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Tales from Candleforth
An Unusual Path to Making Games - Under the Bed Gamelab Interview
We spoke with Chema Galante, producer at Under the Bed Games, about how he went from knowing nothing about video games to making a great one.
Audio transcription
"All right, we're in Malaga for the Gamelab Nexus event, and we're here at the conference room in the Polo Digital building, and I'm here joined by Chema, who's given a talk about your story at Under The Bed Games, and how you guys sort of gathered together to create a game when you knew nothing about games."
"So that's pretty much the story, but then Tales of Candleforth was a success story as well.
So how do you feel about the whole journey?
No, it was wonderful, because as you say, we didn't know nothing about making video games before we started working on it.
I made a master about it, but I didn't know nothing."
"I was working on cinema for a long time, but no video games.
And we started, we found the funding to do it, we learned by doing the game, and finally, in April, we launched the game, and a lot of people loved it, and we had success with this launch, and the publisher is happy with us, and we are so proud, because it's very hard work, and a lot of people are playing our game, and we were at IndieDevDay two weeks ago, and a lot of people came to see our new game, and they were like, wow, someone knows us, and it's wonderful."
"Before we talk about your new game, let's talk about the concept of Candelforth.
It was a puzzle game, it was slightly creepy, but during your talk it was very interesting to me that you said that the creepy side to it, for you guys, was to feel, or to confirm, that the puzzles were going to be really good, instead of the story itself, which is a creepy story."
"So what can you tell me about the puzzle design, and how you guys worked on it?
When we have the first story, we want to take out as much story as we can, and we want to keep something right, and we want to put puzzles.
And a lot of the stories about Candelforth we are telling in the game are puzzles."
"You need to understand the puzzles, not just to do it, you need to understand what we want to tell you about, and we don't know if we can get it, because we are new in this, and we don't know nothing about it, and it was very, very, very frightening for us, because we don't know if we can.
We go to a lot of places showing the game, because we want to know how the people think about the game, and it was okay, we win in IndieDevDay last year the best game, Puzzle, we win art in a lot of games, we win music, we win a lot of mentions in a lot of different events in Spain and outside, and we say, okay, maybe we have a good idea, maybe it's working."
"That's how you kill your fear, and it's not scary anymore.
Would you say that is the aspect of the game that you are proud the most about Candleforth?
Probably the art. We have a very, very, very strong and good artwork done, and maybe the music.
All the artists in the game are incredible. I think the puzzle has a very good design too, and I think the experience in the game is fantastic, because you have a beautiful art and a creepy art, and you are, oh, that's beautiful, oh, or not, what's happening?
And this is why the game goes and the puzzles are so nice, and you can enjoy doing it in the artistic way and in your thinking way, because they are difficult but not so much. I think we have a nice game."
"So, puzzles, creepy art, nice music, is that something we can expect from you guys on Piercing Light?
Yeah, because the puzzle, the thinking games is the most important pillar in our studio, and the artistic games are the other most important pillar in the studio.
Then you will have this, the music, it's very important because we need to make you feel things, and we have a different kind of adventure. If you have a 3D immersive simulator, you can use a lot of things to make you feel things, but if you are in a point-and-click puzzle game, you need everything you can take for the feelings, and the music and the effects is very important in this."
"But we are going to do one more step, because we are working in different systems to make a different kind of game, not just a point-and-click game, we will have puzzles, and we will have a lot of challenging adventures, but we are working in a different way to afford it.
What is the game about?
You are a girl, 40 years old more or less, you go to a lighthouse, you are working in a lighthouse in an archipelago, and you have to manage the traffic in the archipelago, but something happens, an asteroid impacts in your lighthouse, and everything changes, and you are in a new dimension, like a horocosmic dimension, and everything you know is different now, and you have a lot of travelers to help in the way, but you don't know how to do it, because the language is different, the information you have about the things you have in your lighthouse are different, and the way you communicate with the people has changed, and you must know the new way to do it."
"Sounds pretty interesting. You started thinking about this concept while you were finishing Candleforth, or it was afterwards?
I think you mentioned that before.
No, when we finished Candleforth, we started in a process in the company, we are 8 people working, and we said, ok, we want to do a thinking game, but we don't know really what we want to do, then we started doing prototypes for one month in teams, we made 2 teams for people, and we changed the people in it, and we made 8 prototypes, different prototypes, 2 each week, and at the end we said, oh, that's a good idea, a lighthouse, and the game has a very important thing, I can't explain it to you because it spoils the game, but this lighthouse, this cosmic horror, and this turn we have for the game, maybe fantastic, and we decided to do it."
"And that's completely different to the brainstorming and the ideas you had for Candleforth, so you now made a game jam yourselves to find a concept, whereas with Candleforth it was completely different, and you were starting, and that's a new way for you guys to...
The main idea of Candleforth comes from Ángel, he has this idea in his head, and we developed it, but now we don't want to do in this case a second Tales from Candleforth, we want to do something different, and we work in our community, little one, 8 people, but our community to find the best idea we can do as a studio, not just one person idea, a studio idea."
"Fantastic, looking forward to being, you know, scared, and enjoy what you guys do next, Under the Bed, which is the perfect studio name for you guys, so thank you so much for your time, Chema.
Thank you very much, and thank you very much for this time.
Nice to meet you."
Gamelab
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