Sam Barlow, head of Half Mermaid Studios and one of the creative minds behind 2022's acclaimed Immortality, is working on not one, but two secret projects . Both look strange and downright creepy. what are they? he didn't say that. But both have something to do with “kaleidoscopic freedom.”
Earlier this year, Half Mermaid quietly published two new store pages on Steam for two different games: Project C and Project D. Both projects include cryptic descriptions and images that suggest Barlow is returning to the horror genre, but few other details are available. Barlow tells me that C and D are half He is in Mermaid He is two separate projects created by two separate teams, one of which he is created in Unreal Engine I have confirmed that it is. But for now, nothing more has been said.
So we talked about the project instead and discussed the ideas and philosophies he and Half Mermaid had been working on. One of these ideas is what Barlow calls “kaleidoscopic freedom.” In a previous conversation with me, he described Immortality as a narrative metroidvania. This has the ability to “unlock some ability to explore, backtrack, re-traverse, navigate, or simply understand.” Much like someone unlocking his double jump in a Metroidvania and trying it out by returning to a previously visited room, Barlow gives players an idea of what's going on in the game. We want you to revisit scenes, ideas, and locations in your game with a new understanding. And he draws new conclusions about the story.
In early iterations like Her Story, players had complete control over this process. But Barlow has been experimenting more and more with the idea of letting players cede control a little bit and what that means for the story. If it works in something like Diablo where the loot is randomized, why doesn't it work in the story?
“I see people thinking, 'I made a moral choice here, so I should be rewarded for it.' We want this to be very predictable, but , it's a very boring way to experience the story, and even if you run it and get the desired result, it's pretty much the opposite of what I expect from a good story, which means the entire world of Immortality. The fact that I loved it and embraced it and embraced this kind of kaleidoscopic freedom aspect of it, the next game is just like, “Okay, guess what…”, regardless of the genre, I really feel that way. or control style, that's what I'm really married to now. ”
Another element Barlow wants to experiment with is the idea of simply dropping players directly into the action, with minimal explanation or tutorials. “I was playing a game with the kids recently,” he says. “Now that we've got a PS5 at home, we've been working on a bunch of games that we need to play for the judges online. There were a lot of well-known AAA games. And we sat down to 50 minutes of the games , and we were still doing this tutorial, still walking and talking and doing other things, and my kid was like, “Just let me play the game.” did. And I feel like a grumpy old man, and the older I get, the more I feel like, “Just let me in the game.” Let me do something. I'm not stupid. ”
Barlow exemplifies this with the Zelda series. Skyward Sword had a very “didactic tutorial,” he says, while Breath of the Wild asks players to “figure it out” almost instantly. “For me, as a player, what's really exciting about something like Immortality is that, as daunting as it is, you slowly find your path and make it take shape. It also means that when played by different players, it's a very different and personal experience for each player. I think that's kind of the baseline for a video game, if it's interactive. It should be very important who is playing, right?”
The final principle Barlow has in mind for Projects C and D is simplicity. He's not a fan of games where his system is crammed with tons of gameplay just for the sake of playing the game. Rather, he uses “subtractive design” and tries to find the simplest and most enjoyable thing. There's no bloated open world or endless collections and side quests. But Barlow says that being simple or short doesn't mean lower quality or value, or that games can or should be cheaper to make. claim.
“My understanding of the development process for The Last of Us is that it's not about the graphics. Cost: $220 million. It's the fact that you're allowed to iterate through a level seven or eight times and then discard it,'' Barlow says. “I talked to someone who worked on a level on Uncharted, and we thought, 'Oh, how much time did it take to make this level?' In my head, I think I've spent months leveling up in other games. And they said, “Two years.” We spent two years with him as a team with embedded coders, animators, all these people. We had two years to try things out, discover things, get the code, come up with a cool idea, and figure out if there was a way to incorporate it. It does not work. Please discard it and try again. ” And I don’t want to criticize that. Because obviously it allows them to get to a place where they come up with a lot of cool stuff.
“If you have to be efficient, there's probably a more efficient version where you actually make some decisions early on and are more specific about what this game is going to be. Of Us cost less than $220 million because the hair has to look good. It cost me something because I allowed myself to keep throwing things away in order to create something like that, because some artists spend years trying to get their hair looking good.”
This probably should not be interpreted to mean that projects C or D will cost $220 million. But Barlow said Half Mermaid was “lucky” when it came to planning, funding and securing projects C and D. And all their games were released last year. And I know right now it's obviously a really, really difficult time to sign things and it's also a very difficult time to get funding. Either we arrived last minute or we're just weirdos and think what we make is safe. ”
But he also told me that sometimes his success and relative stability still feels precarious. Despite the critical acclaim for Immortality and the recognition that his name has some influence in the industry, Barlow fears it could crumble at any moment. There is. “It's like we're in a big ocean, and the waves are choppy, and there's a huge aircraft carrier, and the Titanic is sinking, and Fortnite is passing us by, and some of those… has capsized and people are falling from the deck, and we manage to avoid everyone and get around it, in a small independent boat.
“I think what’s scary is how platform-dependent indie games are,” he continues. “Whether it's Netflix, PlayStation, Game Pass, when you start to realize, 'Oh, I'm betting on getting a deal.' If a handful of these companies turn around and decide they're not going to do this anymore or change their minds, all of a sudden we're screwed.”
Despite the industry's instability and Barlow's stated concerns, Barlow and Half-Mermaid have chosen to continue their own lineage of, as Barlow puts it, “that weird, experimental, cinematic game.” are doing. Fundamentally, in his past and present work, Barlow is constantly looking to challenge the very definition of what a video game is. No matter what they do, no matter how Project C and Project D turn out, Barlow remains committed to asking the same questions. “How far can we push that definition?”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. Do you have any story tips? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
