As part of a series celebrating The Wreck's first anniversary, here's our last interview. This time, it's with Florent, who co-wrote the game with his sister Coralie and also took care of the game design. Florent actually was in a car accident in 2017 (luckily without any bad consequences apart for a totalled car), which gave him the initial inspiration for The Wreck!
Who are you and what was your role on The Wreck?
My name is Florent, and I co-wrote The Wreck. Plus I tried to pretend I'm a game designer.
What was your favorite moment/thing to do during the production of the game, and what was the one you liked the least?
My favorite moment was when I cut my hair! When we started working on The Wreck, in 2017, I made he weird wish not to cut it until the game was released. Little did I know, that would take us over 5 years! It was fun to begin with but at some point the mere sight of an hair brush would give me the creeps. I really admire people with long hair now!
My least favorite moment was when after working on the game's prototype for over a year and spending quite a lot of money, we realized it just wasn't working. Prototyping narrative games is hard - so much relies on the mood and atmosphere that you can't use crappy placeholder graphics to get a picture of the game you envision - you have to push further. But when you push in the wrong direction, well... It's hard to land back on your feet! Luckily, we had great partners who believed in our ability to turn the boat around, and after a few (hard) months of extra work we came up with a second prototype - which was way more convincing this time! But I feel guilty and I regret having caused that stress for everyone.
What was a thing you learned about your craft making the game that you'd like to share?
Hire a producer! Seriously, when you're a tiny team working with very limited means, it can be tempting to imagine that the game designer or the creative director will also be the team's producer. But the truth is, it's already hard enough to take care of either creative tasks or organizational ones alone - doing both will burn you out. Producers are saints, they work in the shadows for the well being of everyone. Just hire one.