AyC: As a developer but also as a fan of the genre, you seem to be very involved in the adventure game world. What differences can you see between this very moment and back at the time when you left Revolution?

SI: If you look back to the point when I left

SI: – that was three and a half years ago – I think that adventures, as a whole, were going through a bit of a low period. But if you look at adventures now, I think that we’re in a good place, or we’re coming up to some good times. There are a lot of exciting games, for me, coming out soon – Overclocked, Memento Mori, Gray Matter, Mata Hari, Culpa Innata, our own game [laughs]. But you know what I mean; there are a lot of good quality, character-driven games, which is encouraging for the genre as a whole. We’re in a better position now, than we were three years ago.

AyC: What future can you foresee for the genre comparing to the one you foresaw then?

SI: I think it’s potentially better. There are a lot of good adventure sites, adventure gaming sites, which are helping with promoting the good games, because without the quality sites – people like yourselves, who come to these events, do the interviews, help publicize the games and so on – people wouldn’t be aware of what’s going on. I think that having a strong community just helps us all so much and I do think that all the developers should get more involved in the community because it’s kind of giving back something. I know that we have the games to kind of give something, but I think that just… being involved and being aware of what people are thinking helps so much. If you go to a forum and somebody is saying some horrible things about one game or some lovely things about another game, it’s really useful to know what those opinions are. If people say “I didn’t like that character” or “I love this style of play”, developers can take that information and you can influence how developers approach huge projects and I think that that’s important. Developers have got to be aware of the trends in taste, if you like.

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AyC: Quite a lot of time ago now we knew about your own project, which is based on your own comic strip, Juniper Crescent: The Sapphire Claw. In what state is it now?

SI: At the moment it’s on hold because I’ve been trying to get funding for it, unfortunately with it being 2D it’s turned out to be a very expensive project, so I need to kind of explore the possibility of doing it in 3D, but I don’t want to, as I’m not able to do very good 3D characters. I’m not really a 3D modeller, so I’ve been trying to teach myself 3D modelling in order to see whether I can pull off a nice character.

I want to do this game because the story is fun, the characters are fun, and some of the ideas are designed to achieve the best gameplay. The main idea is having a team of characters, each of which has a specific skill and using them almost like an inventory item, you know, you use a character on something. You have a strong character who breaks down the door, or you have a small character who can fit through a hole. When they go through that hole you’re controlling that character… so switching control between the different characters. I wanted to build on that so much more, to go beyond what I’d done before. Although it’s intended to be a traditional point and click adventure, I wanted it to be richer with more characters doing different things. But as I said, it’s unfortunately on hold at the moment.

AyC: Apart from the posh girl who is the main character of So Blonde, what other kind of characters have you’ve written for this game?

SI: We have one who’s the lead male character and he’s rather a dashing guy who Sunny quite fancies. But we quickly find out that he only has eyes for Morgane, the female pirate captain, and she’s quite a strong character, and she keeps changing; one time she’s opposing Sunny, then she’s a friend and then she’s opposing her again and it’s an odd kind of relationship. Then there are people around the town, there’s a lovely old lady, who keeps popping up and she’s the town gossip, we’ve got the bank manager, who Sunny asks, “Can you give me some money on my credit card?” and he says, “What’s this? I don’t know what a credit card is. You’re crazy”. She comes across these problems all the time, she needs some money because she’s spotted this wonderful dress in the shop, there’s always this type of objectives she needs to overcome. Then we have another guy which is the head of the island… there’s lot of fun stuff.

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AyC: You were the game designer for Broken Sword 3. Have you followed that kind of puzzles or we can see a more “conventional” adventure game with So Blonde?

SI: There are similarities in my approach but some of the things derive from Sunny’s nature, you know the fact that she’s a seventeen year old girl in this very strange world, whereas in the Broken Sword game you design your puzzles around the fact that George is a very different character in a very different story. He’s kind of… well in the first game he was much more reluctant than he was in, say, Broken Sword 3, and so he was very proactively trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. For instance, he flew out to the Congo in order to investigate a lead he’d been given. You approach the puzzles in a very different way, in that he’s a guy who’s very actively trying to achieve something, when with Sunny it’s kind of like she’s trying to do something which to her is quite ordinary, like finding some money and buying a dress in a shop or something like this. The puzzles, the obstacles are just to stop her doing these things, so…

As I said the bank manager just don’t know what a credit card is so he can’t give her any of the local money so she needs to kind of work out how she’s going to get the money to buy the dress. I mean there’s always going to be some similarities because it’s an adventure in the sense that you create puzzles to fit the genre.

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