I recently had a chance to talk with the designer of a game called Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, Nicolau Chaud. I reviewed BE: D last month, and I found it to be one of the most emotionally engaging, and compelling indie games I’ve ever played.

I’ve always been fascinated with the creative process (both in myself, and others), so I was excited to be able to hear some of Nicolau’s thoughts on the process of making this unique game. It’s a great interview, and I highly recommend you read through all of it.

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Jordan:  What was the first thing that inspired this game? How did the original concept come to you?

Nicolau: I was very excited about RMN’s Game Gale 2010, and I had a lot of ideas for small projects, but none of them too concrete before the theme was announced. What I knew beforehand is that I wanted a game with very strong and distinct aesthetics and conceptualization. My initial ideas were actually quite colorful and cheerful.

The theme “escape” caught me completely off-guard. I started by avoiding cliches like “escape from prison”, or “escape from hell” or something. My first reasonable idea was “lab rat escaping from mad scientist”. I’ve worked with animals on laboratory before, it’s a very cold-hearted activity. This idea improved to “human escaping from mad scientist”, until finally I decided the bad guy would not keep a lab prisoner for scientific purposes, but for sheer sadism. So it become “hopeless victims trying to escape from sadistic torturer”.

J: Did you ever consider not making the game, because of its content?
N: No.

J: Have you seen any negative feedback since the game’s release?
N: Not mostly, but a lot. Many people consider this game to be completely tasteless. There is a particular review on RMN that caused a heated debate on the community, because it said this is a genre that couldn’t be adapted to game form.

A lot of people also picked on the “rape” element of the game, even calling BE:D “the rape game”, though I believe this to be a very simplistic and distorted view on the whole thing. And, of course, there are people who just thought this is not a good game.

J: The story and characters all have such a personal feel. Was there a part of the theme or emotion of the story that was a personal expression for you?
N: In a way… all of it. I’m not a sadistic person, but I can’t deny that there’s a lot of myself in Verge. I also put a lot of my personal experiences on shaping the relationship of Verge and Daily as well. Daily is heavily based on an actual person I know… not so much the characterization, but the effect that person causes on people (including/especially myself). I wouldn’t say that the characters are just sides of me. I got a lot of inspiration from movie characters, and from things I hear from friends and therapy patients. But yes, overall I will say much from the story is a personal expression from myself.

J: Talk about the gameplay design: you had two very distinct gameplay types in one game. How did you come up with those two styles? Did it just come along as part of the premise or did you really have to think about what you wanted gameplay to be like?
N: The torture traps puzzle was inspired by a minigame from Befuddle Quest 4 Dead, a community game in RMN. That minigame consisted of using a set of tiles to change the direction of a zombie to make sure he got to his grave. In BE:D the tiles don’t change directions, but cause various effects, and the path of the victim is fixed. I actually came up with this puzzle idea before I decided to invest on the psychological aspect of the game. This was my first design idea after I decided on the concept.

Initially I wanted the main character to be a very powerful and rich dungeoneer, so he would have some sort of thug team that would catch random victims on the street and bring to him. But I decided “hunting” would be more fun. I’ve played a lot of dating sims before, so I thought this would be a good way to execute the hunting.

J: The musical selections really spoke to the themes of the game, and individual scenes. How did you decide on what songs to use? Can you tell us any songs you considered using, but didn’t?
N: Even before the concept, I decided I would use a song from Dida Mendes, because he’s a personal friend and I wanted to show his work. Gladly, “Make Believe” fitted nicely.

“Mad World” is a song I really like, and I think the lyrics match perfectly the “hunting” scene. “Woman Reminiscing” from Ravi Shankar is a theme I always liked, and I know it is the kind of song a lot of people wouldn’t just sit and listen to, because it is weird and somewhat disturbing… which is exactly why I used it in the game. “Come away with me” is also a song I always liked, it’s soothing and romantic… the lyrics somewhat matched the situation, and I wanted a love song to play when Verge tortured Daily, because that final scene was, given the game’s context, Verge and Daily making love.

There is a particular song I wanted to use but I didn’t, because even though I listened to it all the time while making the game, it didn’t fit the game at all. I won’t name it because it would sound stupid. But the word “Escape” is in the title.

