A New Project

Hey Patreon dudes, it’s Kirran. I wanted to give you all a peek into something that’s close to my heart. All throughout middle and high school I was infatuated with the idea of making games. I made a few text adventures on my TI-83 (you know, instead of doing math [probably why I’m so bad at it]). I messed with RPGMaker on and off for years, never really seeing anything through but always making some short, dumb things to show friends. One of ‘em was just a fight between Darth Vader, Char (of Gundam fame), and King Harkinian (of YouTube Poop fame). It was magical.

My passion for game design never truly waned. Throughout college I designed so, so many stories and concepts that I looked back on and thought, “you know, these would make pretty kickass games.” I could be all sad and go “kids these days aren’t reading books anymore!” but I’m trying to look at it more optimistically. While books captured my imagination, video games enraptured my heart, because I continue to see their potential. Video games are the final frontier of communication. And recently, I don’t think anyone else sees that quite like Yoko Taro.

Most recently Yoko Taro has captured my heart with his unique approach to game design. There’s a moment in NieR: Automata that spoke so deeply to me I wrote a whole 15 page essay talking about it. Maybe I’ll finish that one day. Yoko Taro has a GDC talk entitled “Making Weird Games for Weird People,” and I highly encourage anyone interested in video games to check it out here. In it, he reinforces that games are the most unique vehicle for communicating with others. Video games require the participant to engage with them and explore. Video games can convey ideas, emotions, and all sorts of cognitive experiences in a way that other media may never truly achieve. I’ll keep harping on that because that’s truly what’s important, what the player takes away.

Video games offer up an entirely new realm of communication that we’ll probably never see fully in our lifetime. That sounds pretty grandiose but I truly believe that. I still love my films and my books, of course, but man, video games are really darn cool. His passion for the future of game design rekindled my desire to explore this hobby I left behind so many years ago.

I, too want to see what they’re capable of and what kind of crazy things they can accomplish. I want to make people cry. I want to make people laugh. I want to grab people by their brain balls (read: eyeballs) and force them to think about something. I want to make video games.

I’m in a very fortunate and unique position to kind of explore whatever I want to right now, and I haven’t taken that for granted. With the support of all of Team Four Star, and especially you patrons, I’ve been able to turn my closet hobby into my job as of late. In my free time I’ve been teaching myself Blender, Unity, FL Studio, and every other little software I’ve had to use to conjure these virtual dreams.

Alongside learning software I’ve had to actually draft out what it is I want to do, what style I want to go for, you know, all that fun stuff that working from scratch allows. As someone who started off in making parodies, the freedom of a project that’s all you is intoxicating and a little frightening. I haven’t really shared something that’s only me, you know? 

Inspired by Yume Nikki, Serial Experiments Lain, .hack, The Ring, and every other thing in my life, my first game is a short mystery about games. Also isolation. Two things I know a lot about! It’ll feature a tiny, claustrophobic apartment, an escape behind a screen, and some scary stuff for players to investigate in this virtual, virtual world, like forum posts, news feeds, and websites. That’s about all I can share for now.

With much coaxing from the rest of the team I’ve been pushing through my anxieties to see these games through. I hope you look forward to all the weird shit I’ve got stirring in my head. I don’t know exactly when this first one will be out, but I figured it’s about time I told a few more people what I’ve been up to.