The Journey Down – Theo Waern

[b]Adventure Gamers:[/b] So, Theo, how does a white dude from Sweden decide to make a game featuring elements of black African culture?

[b]Theo Waern:[/b] When I was two months old my mother and father stuck me on an airplane and took me with them to Lusaka, Zambia in central Africa. My father had a job working for the UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] with infrastructure planning and we lived there for about one year. Back then the UNDP had some kind of quirky deal with its employees, stating that everyone had their own container to fill with junk going there and back again. My parents chose to pretty much dump all the stuff they had brought with them from Sweden, so on the return trip they found themselves with a huge empty container with their names on it. They decided to fill it with African loot.

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Thus, I’ve been raised in a home bursting with central African arts and crafts. Masks, textiles, drums and all sorts of strange instruments littered my childhood home. I was pretty much surrounded by them, growing up. On top of that, my parents brought tons of African highlife music with them home. This cultural background noise has all become a part of me, and this odd African heritage of mine is something that I’m now finally exploring with the art and ambiance of The Journey Down.

[b]AG:[/b] Were you concerned at all about inadvertently crossing any racial stereotype lines?

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[b]Theo:[/b] I’m not going to say we’ve worried about it but we’ve done our best not to offend anyone, and I’m quite certain we’re in the safe zone. Our goal has never been to be edgy in any way with our characters; they just happen to have an African heritage, that’s all.

[b]AG:[/b] After playing through the game, I still can’t place its general location, or even the time period. Where and when does The Journey Down take place?

[b]Theo:[/b] Well, that’s anyone’s guess. “In my brain” is my best answer.  Time-wise it appears to be some kind of mash-up of the seventies and eighties, with a nice chunk of retro-futurism thrown in for good measure. As for the location, all in all it’s an odd mix, but chapter one is rather contained, and mostly takes place in Kingsport bay, outside the fictional city of St. Armando. I imagine the bay to have a nice warm tropical night-time breeze to it, probably similar to something you’d find in the Caribbean. But the location is by no means intended to represent a specific place here on Earth.

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[b]AG:[/b] Bwana is a very unusual protagonist (in the best possible way). Tell us a little more about him and Kito.

[b]Theo:[/b] Bwana and Kito are both incredibly laid back and relaxed characters. We’ve really done our best to make playing Bwana as fun as possible and have truly geared his whole personality toward that very goal. We didn’t want a generic adventure game protagonist who mopes and groans about all his obstacles and refuses to try stupid or dangerous things, we wanted someone who simply oozed a nice, happy “sure, let’s try it!” mentality.

[b]AG:[/b] Originally the game was released as a freeware adventure. What prompted that decision, and then the later decision to enhance it and go commercial?

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[b]Theo:[/b] Ever since I started developing the first free version of The Journey Down, I had a nagging feeling that I wanted to expand it and do more with it. Voice acting was an obvious thing to wish for, and so was seeing my art in full HD. In the original, I chose the retro low-res look for the simple reason that it was a way more feasible thing to pull off with what was pretty much a one man team. I never really liked seeing my art mashed up in that way though, and now finally I get the chance to show it off the way I’ve always wanted to.

Going commercial was actually a choice of necessity. In becoming a father I suddenly realized I had zero free time left to work on The Journey Down, and I figured if I’m somehow going to get to keep on working on it, the only realistic way of doing so was turning it into my day job, and so I did!

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[b]AG:[/b] Tell us about your own background in adventure gaming.

[b]Theo:[/b] This may be extremely obvious to anyone looking at the screenshots of The Journey Down, but I might as well mention my affection with the LucasArts classics such as the Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango. Much of my art and gameplay design philosophy stems from my experiences with those and similar games from that era. I’ve taken much inspiration from other classics of that age though, such as the brilliant Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword games – these certainly deserve an honourable mention as sources of inspiration.

[b]AG:[/b] Did you have any prior experience as a developer before starting TJD?

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I’ve been making games together with the SkyGoblin team for over six years now. We’ve built all sorts of strange things, ranging all the way from mobile games and flash games to our flagship title, the non-violent social MMO, Nord. So we’ve had plenty of time to hone our skills and to get our teamworking in order. Without this previous knowledge and experience, building The Journey Down would have been utterly impossible.

[b]AG:[/b] Was the team at SkyGoblin together from the start, or did that partnership largely come about after the decision to remake the game?

[b]Theo:[/b] TJD actually started out as an experimental test project me and Mathias [Johansson] (who now does pretty much all the scripting) did to try out Adventure Game Studio. We did some co-op development on it during the start-up phase but it quickly became my personal project. Mathias jumped in and helped out a little now and then during the entire development cycle though, specifically with the trickier programming bits and with some of the dialogue. Markus [Larsson] (our other programmer at SkyGoblin) also dabbled in it a little bit right before release, so the majority of the team had in one way or other been involved in it before the HD release was even thought of.

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Markus’ role right now consists of back-end stuff like building and developing our game engine and editor, but the biggest addition to the workforce has no doubt been my animator colleague Henrik [Englund], who has pretty much animated the entire game himself. Frankly, without him this new HD release wouldn’t feel very HD at all.

Simon De Souza, who was the composer on the original version, is also on the team working on this HD release. He has added A LOT of new great music to the soundtrack and I’m very happy to still have him on board.

[b]AG:[/b] Is this a part-time project for the whole team while you pay the bills with regular jobs, are you committed to production full time until it’s done?

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[b]Theo:[/b] The Journey Down has been our full time project during the last year or so, but we have had periods of doing all sorts of consultancy work to keep afloat. Also, we have our other game to take care of, so some time has gone into keeping Nord running as well.