Quinn K. and Conor Walsh on making a sun-scorched horrorscape
The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, nearly 400 of which are independent video games, all sold for just $60. I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.
There Swings a Skull started as a jam game but will now eventually be released in a larger version on Steam. It’s a parable of environmental horror, with a face-melting sun, a deadly desert, and bureaucratic leadership that chooses an outrageous way to try to appease them. It’s also beautiful, with intricate pixel art in a subdued palette. And it stars Pyotr and Anatoli, husbands who are precious and deserve only the best.
How long have you been making games?
Quinn: Since around 2008, but not “seriously” until 2020.
What tools do you like to use?
Quinn: RPG Maker 2003, GraphicsGale, Aseprite, REAPER. Currently learning Blender and Unity for new ventures.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
Quinn: I like to explore themes of extreme mental states and societal ills. My favourite genre is horror, though my approach to it is usually unorthodox.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
My favourite is writing dialogue; my least favourite is playtesting + bugfixing.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
Quinn: Manifold Garden washed over me with a profound audiovisual beauty. It was overwhelming. Eventually I got a little seasick from the constant environment-flipping though.
There Swings a Skull’s art has a very specific feeling. Were you inspired by real places or other settings?
Quinn: Yes, in the visual direction I was inspired by the Italian town Taranto, a once-popular tourist place now hit upon hard times.
What was it like making an interactive but linear story like this? The flavor text is often powerful.
Conor: It was a lot of fun! I think Quinn’s high-level narrative ideas and the more concise writing RPGMaker’s limited text boxes forced me to have fit well into one another. We had a specific idea in mind of what we wanted to accomplish and consequently I was able to use each little bit or piece of side-writing (which Quinn did some of as well) to reinforce our themes and atmosphere and tone. We’ve both had experience with projects in this style before so our knowledge of the territory definitely helped.
The sun is sort of the antagonist here, combined with creepy bureaucrats. Do you feel some cosmic dread or environmental anxiety? Are we hiding a mile beneath the ground?
Quinn: Yes, climate anxiety is a huge motivator for the creation of this game. We wanted to hold a mirror to the people in power’s ignorance — or at least point it out to those who should be rightfully angry.
Conor: I view the sun more as a force rather than the main antagonist — though, of course, the exact circumstances related to it are deeper than are readily apparent (and will be explored in more detail with the game’s full release). And I daresay that I, as well as a great many others, do indeed feel a good deal of dread and anxiety about the state of the world. Maybe that’s inherent to modernity, I don’t know. There Swings a Skull is partially a way of our team venting about how powerless it can often feel to be in Pyotr and Anatoli’s shoes — looking at a rapidly worsening situation that you know you can’t affect while those who hold the power to change it tell you that it’s all up to you to fix everything. In the extended release we hope to address this concept — and responses to it — in more detail.
I loved Pyotr and Anatoli, the married guys who star in the game. What was it like designing and writing them? Pyotr’s sketchbook is especially haunting.
Conor: Anatoli and Pyotr were a joint effort between Quinn and I at the developmental stage — the idea of a kind of odd-couple with one blue-collar, soft-spoken, get-your-hands-dirty person and another white-collar, artsy, stay-inside-but-in-touch-with-his-emotions person was a fun dichotomy to write, especially because the two of them are so in tune despite how different they are. Moreover, both husbands are more alike than is immediately apparent, which added an extra layer of depth that was additionally fun to write — Anatoli’s more creative side and Pyotr’s more practical, logical bits (though, again, say it with me: wait to see more of that in the full release). Their chemistry is the heart of the narrative and the little bits and pieces to both of their personalities that make their engagements “pop” helped make the story feel more alive — and the way it progresses all the more heart-wrenching.
How does this story fit into your body of work?
Quinn: There Swings A Skull sits snugly in the 2D-game era of my work; it has a bunch of elements I enjoy in it, such as middle-aged, unconventional protagonists being faced with insurmountable problems and such. Things will change slightly once I move to 3D, but that’ll become apparent soon :]
