Hate

If I could pick just one project, out of all my numerous unfinished previous works, that I could go back to and actually complete, it would be Hate. From a design standpoint, it was a game I’d long wanted to make. It hit all the marks - it was a roguelike, it was Lovecraftian, and it was modern.

I’d been a roguelike fan for a while, and I had made previous solo attempts at creating them. Also, back then I felt Lovecraftian themes where not well represented in games, which were mostly dominated by Tolkien-esque fantasy and science fiction (today, you could argue there’s TOO much Lovecraft in games).

As for modernization, well believe it or not, at that time, “roguelike” was not a term that even most other game developers had heard of, let alone players. Roguelike is a genre that has influenced a great many of the games we know and love, and this was true even then - yet very few people knew what a roguelike was. So, as a result of the genre’s obscurity, or perhaps the cause of it, roguelike games at that time were often extremely arcane, in the presentation and in their usability. All the top roguelikes of that time were ASCII-character based, with no real graphics, and often with no colors, and learning the games required you to have a programmers patience, and in some cases a programmers knowledge, just to get a meaningful start.

But I loved roguelikes, because I knew at their core, they are wonderful experiences, and I felt certain there was an opportunity here. If someone were to make a good roguelike, but with modern graphics and good usability, there was potential to make something special, and make good money doing it.

It’s funny to think there was a time when the term “roguelike” or “with roguelike elements” wasn’t a top bullet point for every third game coming out, but it’s true. I’m not sure how roguelikes captured the game development zeitgeist (especially in the independent scene) but it did, and nowadays roguelike and rogue-LITE games are everywhere. So, maybe I can take this to mean I wasn’t wrong. Making a modern roguelike WAS a good idea.

Anyway, I pitched this project to some then-colleagues of mine, and we agreed to make the attempt. Of particular great luck was my opportunity to work with Randis, a world class artist, already somewhat internationally known for his game related paintings. But Randis was not merely a painter. He could do seemingly everything - modeling, animation, design, ui/ux, motion graphics, music, video editing… all at a professional level, and all extremely fast. We lived on opposite sides of the planet, and I remember how, practically every day, I’d wake, start work, and see all the changes he had made to the game while I was asleep. It was always amazing to see, and greatly motivational.

I suppose that’s a fourth thing then. The genre, the theme, the goal, all matched, but on top of it all we had a great team putting the game together. Besides Randis and myself as programming lead, we had Mark (my long time friend and collaborator, with as many years programming experience as I had) helping with code and John St. John (aka Trenthian) doing the music (a genius at his craft!) among others.

So why did we stop working on it? Lots of reasons, but I suppose I’m due the most blame. I remember seeing the work ahead and while I loved what we were making, I think I was feeling a sense of intimidation in it all, and maybe more than a bit of burnout. Having recently stopped worked on another project for scope reasons, facing the possibility of scope problems again gave me cold feet. So, I recommended to the team we explore other ideas that are more inherently scope constrained (such as a shmup), with the idea being that we speed launch something simple, and then come back to Hate once we are making all the money. We never came back to Hate.

So yeah, not finishing Hate is one of my biggest regrets in game development. It truly was a missed opportunity, knowing that roguelikes and lovecraftian themes really did become big in the following years, but also, more importantly, not finishing a game that had so much positive momentum and potential, with great people I loved working with.

It’s not all bad news though. We all went on to do other great things - for my part I’m particularly proud of my work on The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, which likely would’t have happened if life had taken me in other directions.