J: I was particularly intrigued by how you portrayed online communities, and I think you really nailed a lot of the little social nuances involved. What kind of experience do you have personally with online communities?
N: I have a lot of experiences with all sorts of online communities, but my analogy was clearly directed towards gamemaking communities.

Many times I’ve seen the debate of “should you make a game for yourself or for other people?”. Many times I’ve seen “reviewers” completely annihilate other people’s projects just so they could show off their amazing technical writing skills. Many times I’ve seen people create and be praised for games that reflected nothing of their individualities, but only reproduced current trend and community standards. I wanted to recreate those things inside the game. And the funny thing is that nothing in BE:D explicitly requires you to do stuff like giving hope to the victim, using many torture styles or making a beautiful escape. You end up doing that (or trying to) just because the community wants you to. Of course, it’s also the challenge aspect of the gameplay, but you could just quickly kill the victims or do the torture by your own ideas and the story would play the same.

J: What’s been the reaction in your personal life to this project? Have friends or family had any comment on this?
N: The reaction has been mostly from myself, because making the game was a very strange experience for me. It was dedicating 15 hours/day for 2 weeks to a sadistic, depressing concept. I actually didn’t show the game to many friends because most don’t speak English. When my brothers watched me making the game, they said “I’m NOT gonna play this!”. One of them played it, but the other one didn’t, and won’t.

J: You mentioned your profession is as a psychotherapist, how has that background affected your ability to make a game with this kind of psychological and emotional weight?
N: I believe not directly. I know psychological theories, and I have the edge of having heard all sorts of people intimately talking about their personal experiences to me. But I can’t point any specific thing regarding those elements that appear in the game. I guess I could just say that, overall, I have a better insight of the human mind.

J: If you were talking to someone who was doing, or wanted to do, the types of things your characters do in this game, what would you say to them? What questions would you ask?
N: If he was a therapy patient, I would warn him about the consequences of his actions, and try to teach him ways to reach similar types of satisfaction through healthier means.

If he were just a random person, I wouldn’t say anything, just ask questions and try to understand how the person thinks. I would ask what kind of person would he like to torture, when does he feel like torturing the most, when did he start feeling those things, etc… the sort of stuff I would ask in therapy, but for personal curiosity. It would be an interesting conversation, actually. That was an interesting question as well.

J: What type of video games do you like to play?
N: Mostly RPGs, puzzle and strategy. I really don’t play videogames much nowadays… my current gaming experience is almost exclusively on amateur games from communities I’m in. I like either addictive puzzle games (like Picross) or games that bring innovative concepts and that reflect some individuality from the creator.

J: What are some of your personal inspirations from film, music, and literature?
N: One movie that really inspired BE:D was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I was fascinated by the idea of a guy that was deeply in love with a girl, but not because he wanted to have sex, he just wanted her scent. I sympathize a lot with Grenouille, even though he is a murderer. He’s just a guy in love.

I guess the movie Sin City inspired me a bit as well, visually. Despite the obviousness, Saw and Hostel did not inspire me. I just watched the first Saw, and I didn’t like it. I watched Hostel after I started making BE:D. I took some sounds from it, but it didn’t inspire me. I can’t recall anything else… I guess real life inspired me more than art this time.

J: At the end of the day, what do you want people to experience while playing Beautiful Escape? And what do you want them to come away with after playing the game?
N: Well… I guess I want people to feel something playing the game. I want them to feel uneasy, disturbed, and slightly depressed. BE:D was my take on “I can make a horror game too!”.

But mostly, all my effort was directed to making the player sympathize with Verge… put the player in his shoes. Which is in a way absurd, considering Verge is a sadistic killer. But he is also human. Considering the feedback I got, I think my success is relative… some people do feel the humanity in Verge, some hate Verge but enjoy the disturbing atmosphere of the game, and some are just appalled by the whole thing… which is also an interesting reaction.

J: Do you plan to make future games? If so, is there anything you have planned that you’d like to clue us in on?
N: I do, but nothing like Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer. I don’t want to do horror/depressing/psychological games any time soon. I like the formula of adding a story to a simple gameplay element, like a puzzle… making it a puzzle adventure. I’ll probably stick with this formula.

The idea I’m flirting with right now is a strategy/turn-based sports game. I’m hyped with the whole championship/competition thing after the World Cup. I’ll add some story to it, maybe something like… demigods as athletes. Not sure yet. But it will definitely be MUCH lighter than BE:D.