SPIRAL
Spiral is a third-person narrative-driven exploration game by Folklore Games. Spiral is all about sharing a poetic vision of cognitive degeneration seen from the inside. It tells the story of Bernard, a man who wishes goodbye one last time to the memories that built him from his early childhood to who he is today.
Let your emotions be caught at every turn as you realize the connection humans have to everyday objects- and, other people as well. Read through Bernard’s journal, and watch his life, quite literally, unfold in front of your eyes.
Spiral is planned to release in 2023, and will be on Steam- however, there is a demo available on Steam for anyone looking to explore Bernard’s world early!
Sarah: Hi, this is Sarah. I'm here with Mikhael from Folklore Games. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Mikhael: Yes, I'm the Creative Director at Folklore Games. And essentially I'm making sure that everyone is on the same page. We're all heading in the same direction then I'm handling most of the game design for Spiral.
Sarah: So, can you tell us a little bit about Spiral?
Mikhael: Of course, it's a narrative-driven exploration game sharing a poetic vision of cognitive degeneration seen from the inside. Essentially, you become a witness to Bernard’s life and try to remember it for him as he slowly forgets. So throughout the game, we're going to visit multiple memories from Bernard’s life from his early childhood until we get back to the older version we meet at the beginning of the game. And while exploration is at the core of the experience while this is happening, mechanics are there to help you connect with him. So if his father is teaching you how to fish, you will wander around the fishing while you hide from his mother when she's trying to punish him, playing role-playing games, and a few more, but we are still keeping them under wraps.
Sarah: Awesome. I love the secretiveness of things, honestly. What has been your favorite part about working on this game?
Mikhael: That's a huge question. *laughs* I think at first, at I'm the core I'm a designer and that's what they assigned me for, but with Spiral (the team) I started to grow more and more and I became more of a manager to an extent: making sure everyone was doing what they needed to do in the game and also making sure that everyone knew what the game was about and was giving a part of them to the game to make it evolve and change.
Sarah: Right.
Mikhael: And it's that little spark of everyone that came to our game. I mean, that's another long story, but we are a small self-developing self-funded indie. So we have many people working part-time with us so they come in, work with us for a few months and then go out and go back to another job, a full-time job that we cannot offer them. So we like to have all of them leave a trace instead of the game.
Sarah: That's awesome. I love to hear that. What has been the hardest part so far?
Mikhael: If I speak as an administrator, I'd say finding funding. That's something that's been extremely difficult. We have not found anything yet. Everything is from our pockets so far.
Sarah: Okay.
Mikhael: So that's definitely a hard part. Otherwise, I think as a developer the hardest part is making sure everything works together so that our vision is what the game is but also that it reflects properly cognitive degeneration disease, but also that it does not frustrate players. So there are a lot of tests with that. We have another iteration and then we go back and forth, like scratch various things and start from scratch because it's not what we want it to be or it's just too frustrating or it doesn't reflect perfectly what we want.
Sarah: Lots of little things to change. Yeah. Speaking of that, if you could go back in time and change anything — either in this game or your whole experience working in gaming — is there anything that you would change? And what would that be?
Mikhael: Two things that could be changed. I'd say, first of all, Spiral is our first game for our studio. We should probably have started with the smaller game. That would have been a better idea; easier to just ship a first one. And when you have the first game it's easier to find funding afterward — that might have been wiser to do. Otherwise, information. So every year we seem to discover something new to either work technique or wait to receive some funds for the games or way to work that helps us. So, having all that information from the start things would maybe have been a little bit faster and easier from the start. But otherwise, I'd say I'm happy where we are heading. It's difficult and slow. But the game is being created and we won't stop.
Sarah: It's a beautiful game too. So whatever process you are using, I definitely think it's working. What advice would you give to anybody that's looking to get into game development and do what you do? Or just in general, any advice?
Mikhael: Anyone that wants to start working with games, I’d go with some advice I was given many years ago. If you want to work — and even more, to start an indie game studio — you need to either do that before you start the career or at the end of your career. Because if you have a full-time job, a house, and a family, you can’t just drop everything and not make any money for a few years. So you need to do that when just before you start your career or at the end. And maybe that will be your career in the end. But it’s harder to do in the middle of a career, to just drop everything. So I share that advice and if you do want to create a studio: find an idea and find the right thing. You having money and having someone that backs you is awesome, of course — that means you can start working full time and give all you have to the project. But if you have a team with you, and they all think that the idea is awesome, you can create something even without that said funds.
Sarah: Awesome. All right. What made you decide to make Spiral? Because I know it's about like a degenerative process. Was there any inspiration behind choosing that as the theme?
Mikhael: Yeah, that came from personal experience. So, many years ago, my grandmother and two of her sisters were all diagnosed with cognitive degeneration disease. My grandmother was dementia, one of her sisters was Alzheimer's, and the third one was just a nameless cognitive disease. So some people will express themselves through drawing, others with singing or writing: I do by designing games. So, I started just a little something that I brought to the team and we all worked together and it eventually became Spiral.
Sarah: I love that and it actually even reminds me of something. I don't remember what artist it was… I want to say maybe Picasso, where like, his art changed as he got older. And I think there was somebody who did that. So I love thinking that this game is how you express that. That's awesome. All right, is there anything else you want to share with people, the listeners? Do you want to plug your game or anything else about yourself?
Mikhael: I’m not one that speaks about myself a lot, but I'd say go try the game. We know the game is niche and it's not for everyone, but if you enjoy narrative games or if you want to learn more or open up discussions about cognitive degeneration disease: try Spiral, join our Discord, and of course, email and ask us questions. We love feedback and questions all the time.
Sarah: Where can they find you and find the game?
Mikhael: This demo is available on Spiral and itch.io. Otherwise, we have Discord, Twitter, and Facebook. And on our website, Folklore.games where you'll have you'll be able to find all the links to all of that. I'm not the person for social media things. I know they exist, but that's about it. *laughs*
Sarah: *laughs* That's fair because I'm the social media person and then there’s like the editing team and I don’t know what they do. I’m like, “Go you”. I don't know how they do it. *laughs* Alright, well, thank you again so much, Mikhael. It was a pleasure. So thank you for interviewing with us today.
Mikhael: Thank you. It's really a pleasure meeting you.