Sol Martínez-Solé’s low poly memory exploration Guacuco
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.
Guacuco by Sol Martínez-Solé is almost a tone poem, a few minutes you spend exploring a darkened beach and finding and throwing seashells. I’m struck by the number of really poetic or expressive short games like this in the bundle. Sol also comes from a different background than many of the developers, with professional experience in the world of 3D technical art for games.
How long have you been making games?
I’ve been in game development for five years, though I only started to make personal games with friends about two years ago! Definitely a nice change of pace. :)
What tools do you like to use?
I fell in love with Blender and low-poly modeling during the development of GUACUCO, and it’s become my main modeling software since! It’s impressive how lightweight and user-friendly it is, coming from four years of modeling in Maya (a.k.a. hell).
During my time at studios I thankfully discovered some good “industry standard” software, like the [Adobe] Substance Suite! Substance Painter in particular is a joy to use. Lets you handpaint things with relative ease, and also gives you a lot of procedural tools to aid you in your process no matter your style. Great great stuff.
I also love scuplting, and for that I feel ZBrush is still best! Despite its intimidating UI, it is surprisingly intuitive to get some high-poly sculpts looking nice and pretty. :) It’s also one of the few big time softwares that still use single-time purchases, so that’s a huge plus IMO.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I love using games as a conversation with myself, to explore ideas or feelings that I avoid in my personal life, so surrealism and experimental atmospheres are a hit with me. I also really like horror, and I keep starting horror games but never finishing them! For my next projects I’d really like to dive into more into the horror genre for sure.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
My favorite part about gamedev has always been texturing assets, because it means I’m mostly done with a model which is a huge relief! I have a background in illustration too, so using colors and hand-painting models is relaxing and familiar to me.
I also really love putting everything together in-engine! Gamedev takes a long ass time from concept to finished stage, and sometimes it’s a bit frustrating not seeing any results. But once you start updating your levels with finished assets and ambient effects, I feel it’s a huge morale boost! Aside from that, decorating scenes and doing level design is just plain fun. It’s like playing with dolls!! What’s not to love!
On the other hand, my least favorite part is the technical aspect of things, especially optimizing and mapping models and materials. I honestly have a love-hate relationship with it. I am thankful for diving into optimization and efficiency in modeling and mapping, as it means more people can play my games, but it’s also such a pain sometimes because of how long it takes for me to solve these problems. I’m self-taught as well, which looks cool on a resume, but also means I don’t have standarized practices or just background education to fall back on. Thank god for good, updated documentation! (side eyeing unity)
“I’m a little bit obsessed with documenting and representing the places I grew up in because there’s just so little of it in mainstream media, or even any media at all.”
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
I don’t have enough time to play a lot of games lately, so this question was actually kinda hard! I think Kirby and the Forgotten Land affected because of the care put into the environments. I’m an environment artist by trade so I spend a lot of time just vibing in the levels and checking out how the game artists did things like trees or even small pebbles. Every texture in Forgotten Land is a joy to look at!! I could get emotional talking about their lava shader. They’re wizards, I swear!
Guacuco is a dreamy little exploration dotted with harsh memories. What led you to make it?
It’s kind of a long weird story! Before GUACUCO I never really thought of making personal games mostly by myself, actually! I was all the way focused on doing portfolio pieces like dioramas or just single models. GUACUCO was born thanks to the support of Oyoun KulturNeuDenken, a cultural centre and hub in Berlin focused on queer and migrant perspectives. They saw my work in a Gayming mag showcase (a million thanks to Alex Taylor for giving me this opportunity ❤) and reached out during spring last year to ask me to do a game for an interactive exhibition they were planning for December 2021.
The exhibition (and theme!) was called “ESCAPISM”, and other than that I had mostly free reign over what I wanted, which was very very hard, honestly. Rather than make an escapist game I instead wanted to dive into things I was escaping from and put them to rest, sort of. I kept having the same nightmares of being back in Venezuela, surrounded by the people that Kind Of Traumatised me, and being completely unable to leave or escape. It royally sucked that those were the only dreams of my homeland.
