• Hello Ivan, congratulations for the release of your first game. How do you feel after this long work?
A total liberation and an incredible satisfaction, for me it all started as a trial, the idea of creating a game from scratch had always fascinated me. Over time, the project has become something bigger and more structured.
Compared to the beginning, things were becoming more complicated, but it was a great challenge for me.
• Three years ago you were a novice developer, tell us a little about the challenges you had to face to complete the project.
Being a graph, surely the part of programming was the most difficult because initially I did not know the engine, so I had to learn how it worked first of all. The engine is called Construct 2.
In general, the story was also very complex, both because I was not going to tell something trivial, so I tried as much as possible to be profound, both because it was very difficult to hold the reins of a narrative and at the same time establish how it would be carried out on the level of the game.
• Let's talk a bit about the game: living dead, ghosts and scientists with balls ready to run all the way to Scotland on a Mustang. This is a game with many references, fantasy, but also related to your life?
There are no particular references to my life, rather that I have included what I really liked, in fact the references we find take us back to horror movies, obviously to some historical videogames of the past, but also to some characters from the world of cinema or music.
• Why a Metroidvania?
Simply because it's my favorite genre.
• Do you have any other project in your mind? Can you anticipate a little something? Come on, we're sure you have some other hidden idea in a secret crypt, inside a well-sealed treasure chest ... Do not make us find the key.
Yes, I actually have at least three new projects in mind. I still do not know which of the three I will work on, but they will certainly be on the style of Ghostly Matter. In my free time I'm working on a game set in the Far West, with shootings and stuff like that.
On the other hand I would have the desire to carry on the horror genre. The next title could be called "Zombie Matter", which in fact I had thought before Ghostly Matter, set in a city infested with zombies, but with the novelty of the PG switch. And then finally there would be "Alien Matter", with this we could say ended the trilogy.
• Are you willing to enlarge your studio? Maybe ahead of the launch of a new title.
In reality I was only at the beginning and I assume that I will remain only in the future, but only for a matter of optimization of time and resources. It would be very difficult for me to think about splitting the work or setting up a new line of work.
I feel more organized in this way, thus avoiding unnecessary waste of time with the bureaucracy and things like this.
• How was this relationship established between you and Milestone, your publisher?
Milestone was interested in the development of the indie games at that time, but still had nothing definite. By pure chance one day I met a person from Milestone who I talked about about the project. Let's say it was immediately appreciated, indeed it was he who stimulated me to conclude the project.
so the company would have wanted to invest in the publishing of the indies and this, in a sense, I would have been the trailblazer.