Interview: Ste Curran

Posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 in Gaming & Tech, Gaming Interview.

Last year, at a special reveal of OneBigGame’s first non-profit title, Chime, Ste Curran creative director at Zoë Mode spoke to us about his love of music making, discussed geometric shapes and why comparisons to other block puzzle games don’t do Chime justice.

What’s been your passion behind making Chime?
Ste Curran: I like music and I like video games, and a long time ago we had an idea within Zoë Mode about creating a video game that would let you create music. There are games out there where there’s something of that, but none of those felt quite enough. [At the time, I’d] been playing a lot with sequencers, and still am now. I always felt that there was an element of gameplay there. I think you’re seeing that now in titles like Korg DS and stuff, which are actual releases, but this was prior to that. We were wondering whether we could turn a sequencer into a video game and I think we’ve managed that to an extent with Chime.

You’ve chosen to go with five block shapes (pentominoes) for use in this puzzle game. Can you explain the reason for that?
SC: These are made from five [blocks], and if you think about that that gives you 15 pentominoes. If you have 15 shapes in this game that gets too confusing for the player to remember all of the shapes, so we wanted to restrict the number to seven. So, there is a smaller set that lets you remember which bricks there are in [each] level and allows you to expect. We find that some of those blocks are really, really useful and some of them are a lot more awkward. So, as you progress through levels, the first level has quite friendly blocks to use. By the end level, you’ve got more of the blocks in your set which are slightly more awkward to use, so the game becomes harder as a result.

What were your thoughts when Martin de Ronde contacted you about producing a title for the OneBigGame project?
SC: The driving vision behind Chime has always been to make a good video game. If money from that is going to charity that’s absolutely awesome, it doesn’t affect the fact that Chime has to be brilliant. So, it actually hasn’t affected the development process that much. Aside from the fact that OneBigGame have been a brilliant publisher to work with, because they’ve given us the freedom to make the game that we absolutely want to make. Martin has offered suggestions for what he’d like to see in the game, but he hasn’t at any point said, “This has to be in the game, this has to be this type of game.” So it’s very much Zoë’s game with Martin being a brilliant playtester.

How long has the game been in development?
SC: Officially we’ve been working with OneBigGame since the start of [the project], so that’s about 18 months. As soon as the opportunity came up, Chime seemed to be the perfect fit for that. But the game, in various forms, has existed at Zoë for pretty much as long as I’ve been there, certainly since I’ve had the creative director role. In its nascent form and its early demos, [it] was actually called Cascade. As we moved away from a more ‘cascading’ dynamic that became less appropriate. It’s now called Chime. However, the ‘C’ theme remains which meant we could keep the [C-shaped] logo. [laughs] Yeah, it’s been around for quite a while and it’s been in a process of iterative development. We’ve changed big things in the design, we’ve changed small things in the design, and we’re now at a stage where I’m really happy with the basic game dynamic.

Who are some of the artists you’ve worked with to create the music? How has that process been for you?
SC: Moby and Markus Schulz have both proved the core components of tracks they’ve made and allowed us to produce stuff with their work, and they’ve all done that for free. But Chime is super flexible and works with any style of music, so it gave us, and our music acquisition people, the freedom to approach anyone [we] wanted [to] try and compile this diverse line-up. And it also gives us a framework, if there are future versions of Chime, to explore different directions as well.

Which artists would you like to work with in the future?
SC: I have lots and lots of ideas for things in the future, but right now I’m focused on this version of Chime. And I think the soundtrack we’ve got – is super exciting for me. One of the artists [Philip Glass] was genuinely the most exciting thing to happen to me this year – and that includes winning an award for One Life Left. That’s pretty exciting! And I’m excited as much about the future of Chime as I am about the present, assuming it does commercially and critically well. And I think it should. I hope it should. You know, then, hopefully we can explore some of things we didn’t get a chance to put in this version. That includes a lot of artists.

For those that may be passing it off as a Lumines or Tetris refit, how would you described what’s unique about Chime?
SC: There are certain people who would call Lumines “like Tetris.” They’re completely different games, although they’re in the same genre. [Chime] is as different from Tetris as Lumines is, and it’s as different from Lumines as Tetris is. It is another action puzzle block game. The core difference to any of those games is that in this you are genuinely building the music, every single block you place will affect the music, and I don’t think that’s been done before. [Chime also has] a basic puzzle dynamic which is different from Puyo Puyo, it is different from Columns, it is different from any of those sort of games. There are obviously comparisons with Lumines – [Chime] has a time line – and there are comparisons with Tetris, but there are lots of game’s where you could draw those comparisons as well.