Daniel Remar is the developer of your pick for Free Indie of the Year 2008, Iji, which just received an update. He was kind enough to conduct an email interview with us about the game, his influences, and how to live up to community hype.

What was the initial inspiration for Iji? The game has drawn comparisons to Metroid, Out Of This World/Another World, and Deus Ex. Were those games influences on you?

Yes, plus System Shock 2, Blackthorne, Equinox and others. There’s too many of them to recall, but it also includes movies like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, hence the violence/xenophobia angle. I actually liked Nausicaä as someone who was so extremely, improbably idealistic about nonviolence that she (spoilers) flew straight at someone while displaying that she was unarmed, in the belief it would make him hesitate to shoot her, which obviously didn’t work in the end. Iji doesn’t go to that extreme even when playing pacifist though.
 

Iji’s development took four years before initial release, and it’s still being updated. What’s the average amount of time in a week you spend on the game?

During initial development, it probably peaked at 80 hours a week but was sometimes 0. I took many month-long breaks as well. Inspiration came and went quickly, especially when I worked on something really demanding that nearly made me quit, such as animating the characters. For the 1.3 release I worked around 5 hours per week, and now it’s zero again since I’m done.

How do you stay motivated during such a long-term project?

I often didn’t, but I found that motivation tends to return after a few months of not getting anything done. Sometimes I just forced myself to work, especially when tiling levels or programming menus, which helped because I wouldn’t have finished the game otherwise. Seeing the final product was worth it, even if it’s easy to forget how long I spent making it. I think everyone, including teams, who work on something for a long time struggle a lot with motivation.

There are a lot of different subsytems of play going on in the game — character leveling, weapon crafting, hacking, etc. — yet the game plays very simply and naturally. How do you place that much functionality into a game and still keep it easy on the player? Were there mechanics you had to revise heavily or dump all together?

I don’t think it’s that easy on the player, considering the heavy tutorial in the first level (which comes right after the information-heavy intro cutscene). I made most of the gameplay optional, like cracking and some of the stats, but actually predicted that considerably more people would think the game was bad and boringdue to the inability to fire while jumping. It was a balance issue that would make the game completely different, much like crawling or firing at angles. Instead people mainly think the graphics and writing are what detracts from the game, which is just as fair of course.

There’s a real feeling while playing Iji that every choice a player makes has a real effect on the game, not just a superficial one. How did you go about making small choices feel important? Why do you think we see this sort of thing so rarely in games?

I didn’t think much of it, to be honest. One day I just thought, hey, why does this logbook and Dan talk about things I obviously never did, or pretend something never happened? So I started including modifiers, most of which people usually don’t notice since they’re subtle and text-related, and pretty soon I were adding pretty important ones. Actions in one level which affects a later one, things like that. I think it’s mainly left out of other games because it takes too much time, resources and team coordination to add (neither of which I had any trouble with, being a lone developer without a deadline). Some players have told me that they like the feeling of irreversible choices, however small, rather than being able to both have the cake and eat it. Or every player leveling up the same character that will become the master of everything in the end – compare System Shock 2 to Bioshock here, or the characters and story in most linear JRPGs. Then again when players learn to “Reboot” and redistribute their stats for a price in Iji, they don’t feel as attached to their character as the first time they played, only their choices.

This is a hugely polished and in-depth project. Did you ever think about releasing it commercially?

Nope, since I wanted as many people as possible to experience it, otherwise the time would really have been wasted. And as I’ve said before, if I wanted a far better hourly wage than spending four years on a game that wouldn’t sell that well, I’d just have gotten a summer job. There are also legal difficulties with the ending song and the original sound effects, which I don’t own any rights to. I was told that the only way I could release the game with these sound effects, however I have modified them, would require Iji to be free.

What changes are there in the latest update? How much farther than 1.3 do you think development will go?

Most of the changes were in the pacifist modifiers, script and the addition or moving of some secrets. Many changes were just bugfixes, or internal or cosmetic things. And since the release of this version, I’ve stopped working on the game and will only update it if there’s some serious bug that needs fixing. I’d rather move on than polish the same thing forever, and people would never be satisfied.

Iji’s received a lot of positive attention from the gaming community, including being voted Free Indie of the Year by our audience. How does it feel to have such a long-term project be so lauded?

It’s hard to say. As a creator that has now gotten lots of feedback and opinions, ranging from “pretentious garbage” to “Cave Story”, positive reinforcement only reminds me that there is negative as well. So I’m mostly emotionally indifferent to the feedback, strange as it sounds even to me, but it does make me happy that so many have enjoyed the game and have managed to connect to it despite the flaws.

After all, as much as I wish I could make the next Super Metroid, I know that a ton of people still wouldn’t like it. So as a word of wisdom to all the players of games out there, remember that opinions are subjective. Before I started making games, I was also that guy saying many popular games didn’t “deserve” the praise they got and I “couldn’t understand” how anyone could possibly like them. As a result I started enjoying games I hadn’t before – changing or lowering your standards (when it comes to anything, really) will make you enjoy more in life.

Actually, there’s a secret logbook in Iji 1.3 that contains quotes about my previous games, mostly strange, amusing or negative in nature. I am aware of what people are saying about Iji – if your forum shows up on Google, I have read it, probably more than once. In fact, some of the most important design mistakes I’ve fixed in Iji’s updates were thanks to me Googling the game and finding critiscising comments, which the writers sometimes thought would hurt my feelings if they mailed them to me (in rare cases because they also contained personal attacks). Don’t take this as an invitation to send me suggestions though, remember that I’ve stopped updating it. :p I also couldn’t possibly implement the more radical suggestions people have sent me, like multiplayer or a level editor which would mean I’d have to rewrite the entire game.

Speaking of which, people sometimes assume a lot of things about the game and myself, which is saddening but not surprising. As with all media, my game is a medium of communication between me and my players that can’t possibly convey everything. I don’t know if all these interviews are helping or not…

Have you started working on any other projects? If so, can you tell us anything about them?

I haven’t started on anything yet, and I can’t promise anything about the completion date of future games. According to secret logs and conversations found in Iji, Hero 2 and another retro game are what I want to do next, but I’m going to have less and less time on my hands now. Iji landed me a game designing job and some proposals (job proposals – I make computer games, remember).

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Daniel!

Download the latest version of Iji on Daniels website: LINK