Riley Dülberg’s first game, a surreal trip to the convenience store
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I really enjoyed Riley’s game transaction failed, which is a surreal adventure that takes place in (and . . . around? beneath? through?) a convenience store. It’s a fun use of Bitsy and puts a bunch of little rooms together that have very different identities. The basic premise is that you’ve realized you can’t afford your groceries and are just trying to leave the store, but it becomes more and more difficult to do that.
How long have you been making games?
I only got into making games a few months ago! transaction failed is my first game I’ve made. However I was always fascinated by games and wanted to take them apart: The sounds, models, sprites, dialogues… I love to rip a text or a graphic out of its context and put it together with another thing from a different game to form a new image. I make art like this for a few years now, so it was a rather big challenge for me to create transaction failed from the ground up without dabbling into making a collage.
What tools do you like to use?
For someone who doesn’t have any real experience in game-development like me, I was thankful for simple game maker tools like Bitsy, which I also used in the end. I like the strict limitations and the incredibly friendly community around it! Right now I’m looking into PICO-8, that lets you do more stuff than Bitsy. Other than that I use Aseprite to train my pixel-art skills and with Renoise I’m making music.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
At the core I’m all about language. When I look around I see words. When I look at a scenery or an art piece I see sentences. I try to explain everything I encounter with striking terms. I think this is going to impact my next games greatly too. My interests often shift to those things I can’t find words for yet. This time I talked about gender. But there are so many more themes like artificiality, christianity and virtuality and many more to take on. I don’t know yet in which genre those themes are best tackled.
“I love to explore smaller sites that serve a clear purpose like a convenience store. You can tackle such places from so many different perspective so many times until it feels like you’re playing around with a rubber ball.”
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
Games are infinite. You can add pictures, videos, music, performances and all other things you can think of. That way you can make something that is completely your own without restrictions. On the contrary you are tied to the code. Therefore everything I do feels subjected to a set of rules. The process of creating something doesn’t feel that free as with other mediums.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
There’s this game by Taylor Swietanski that takes you to worlds you have never seen before but that feel way too familiar at the same time — as if you are playing through a memory of yours. That really impressed me. The game also confronts you with refreshingly new takes on the idea of mirrors. It’s a game that I thought about for days and everyone should play it at least once! Its name is spirits mirror::digital possessed.
“Transaction Failed” reminds me so much of an anxiety dream. What inspired the concept?
I have noticed that my inner conflicts are well reflected with the relationship I have with convenience stores and supermarkets all my life: In recent years it was often a nightmare to navigate through all these products that hold empty phrases or through all these customers, who felt more like drones than real people with real thoughts.
At the same time I acted weirdly in such environments: I hid my left hand, that had nail polish on. I stormed through the store to get home as quickly as I could. I apologized every small inconvenience I made for someone.
And that’s what I was feeling in public and in private: I thought no one could understand me and I didn’t believe in myself at all.
So it felt natural to me to compile my experiences with my body and gender that I navigate through public spaces into one place. And! This wordplay of a financial transaction and literal trans actions has been floating around in my head for a while now.
I loved all the surreal little rooms and talking plants and such. Do you have a favorite location from the game?
Funnily enough, I like those rooms best where you can’t interact with anything. They provide a sense of peacefulness which I think is very important in a game like this, that disorients you and most of the times dislikes the player. So my favourite location are the stairs! You just walk around in those rooms and that’s also where you realize all of a sudden that this can’t be a normal convenience store. Reality begins to derail heavily past that scene. (Also I just love stairs in games — the longer they are the more tension they create!)
“When I look around I see words. When I look at a scenery or an art piece I see sentences. I try to explain everything I encounter with striking terms.”
What has your experience been like working with Bitsy and creating the tiny sprites?
Bitsy is a great tool to tell stories. First I drew the all the rooms and scenes of the game roughly on paper. Then I recreated them in Bitsy with the built-in editor quite easily! But I’ve noticed quickly that you can on one hand lay out your ideas fast but your ideas also have to be limited. Bitsy has a clear and finite set of features you can use: You can only choose three colors for your entire game and the text box can only display two lines of dialogue at once for example. I didn’t stay in those limits though. There are wonderful mods out there that let you do way more with the program. One of them let me convert photos I took to pixel-art right into Bitsy. With another one I added the music to the game, which I’ve made outside of Bitsy. Like the title of the game, this tune you hear throughout the game is also way older than the game itself btw!
So I’d say that working with Bitsy feels like scribbling in a sketchbook with a pen that you can enhance to your liking.
A convenience store is such a good setting. Are there any other places you’d love to set a game?
I love to explore smaller sites that serve a clear purpose like a convenience store. You can tackle such places from so many different perspective so many times until it feels like you’re playing around with a rubber ball. And I LOVE rubber balls. Therefore the next things I really want to build a game around are personal spaces like bedrooms or bathrooms but also semi-public places like museums and classrooms. My absolute dream-setting is a monastery though. But to make this happen I have to expand my coding-, art- and writing-skills a lot more!
Most importantly . . . What do you like to buy at the convenience store??
Oh I’m a huge sucker for bright colors with high contrasts! So everything that is wrapped in mega colourful packaging immediately grabs my attention. Most of the times these are sweets or new soft drinks!! They don’t even have to taste good, I just have to like the colour :3
