GCORES 2025 interview

I gave an interview to Lee Cisco for GCORES (a Chinese website about videogames). You can find the article in Chinese here.

The inteview was performed in English, so I’m publishing the original here.

(LC - Lee Cisco. ED - Elias Daler)

LC: Your current project runs on actual PS1 hardware, which is incredibly impressive. What motivated you to develop a brand-new game for actual PS1 hardware? Was it nostalgia, a technical challenge, or something else that drew you to the platform?

ED: Thank you. The project started a year ago while I was burned out by my game that I was writing in Vulkan. This is a very low level graphics API that requires you to manually manage a lot of things. Even though I managed to make a somewhat easy to use engine with it, I still found myself worrying about many engine aspects and spending too much time on unimportant things instead of making the game itself.

I wanted to work on something else for a while and then I remembered about Pikuma’s PSX course - that’s how I started doing PS1 programming. Developing games for older consoles seemed pretty magical for me and I always wanted to make a game for an older platform. I also thought that PlayStation 1’s minimalism and constraints would force me to stay focused on important things.

The technical challenge part is a big motivator for me as well. PS1 has only 2MB of RAM and its CPU is very slow (33 Mhz) which forces you to care a lot about how you use memory, reduce allocations to a bare minimum, pack everything into smaller binary files and so on. It forces me to implement very performant and bloat-free code.

The limitations also force me to make smaller, less detailed environments. The low resolution hides the lack of detail which is great for quickly choosing textures and making models without much polish - if some object only takes a few pixels on the screen, spending hours on it is pointless - a quick “sketch” would do just fine.

And lastly, I love PS1 as a platform. It has a lot of incredible, bizarre, quirky, artsy games on it. Its limited and “imperfect” graphics - wobbly polygons, affine texture mapping, low resolution - make the games look unique and instantly recognizable as PS1. It’s no wonder a lot of indie games try to emulate PS1 graphics style these days. To me, PS1 is just at the right spot of graphics where your imagination does a lot of work and all the limitations just increase the atmosphere of the games and how it all feels - gritty, somewhat spooky, high contrast, alive.

LC: Could you share a bit about the world or story behind the game? What’s the setting like, and what kind of themes, atmosphere, or emotions are you hoping to explore through the narrative?

ED: A lot of the story is still in a very rough state and many things might change in the future.

My game will take a place in something that feels like 90s/00s, but is more technologically advanced than that. However, many characters use retro tech, and not just for nostalgia reasons. I don’t want to spoil it yet.

I also want to explore the theme of video games as well. I’m inspired by games such as Retro Game Challenge and Nanashi no Game. Some people say it’s best to make your art about the things you love and I love video games. I love video games which have video games in them, and there’s also a concept of “fantasy console” (e.g. PICO-8) that I find interesting. A recent game, UFO 50, did an incredible job exploring this concept - something like “what if a platform existed that was something like NES, but more powerful?”.

I also find the work, art and writings of Arne Niklas Jansson very inspiring, for example his Famicube article explores a very similar concept of more powerful NES and how the games might have looked for the platform.

And lastly, one topic that concerns me a lot is AI. I find it pretty funny that almost no one predicted the way the technology would evolve in… You had all sorts of evil robots and hyper-intelligence in sci-fi, but almost no one predicted generative content and the way people would use AI chat bots this day (Her (2013) now feels very prophetic…). I hope to explore how AI might affect the world if its used to extreme and it won’t be a very optimistic picture.

LC: You’ve written in your devlogs about doing everything―from programming to animation. What part of solo development do you find the most rewarding―and which part drives you a little crazy?

ED: There are a lot of benefits of solo development. First of all, you can do it at your own pace. Secondly, you can polish and refine everything to your liking without anyone objecting to it. I think I’m a very strict person and very particular about my tastes and what I consider “cool” or “beautiful”… I’m worried that unless me and the artist are on the same page, we’d disagree about character design choices, for example.

On the other hand, the part that drives me crazy is how much work you need to do. I don’t have enough much time for making art and music. Programming just takes a lot of time. And I’m not a great artist either so making things look good takes a lot of time, compared to what a professional artist could do in a much quicker time period.

LC: The environments and mood in your game feel very distinct. From a visual standpoint, how do you approach creating that atmosphere using the limited graphical capabilities of the PS1?

ED: Most of the environments in the game so far have been placeholders that I made to have something somewhat OK looking so that people don’t get bored of looking at abstract/test environments.

However, I still try to make it look pleasant because I don’t want to be looking at ugly levels for long periods of time. (And other people won’t like looking at them either). I feel like the most important thing in my environments is the use of vertex colors. I paint them manually. To me, vertex colors usually look much better than dynamic lighting. I feel like more indie games should use them - many PS1-style games I see either have flat lighting or dynamic lighting which doesn’t make games look as good as they could have. With vertex colors, it’s easy to make deep shadows, make your scene have good contrast and greater sense of depth.

LC: Outside of game development, what’s something that recently inspired you creatively―maybe a book, movie, place, or even a dream?

ED: I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately since many video games just don’t have that vibe that I’m looking for. Many movies (especially non-mainstream ones) seems to be aimed at older audience and explain more mature and adult topics which many video games barely touch on.

There have been two movies I recently watched that greatly inspired me. The first one is Stalker (1979). This movie is surrealist and its use of environments, slow pace and philosophical dialogue made me think a lot about doing something similar in my game. Another movie that I liked recently was Videodrome (1983). The movie is incredible at making you question what is really happening and what is a main character’s delusion. Sort of like The Machinist (2004).

A frequent dream I have is getting lost in a sprawling subway with all kinds of weird subway stations, tunnels, underpasses, transfers… Some of the ideas I get out of them would totally be in the game.

LC: A lot of Chinese indie devs use this platform. Do you have anything you’d like to say to them―maybe some advice or thoughts from your own journey?

ED: My advice is to be yourself. Think about what kind of things you want to make and do it. Remember the “indie” part of it - care less about profit or following some trend. Make something which wouldn’t ever be greenlit in AAA industry. Make something that a conservative publisher wouldn’t approve or would avoid as “unsellable”.

I adore obscure, “artsy” indie games and weird older AA games that are mostly art / passion projects not meant for general consumption. If you feel like something is missing from modern media and if you don’t like some of the modern trends, just try making something different yourself - no one can stop you from doing it.

LC: Just a light-hearted one to end with―have you been watching any anime lately? And if you had to choose, what’s your all-time favorite? :D

ED: I’ve been watching some more obscure 90s/00s anime. I don’t like modern anime much and have seen most of the mainstream classics, so now I’m just ignoring the ratings on any websites and just watching stuff that seems interesting.

My all-time favorite is Neon Genesis Evangelion + End of Evangelion. Might be a bit of a boring answer, but I feel like this anime haven’t been surpassed in many aspects - it’s just perfect in so many ways. But let me plug my two more obscure favorites: Cat Soup and Kuuchu Buranko. Just watch them, there’s nothing quite as surreal and psychological as those two.