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We spoke with Gerard San Miguel Navarro of Big Stretch in Bilbao all about his new narrative adventure game.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is the Indie Showcase at the Bilbao International Games Conference and I'm here joined by Gerard, who's showing us The Well's Blessing which is a game that's making a little bit of a splash here, and I've been hearing about it and it's a low-poly, low-resolution adventure game, coming of age where you have to explore a world with something very quirky and very weird going on so now tell me that, but in your own words OK, sure, yeah, The Well's Blessing is a short, narrative-driven, exploration puzzle game where you get to explore this mystical sanctuary of the old well as you reconnect with two childhood friends you haven't seen in a while and yes, you said it was like meeting quirky characters and getting to discover the mysteries of this place as you solve these puzzles which are scattered around this open area and ultimately this is a game about, you said it, a coming-of-age story about your own upbringing, trying to find your own place in the world and yeah, trying to explore these insecurities about teenagers and these years of transition in their lives What's the mystery behind or within this well?
Yeah, so there's these superstitions going around about this old well which is capable, as some ancient legends have said, of changing your life, like starting anew and it's after a really severe fire and a restoration process that they reincorporate all these mythologies trying to get people to go here but some people are visiting just to have a nice hike on a Sunday and others maybe are believing in this so there's this ambiguity in the supernatural part of this story that the characters will slowly start to understand that maybe it has something real And you come here with the intention of doing a documentary?
A documentary?
Did I read that well?
Oh yeah, one of the characters, yeah, one of the three characters, there's the teenagers one of them is trying to do a documentary she's a student, a film student, and she really wants to be like a director and that's one of the motives of why she's here but yeah, every one of the three main characters has its own reason to be in this park and they together will be putting it in common and trying to, you know put some sense in their life and catch up with some friends What can you tell me about the mechanics? What do you actually do here?
I saw you have some tools in first person, some items, some pixelated flowers Yeah, the main mechanics are quite simple they involve moving around this 3D environment talking to characters, both your friends in a spontaneous way reacting to what you're doing, but also with other visitors and then there's this listening mechanics we can focus sound into certain areas and lastly picking up objects and placing them the actual interactivity is quite simple but it builds on these four main pillars just to explore the area and get to know more about the people and the little clues that are hidden around the environment And what can you tell me about the art?
I mentioned it's low-fi, low-poly what can you tell me about this approach?
it looks like a N64, PSX sort of type of deal Yeah, well, one of our biggest references is A Short Hike not only visually but also in other ways but yeah, we really like the kind of, as you said, PSX, Nintendo 64 look because it brings us to our own homecoming story and it's a story about teenagers growing up so I thought it was interesting to pick up this almost too digital, too weird, abstract way of deploying a natural world and try to make a story out of that But then there are animals, and that adds some character to the characters?
Yeah, anthropomorphic animals are really interesting topics I think especially many of these stories, not only in games but in cinema are a way to create a parallelism between the real world and a supernatural world in which you actually talk about things that are concerning the real world and one really movie I like is Spirited Away and they do this, it's like one day where something supernatural is going on but it's actually talking about something super personal and realistic and real and I think symbolism through animal anthropomorphism is a really good vehicle to do all this inactive stuff we are really ambitious about Is everyone going to be turned into a pig?
No, but yeah, thanks for the reference Okay, okay, and what's the status of the project?
And are you looking for a publisher, if I'm correct?
Yeah, right now we're looking for financing and the whole publishing deal Right now the game is like 35% done We have a vertical slice which will be soon public, which is like 35 minutes and yeah, right now we're looking for potential financing options but yeah, we're also opening our ideas to other possibilities through crowdfunding or maybe like cutting content but yeah, we're in that area, we're still really early in the project so deciding in which direction to do but yeah, financing is definitely one of the options right now Fantastic, looking forward to learning more about The Well's Blessing or to get in The Well's Blessing, to get in The Well's Blessing myself Somehow in a low poly fashion So thank you so much for your time Gerard and enjoy the rest of the show Thank you so much for the interview"
