How did your experience as a musician come into play while creating Surveillant? I must admit to becoming a huge fan of “Melodies and Memory” from the Capsule One album while drafting this interview, and it got me wondering whether the tracks you created for Surveillant forced you to expand your stylistic range in any way.
I recorded a lot of music for Surveillant, but eventually removed it from all but one of the levels and the menu screens, which was a hard decision to make as a musician. I just felt because of the nature of the game, ambient sounds and silence were much more effective at conveying the mood. I am a huge fan of Fumito Ueda’s games and Ico, one of the most atmospheric and moving games I have ever played, is almost totally devoid of music. So I took that as evidence that music can sometimes be overused.
What’s on tap for future updates to Surveillant?
Well, I feel as if I have only just scratched the surface with Surveillant. There are a lot of ideas in the back of my mind that I haven’t been able to try out yet. Obviously, more levels will be added in future updates and I hope these will also introduce new features to the gameplay. I’ve been noting suggestions from users and now plan to incorporate some scoring and achievements in the game, which I want to then tie in to Apple’s Game Center. The main thing is, it all depends on the support the game gets from players. Right now, I’m just hoping it will sell enough to enable me to continue development.
And that’s a wrap. Our great thanks goes to Martin Wheeler for taking the time out to trade emails with us — but, oh, what’s this!? He added a giveaway contest just as we were about to go to print? Sounds awesome! Here’s the deal:
“…I experimented during the making of Surveillant with an Orwellian inspired, 1984 style theme, with posters of the nameless supreme leader figure you see below, ‘the Supervisor’.
The image was created by combining the faces of two real 20th century figures (one dead, one still alive).
First correct answer naming both figures wins a free promo code for Surveillant!
Just tweet @recluse_games with your guess.”
So don’t just blurt out the answer here — be sure to pay @recluse_games a visit on Twitter with your response!