has a very storybook feel. All of the characters and all of the environments have been hand-drawn by Kristin. She’s the artist and the musician. 

Sam: Are you serious? Really? That’s awesome. I’m so sorry!

Joseph: I love it. No, I appreciate it. The music is also completely original. She’s been developing the soundtrack, and yeah, that’s kind of the idea of the game. The story is a dark fantasy, sort of, and it’s set in a village that has been cursed and as Aron, a twelve-year-old boy, you figure out how to use some magical abilities to uplift the curse. 

Kristin: Yeah. And it’s an isometric viewpoint and semi-open world.

Sam: What would you say is your main inspiration for the game? I know you said storybook. 

Kristin: Yeah. Definitely like Zelda-esque. That’s probably our biggest inspiration for the gameplay. It’s a very linear story. And I would say a lot of Tim Burton qualities mixed with Ghibli qualities. I love Fable, as far as games go, I love the game Folklore. 

Joseph: Yeah, I heard a lot of people asking of us if we’re fans of the Fable series and we always have been.

Kristin: Yeah. And yes! Especially the first one. 

Joseph: That kind of comes out naturally whenever we’re building this world and working on the concepts of the game. 

Sam: How long you guys been working on the game? 

Kristin: It’s been in production for about a little over four years, but we’ve been full-time on it for about a year now. 

Joseph: Yeah, that’s fair to say.

Kristin: Yeah, we have two kids and one just started school, so we’re like, “Oh yay, we get to work while they’re at school, yay!”

Joseph: That’s right, there’s some time off there for sure. Building the process of developing this game and how we were going to put her art on screen and make it move and finalize the type of game we’re going to do—that took three years itself. And then actually building Aron’s Gift, what it is today and what it’s going to be when we release, that has taken an extra year and a half at least. 

Sam: If you all could go back to [the] beginning and give [your] younger selves more advice or advice on starting this process over, is there anything you guys would change? 

Kristin: Wow, that’s a great question. ’Cause there’s so much that we’ve learned over the years. So yes, you know, we would definitely. ’Cause I’ve learned how to do everything the way we want to do it now, and so I definitely would. But I wouldn’t have been able to know those things if I didn’t go through that process, so… It’s kind of one of those things where our next game, we’ll know how to do this better. It’ll be a little faster. Smoother.

Joseph: I think I would tell my younger self: keep working and stop comparing your work to everybody else’s. Just build what you love. Because there are so many times where I get completely deflated when I see these projects, amazing projects, like here at PAX, that people been working on with just a small team and… they put so much passion and energy in. It’s daunting to think, “Oh, my work is never going to be that good.” But if you build something that you really love and you just keep working at it every single day, you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve, especially with all the information we have on Google and the good old Internet, and all the extra time a lot of people have at home these days. 

Sam: What would you guys say would be your favorite part of the development so far? 

Kristin: Definitely seeing it put together and then finally like, working. It’s just incredible to see all the puzzle pieces, because you know you see it for so long in pieces and you build it in pieces for so long. 

Joseph: Yeah, it feels broken forever, like a broken puzzle that’s been staring at you for way too long. 

Kristin: Yeah, and you’re like, “Is this even going to work when I put it together?” We don’t know. And then you finally put it together and it’s like, “Ohh, look at that! It works!”

Joseph: For me, the icing on the cake is when her music gets married with the art and the sound effects. That’s my favorite part. 

Kristin: Yeah, he loves the music and the sound effects. It’s his big thing. Mine is like when the animation’s finally work and the characters are like moving, ’cause I see the still picture forever, you know, that’s all I do. I see the painting and the land but I never see it move until he takes it and moves it. And I’m like, [gasps] “I can run and like go behind that building, yay!” you know? So that’s my favorite part. 

Sam: Is there anything else you would like all our listeners and readers to know about the game? 

Kristin: It’s based off a book we were writing, actually. We decided to kind of take that and turn it into a game, so it’s our first project we’ve ever tried. We’ve never made a game before, so it’s the first time we ever actually attempted to, and that’s why we just were like, “Oh, this is really cool,” and he already his master’s in computer programming, I was already an established physical artist, but we had this huge passion for games and so we just were like, “Let’s try to make a game out of this.” So that’s kind of where it was inspired from. 

Joseph: I would say if you like these types of games, these storybook, cozy feels, and you know that there’s a small team making it, I would say just reach out and support them every once in a while and let them know that you’re ready for it when it’s released. That helps a lot. And just keep an eye on Aron’s Gift because we have a lot more art and levels to show. And what we’ve shown here at PAX is…

Kristin: Tiny, tiny bit. [laughs]

Joseph: It’s representative of the final game, for sure. You will see the village and you will see a lot of the characters you’ve seen today. But there’s probably about five times more that we haven’t shown. 

Kristin: And it has a good contrast of present day, past day. ’Cause in the present day, as you saw when you first started the game, it’s very like snowy and desolate and cold, and that’s where you’re going to encounter a lot of your bad guys, your bosses. And then it contrasts with the past, which is, you know, a pre-cursed area, really beautiful environment, a lot happier. So yeah, the goal is to like, uplift the present day and uplift that curse so that, you know, it can get back to that beautiful environment. So there’s a lot of good contrast: there is a dark world versus the light, cozy world. 

Sam: Is there a social media that they can follow the game at? 

Joseph: Yes, so we are on Discord, the Aron’s Gift Discord, and on Twitter. I’m gonna put our Discord on the front of our website, inktalestudios.com, and we will be on Steam wishlist in a couple weeks. 

Kristin: And we’re on Instagram. 

Joseph: Instagram is maybe the best place because Kristin has been an artist for years, probably eight years now, and she’s good at posting her art and my animation on Instagram. So yeah, we’ll be posting a lot more there. 

Kristin: I’ve also made a Facebook account, like a page for Instagram that I’m going to launch after this so we will also have a Facebook. So you’ll be able to find us on most of the social media platforms.