8 years of BLUE REVOLVER
It’s been 8 years since we released BLUE REVOLVER.
I had the idea for the game system in university – and I guess I had long enough to think about it that development was a remarkably straight shot. (The other idea I had was “a metroidvania with a strict 30-minute game timer”, a dark idea carrying only blood, pain and fear behind it.) Resource management, short chains, loose tolerances, multiple options. But it would take meeting some of the most talented artists and musicians in the world to actually be able to turn those hollow words into an actual gamesoft.
The thrill and the novelty of making a “real game” – which I really do think is a thing you can see and feel – comes and goes. These days, making a little ship move around carries only a small thrill – all that time ago, taking a sprite sheet and making it wobble around, making the orbital gun-bits smoothly swing, making the big laser surge out – was so powerfully exciting in itself. One simple particle class, a multi-explosion system, both shamelessly lifted from inspirations and lending our game a sense of grit and “realness” immediately. I do still like working on this kind of thing… even if I really want to move away from strobe-flashing effects as much as possible next time!
But it was that one part of stage 3, with the original soundtrack’s breakdown sequence, where the game struggles to keep up, spewing enemies and points and bullets and particles and dynamic background layers –
– to flourish, and flourish, and flourish… until it lets up, the music breathes, and if you kept up with all that; a full-stop of a bonus before the boss comes along.
That’s when I felt there really was something quite special we were doing. And I had a similar moment doing this update. There’s one spot in stage 5, with the new soundtrack… well, if you know, you know.
By the way... what would happen if you checked the hex code for the shade of white that the game's internal "Dawnbringer 16" palette uses? Probably nothing, right? Strange coincidence enthusiasts may want to sit down first.
Critically, the game is in an awkward position. It’s in a genre that still isn’t understood well in the anglosphere – indeed, the deluge of bullet-hell-as-aesthetic games has displaced the genre even more. A year ago, I felt quite bitter about this. Now? I resolve to find the answer. It’s not the type of story you can go on about for long. It’s a difficult game that requires thought, practice and execution. To get anywhere at all, you need to engage with an idea of “scoring” – FLOURISHING, BREAKING – an immediately abstract thing which is nevertheless the game’s beating heart. My part of the project, at least, came from a love of the minutae of game systems and a frustration at the lack of Cave/Raizing-style STG that felt readily available to a layman and at-home on PC – these aren’t things that are easy to get across in a review, or a video, or a stream… and the audience for such qualities is a fraction upon a fraction.
And yet it moves. And yet, our game reviews are full of glowing hundred-hour appraisals. People talk about how to best wrestle with this thing – to me, a bunch of pngs, lua files and Github issues, but to them: a living, breathing game to inhabit and challenge. I know of multiple people who got into the genre and are making their own stuff now because of our work. I’ve met new people, and been to new places – you have no idea how good the staff catering at Stunfest is, man – off the back of a silly shooting game about OP special weapons.
It’s been 8 years.
I’m supposed to be washed up, burnt out, old, some crap like that. I’m supposed to have wasted my big chance. I’m supposed to have nothing interesting left to say or do. Unlikely. I feel more creative than I have felt in a long while, I feel my perspective has changed in a good way, and I feel like there is now an infinite sky of possibilities above my head. I remember launching this game, going to a local restaurant on a grey evening unchanged by clicking the Steam launch button – eating a mediocre chicken balmoral with a head full of static. That bleak, vague “Now what?” feeling after launch has, over time, simply become the word “Now.”
(And I have a while yet to consider what my true ura-loop celebration meal is going to be.)
I want to thank our players who’ve waited so long. I want to thank the many talented artists, musicians, sound people, translators and testers who’ve contributed – without whom it really would just be a bunch of lua files. I want to thank the generous souls who’ve championed our game, even when I couldn’t stomach the thought.
More than anyone, I want to thank woof – someone who is still a close friend and an immense inspiration. He’s working on his own thing right now. I’d love to cross minds again with him in the future, but no matter what the future holds, I wish him only a small thing:
The very best that all the world can offer.