Hi everyone, I’m Vijay Sinha – one of the game designers at Holy Cow Productions. Last year at Unity’s Unite India conference in Hyderabad, Holy Cow Productions revealed its next game which has now been in development for more than a year called Mystic Pillars.
Mystic Pillars is a story-driven puzzle game that combines logical solving mechanics with a visual novel style narrative dipped heavily in South Indian tones, to give what we hope is a unique experience unlike anything that’s ever been made in India or elsewhere.
But the original concept for Mystic Pillars wasn’t always like this. In fact, the mechanics were decided much earlier before I or several others had any sort of involvement. So in order for us to arrive at this point, the team decided that not only would we showcase the game at Unite India 2018, we would also explain our creative process, the decision making and the ugly truths that come with working on a game this close to us.
Last year’s talk was dubbed “everyone is a designer”. The perspective of this talk was to explain that everyone involved in our creative process was every bit responsible for what Mystic Pillars is today, from the perspective of how puzzles are solved to the art style and even the story focus.
And speaking of perspective, check this early concept artwork out.
Notice how originally our game was meant to be played from a completely 2D perspective, on what appeared to be a board. From there, we branched out even further.
These last two concepts now have some depth to them. Not only that but our slots (containers that hold the numbers) were now looking more solid or polygonal the more time went on.
So how did this happen? Our concept artist Monica Selvandurai was assigned to come up with the look of the game based on our suggestions. The team looked at a LOT of games for reference, and tried just about everything from popular mobile games to more arcade style shooters. Our early inspirations included games such as Monument Valley (if it wasn’t obvious already), Far Cry: Blood Dragon, Geometry Wars, Divide by Sheep, etc
While going through Monica’s concepts, we were really keen on trying to tie a story to the gameplay. So we started coming up with different storylines that might correlate with some of the art concepts. Suffice to say, it was a tiring and long process. But we kept at it, despite how much we were struggling with the concept of having a story. After all, we had never tried making this kind of game before (a puzzle game with story elements?!)
Then came the idea of using pillars instead of grids (again using Monument Valley as a reference). This was somehow our “a-ha” moment and helped tied everything together, while birthing the idea of linking the gameplay with the story and interjecting story moments between gameplay breaks, again similar to a visual novel game (like Phoenix Wright or Danganronpa).
Once we came up with an art style and story narrative that suited the gameplay, the next step was to get something playable. Enter the Google Indie Games Accelerator programme which launched last year in India and many other countries. This pushed us to submit a playable vertical slice. The goal we set out for ourselves was to have the following.
- Present the name of the game
- Have a story sequence play out giving context to the player
- A quick and dirty tutorial on how to play the game (not the best approach)
- The game itself (which should last for about 10-15 mins)
- A teaser for things to come
And despite having to crunch a bit within a span of one month, we somehow managed to deliver everything we set out to do in just enough time.
But how did we achieve this? Our lessons:
- We understood the importance of having everyone involved. Technically, only one programmer and one artist were on the project until earlier this year. But it was important for us to have everyone involved from the start.
- “Too many cooks can spoil the stew,” which is why it was also important for us to accept that some of our ideas either sucked or didn’t match where we wanted to go.
- We imposed a time limit on ourselves. We need to fail quicker in order to reach our conclusions. After all, we had a submission deadline.
- The importance of meeting every day even if it was just for a quick catch-up kept us on our toes. Most of the time 😉
And although we didn’t qualify for the Accelerator programme, it still gave us hope and energy to regroup, look at our mistakes/shortcomings, and plan ahead. By the time we showed off Mystic Pillars at Unite, we had to reiterate multiple times as what we had was several months old, and we were already in the process of revamping the entire art of the game (a process which ended up taking a good half of the year). It was a great way to validate some of our concerns and problem statements to an unknowing crowd.
And much like what I said last year: it’s okay if you don’t think you’re a “game designer”. Your ideas and thought process matter. Sometimes the challenge of conveying your idea is exactly that. So whether you’re an artist, programmer, tester etc, it’s important to try and visualize your ideas by giving a write-up, drawing it out or providing examples. Even if it seems like your ideas aren’t going anywhere, there’s no harm in stopping and coming back to them later. Try to avoid falling in love with your own game – looking at it critically and objectively can be important, especially when prioritizing what’s important.
At the end of the day, however, as a studio, we’re all in on Mystic Pillars. Each of us has contributed to its vision and while the process of realizing that may be long and stressful, it’s been a uniquely rewarding journey. Thank you all for reading and we invite you to check out the next blog post by Monica on the game’s art.
Check out our Announce Trailer here: