SPIRIT OF MIDNIGHT

Brotuzak: So Scott, what is the name of the game you’re working on and what is your job within the game? 

Smith: Sure! So I’m working on Spirit of Midnight, and my job is most of the roles, actually. So I do all the animation, design, graphics and animation—well, I said animation. And beyond me, we have a really great sound designer and composer, and we got some help with some UI in some places as well, but...the bulk of it is me, so I’m mostly a single dev. 

Brotuzak: That’s really cool, that’s a lot of work. And if you just want to give us a small summary of your game?

Smith: Sure, so the premise of the game is you are a house cat, and one evening you encounter a spirit monster, which lets you actually leave the house for the first time. And as you wander the outside, you’re both kind of just being a cat outside, doing cat-like things, but in addition, you’re kind of unraveling a mystery around a hidden town of animals and their relationship with this spirit and what’s gone wrong. Something like—the spirit should never have been in your house, and it’s just an adventure. 

Brotuzak: Awesome. I love it. I mean you’re gonna get a lot of people with cats, for sure. It’s going to be a big blanket for people! [laughs] And then, what would you say inspired you the most about this game? 

Smith: What games inspired me? 

Brotuzak: Yeah. 

Smith: Oh yeah, so… 

Brotuzak: Or anything, honestly. 

Smith: Sure. I always wanted to make a point-and-click adventure game after growing up with LucasArts games. So things like Monkey Island, The Dig, Day of the Tentacle, and I realized back around when Broken Age was coming back out that there was still a market for that, and I really wish there were more of those games. And in addition, when I was playing really big, heavy open world games myself, I wanted kind of a chill game to fall back onto to kind of relax so I didn’t always have to be doing the heavy mental lifting or you know, dexterity in those bigger games. So that kind of led me to want to make an adventure game myself, as well as I’ve always loved cats. I figured a cat could be a great protagonist or hero of the game, and I ran with that and here we are. 

Brotuzak: Awesome, I love that. I’ve done a lot of like, just open world point-and-click adventures, so it’s really cool to see that you’re kind of adding more of a cozy aspect to it. That’s really cool. And my favorite question to always ask is: if you could go back, kind of redo the entire game just from scratch, or maybe change certain things, would you do it? And if so, why? 

Smith: I don’t know that I would change much. We did actually start in a different place. We had kind of a 3D game with real, normal puzzles like, as opposed to situational puzzles, which you’d find more in a true adventure game like we have. I think we ended up with something that we can produce to the level of fidelity that we like using the skill sets of the team, and it’s going over great. People say they love the art style, it tracks them like we wanted it to, and it’s just enjoyable to see. 

Brotuzak: Awesome. Well I guess we can go next with: what was your favorite part in developing the game? What was the most fun that you had in the developmental process?

Smith: I’d say the best fun is coming up with the characters and having them do the funny things that make people laugh. So, we wanted the right kind of balance of humor, we don’t want it to be too much in your face where it gets kind of hokey; we want it to always be surprising, and even in terms of an adventure game, we wanted it to be a little bit more approachable. You know, it’s controller based, it’s not really point-and-clicky. And, you know, you’re never going to get stuck. Like going back to games like Grim Fandango, you could be hunting for hours, walking really slow through big worlds that are really cool to look at, but playing those games today sometimes feel like, “Oh, I wish it would go a little faster or I could get to the next big, fun thing.” So we’re always thinking about that. Yeah. 

Brotuzak: I love it. I mean, that would probably be my favorite thing, just to go through and kind of add all your personal touches on characters and just like little niche things, it would be really cool. I guess, and then for the final question, if you want to shout anything out, if you want to tell us anything more about your game, if you got like a Discord or YouTube channel or anything like that, feel free to let us know.

Smith: Yeah, so, most of the updates of the game have been on Twitter so far, but we’re really ramping up our Facebook and Instagram. Also, the Steam page is live and the wishlist is live. You can check that out for details. We also have a plush coming soon, that’ll be out within a month. We’ll post that there as well, and we’ve got a lot of requests for T-shirts, so we’ll probably be making those as well. 

Brotuzak: Awesome! Well I’m glad I had you, Scott. And I’m going to have to check out the plush, I think I saw it on the wall over there.

Smith: [laughs] Thanks! 

Brotuzak: Yeah!