Creatively, we've always let our North Star be our own personal taste in terms of what we think is cool--what it is we enjoy and want to see. I've seen too many TV shows and books be swayed trying to please a lot of people, and in the process you end up losing the heart of what's there,
It has been 13 long years since Aaron Foster last spoke to The Verge. Back then, Foster's tiny, three-person studio Lunar Software was touting sci-fi horror game Routine with a striking vision: Foster hoped to suck players into the desolate eeriness of its moon base setting, which was equal parts immersive and grounded. Foster ended that interview by swerving a release date question. With 13 years of hindsight, it reads like an all-timer understatement.
When Vampire Survivors won a BAFTA for Game of the Year back in 2023, it was a handful of Galante's colleagues at Poncle who took to the stage to accept it. At convention panels, Galante is known for using screens and decoys rather than addressing the audience himself. In the NoClip documentary chronicling the success of Vampire Survivors, Galante opted to have a Muppets-esque puppet resembling the game's iconic vampire mascot made so he wouldn't have to appear on camera himself.
These are the sort of things you see on the floor at the Portland Retro Game Expo, a yearly exhibition of video game culture and technology for vintage game collectors and dealers. Gamers are looking to relive their pasts and the pasts of others (who grew up with different systems or games), and, as with every gathering of ten or more people these days, Pokemon card collectors, hunting for the treasure their heart most desires.
I carry around a notebook that is now teeming with ideas to implement or test in the game, and thankfully I still consider this my hobby, but the prospect of rushing the work and going back into crunch mode to get it out this year just felt terrible. I am working slowly, but I like it that way. I love getting sucked into rabbit holes and I don't like trying to force things creatively.
"We recognize that there is an opportunity there if you get something new out of the gate or close to launch, and [if] you use some of the features, there's going to be a decent audience there that wants to try it," studio founder Matthew Annal told me in an interview.