I explored a few concepts with the mentors at Oyoun and with my game designer partner (who patiently supported me and also acted as a game producer for the whole duration of the game…bless him), and eventually I settled on a memory I did like about growing up in Venezuela, one where my aunt and I “gave back” seashells into the sea, and the sea sort of repaid us by floating a 2VEF bill back at us. It was a sweet, little magical realist moment that I kept thinking about, and turns out it was a great choice in the end!
I also had the opportunity to design the physical space the game was exhibited in, which was a whole trip in itself. I worked with Yuki Kojima, a great installation artist, who had the expertise to pull something up in just a couple of hectic days. I wanted the installation to mirror the game/dream, but instead of showing nightmares, I showed a video collage of memories and pictures from my home island, as participants explored the beach. It was pretty neat. :)
What was it like to relive those memories while making the game?
It was pretty rough, obviously. In general, I’m not a person who sits down to examine his trauma and his harsher memories willingly (though I’m working on it!), so even though the concept seemed nice on paper, it was very very hard to actually do it. I’m not a writer either, so these two factors merged into a pretty big monster that I had to overcome.
I think that’s what took the longest during production — just sitting down, preparing myself mentally, and just writing and editing and crying a lot. Not just because of facing those memories over and over, but also because I was questioning whether I had a right to put my pain out there, and whether people would like it or even understand it. I don’t like being the center of attention, even when I’m doing what’s essentially personal art.
I’m glad I did it though, because the response has been pretty positive, and some friends and even strangers have reached out to say that they had similar experiences. A cool side effect was that the nightmares stopped entirely, too! It’s like the game was a little spell that finally put those horrible images to rest. Now they’ve been replaced with happier dreams.
I like the idea of memories as artifacts you can examine and release — that’s very therapeutic. How did you decide on that mechanic?
That is a really lovely way to put it — I honestly have to say that I didn’t plan on it consciously. A lot of my process is unconscious and improvised, so there wasn’t really a logical decision behind it. If anything, it’s thanks to my partner. I kept throwing disjointed concepts and ideas at him, and eventually we settled on connecting the happy memory of returning seashells into the ocean with examining my trauma. I guess I unconsciously wanted to attach myself to a happier memory as I delved into the bad stuff, and I’ve always been a fan of letting bad stuff go by releasing them into the elements.
As an aside, the original game also had monsters that you had to negotiate and pass through to actually get to the memories, and then tell them how you felt afterwards, but I scrapped it when I realized I had very little time to do all that. And thank god! I feel the game is way better with just the seashells and the ambience.
“I love using games as a conversation with myself, to explore ideas or feelings that I avoid in my personal life.”
The setting is dark blue and surreal. Is it modeled on a real dream, a real place?
It is modeled on a real place! Playa Zaragoza, in the island of Paraguachoa (Margarita)! It’s the actual place where we released the seashells too! It’s a very small beach with a lovely little tourist town that runs along the coast. I must’ve spent at least ten hours scouring the internet for any footage of the place, so I could get its essence and reproduce it faithfully.
I’m a little bit obsessed with documenting and representing the places I grew up in because there’s just so little of it in mainstream media, or even any media at all. Just finding good footage as reference was very hard because a lot of it is lost or not really shared outside of Venezuelan circles that end up degrading or disappearing in the mountains of more relatable and flashier content and vistas.
The beach in the game is smaller and simpler than what I wanted to make, but I still did my best to capture the essence of the elements that made the cut. Even if it’s dark and hard to see, I hope that other Venezuelans that play my game can be like “holy shit, that’s Venezuelan architecture in a game!” and maybe my fellow islanders can identify the beach it’s based on, too!
What do you hope players take away from this experience?
I hope this experience can be cathartic to them as well! I don’t want to spoil the game, but that’s what the ending (and the installation) was for! I want my game to be a conversation with myself, and also be a conversation for players too. I hope everyone can take the time to dig a memory or a feeling that’s been nagging at them, and then let that go and feel a little bit lighter. This was a cool, healing experience for me, and even if it’s a very personal niche game, I’d love it if it was healing for other people as well.
