I had an interview with Everyeye.it about the Black Cube series (ASA, Catyph, Anterran…) and it was both an honor and some fun to answer! If you’re curious about this series of scifi projects, its future, the BlackCube Jam, and about myself as an indie creator in The Icehouse collective, please read this. The original article is written in Italian, but I’ve added an English translation below.

Original article on Everyeye.it in Italian - please SHARE if you like it! Many thanks!!!

1) First of all, could you present yourself and your work with The Icehouse to our readers?

Hello, I’m Simon Mesnard (aka Simon Says: Watch! Play!!), a passionate French graphic designer of 33 years old. I work on my own at home as a freelancer, and I try to self-fund my projects of games, short films and more. I currently work mainly on 2 series called The Black Cube and Mon Village est Magique. The 2nd one has been in development since 2009, but I could never release anything officially yet, so I will not tell much about it. On the contrary, the Black Cube series already has several creations. They are games reminicent of Myst and Rhem (ASA, Myha, Catyph), but also short films (2001: A Space Adventure - “Vimeo Staff Pick”) and comics (ANTERRAN!). I really hope that the Black Cube series will continue to expand! I am looking forward for more cooperations with other artists, and that is one of the reasons behind the creation of The Icehouse collective!. As you know, “unity is strength” and we decided with some creative friends to gather online in the form of a collective (including my brother Yves and his game Chilie!). Another purpose of The Icehouse (along with building cooperative projects) is to support indie creativity. Finding funds and working in small teams (or individuals) is very challenging, particularly if you want to create games for a living. Together we try to help each other in marketing by sharing ideas on our private forums, to get more exposure and we try to reach the press and our fans more efficiently. It’s very difficult and time-consuming.

2) For your three adventure games about the Black Cubes you have chosen a Myst-like style: what made you prefer “pre-rendered” scenarios instead of the real-time 3D? In your opinion, which are the differences in terms of gameplay, exploration, immersion (and so on) in the ambients? Which are the unique features that “slideshows” can give to games (maybe something that modern 3D has lost?)?

That is a very interesting question, and I remember that I wrote several articles about this on the old ASA blog. One of the reasons why I chose to work on pre-rendered scenarios is my own background. I love such games such as Myst/Riven, The Longest Journey, Final Fantasy (PS1 episodes), and many more. The common point between them all is the technique that was used. They were all created with 2D backgrounds (pre-rendered 3D). I don’t think it’s a matter of nostalgia here: I just really prefer that kind of game. They combine the nice feeling of a 2D gameplay (quite comfortable and easy of access), and what 3D can offer best in terms of technique, art and production process. Another important point is that, as a 3D artist, I have always learned to use render engines in 3dsmax (mental ray, vray, maxwell, final render…) and I somehow specialized myself in this kind of job. I started my experiments on 3D when I was 15, and so far I remember, the rendering part has always been one of the most important to my eyes. I was inspired by some of the movies of that time (Toy Story, Shrek and Final Fantasy the Spirits Within), and I often tried to reach that level of quality. But one of my favorite exercises in 3D was to create sunny rock islands and beautiful mystic places inspired by Riven, with a foreign vegetation and a very peculiar atmosphere. Even today I am still amazed by the quality of the realism in Riven, and I still consider it’s one of the most beautiful games ever (if you forget the technical part - such as the very low resolution).

What I like so much in slideshow games is the fact that the player is driven by the creator of the game. In a full3D game, you are free to go everywhere and I must say that it is often comfortable. On the contrary in a slideshow game, you often feel more restricted, and younger players may think that it is painful to move in static views while you could have the possibility to view everything around you for real. However you have something special in slideshow games that you don’t have in full 3D: the use of imagination. The fact that the developer chose specific views and cameras is very important for the immersion and the artistic aspect: it’s like showing a photo album to your friends, and they imagine your journey with your explanations and the pictures. Then in agame it’s the same: walking from one view to another by clicking forces the player to imagine the parts of the world that don’t exist. Everything that you can’t see by turning your head is imagined and recreated by the brain automatically. Everyone is free to imagine the world in his own way, just like when you read a book: everyone has a different perception of it. I also find that point and click adventures are more peaceful and don’t require an unnecessary stress with the gameplay. We live in a time where everything go fast and we are driven in our lives by adrenalin. It is good to calm down, and admire a different world that doesn’t change so fast. That’s the promise with Myst-like games: “Sit down and relax, and explore the world with your eyes. Take notes, solve the puzzles. If you’re stuck, then just take a break, save the game and come back later when you found some logic in your notes.”

3) How do you usually meet the developers who works and/or are associated with The Icehouse? Do you think that this “collaborative spirit” is important for you in the process of creating your own games?

Oh I usually meet the devs and other artists online. When I have an opportunity, I try to come and see them in real life, but it is very rare (it happened last year with my friends Atelier Sentô). Usually we have the opportunity to chat, on our forums or on facebook, or even by email. We usually try not to interfere with the life of the others, because we know that we are all very busy. We just follow our own ways, and if we have questions we get in touch with each other.
It happens that I contact some new people when I played a game that I found interesting, or heard of a project that seemed interesting, or when I think that they could potentially be interested in our skills or ideas. Most of the time we prefer to be contacted by creators, instead of contacting them ourselves: it prevents us from growing too fast, and it’s a proof ot their interest in our works. When we accept new members, I just try to focus on individual artists that lack of exposure, and whose talent is still unrecognized officially (our purpose is not to work with artists that are already famous). And now that we start to be more and more people in the collective, we all try to bring new friends into the team. Together we already gave birth to some interesting cooperations, such as the comics ANTERRAN with US artist John Carvajal!, or the short film MOON! with French figurines maker Kiboochan and music composer Sam Oz. Indeed this collaborative spirit is very important. It forces artists of different horizons to work on the project of another person, and create things they wouldn’t have done otherwise. When John started working on Anterran (which is part of the Black Cube series), we didn’t know what the book would look like. He has a very unique style, quite cartoonish and very different of the graphics of my usual games. But I was comfident that we would be able to adapt my project to his style, because he is very talented and passionate. That is what I like in The Icehouse, even if our primary goal is not (yet) to create collaborative things, but more to help each other to increase our online exposure, and in the end, our sales.

4) Your games are full of difficult puzzles: where do you come up with all these ideas for the enigmas? What kind of creative process do you follow?

Ahah yes, they are very challenging, but if you think of it, the whole Myst series was very difficult too! In fact it is much easier to create difficult puzzles than solving them ;) But the true difficult part is to find the good balance in order to make them understandable and possible to solve by normal people.
I always try to create a logical world: that is the most important for me. The puzzles have to be coherent together and with the environment. Every part of the world has to have its History, and all of it must fit with the planet or the place where the game takes place. As long as I succeed to respect this consistency in a project, I think that the game will be interesting to play.
If you want to know more about the creative process, I made a very complete Making Of Catyph! that you can read online (in English).

5) How was your passion for video games born? Which are the most important games for you?

Oh that is going to take us very far in the past! Well so far I remember, I have always found video games funny (there was a Tetris when I was visiting my grandmother). I grew up during the golden age of Nintendo (Nes and Super Nes) and I must have played most of the games of this era. I was already passionate in many games without bothering of the genre (Megaman, Mario, Zelda, Castlevania, etc.). But even very young I was frustrated by the limited pixelated graphics of the NES, and the Super Nes was more than welcome when it released. I remember very well that moving from the first one to the all new system was a big slap! Not only the graphics were way better on the Super Nes, the sound and gameplay were also improved a lot (I still have in mind the soundtrack of our first game: Super Turrican!). I don’t know if people nowaday can still feel this difference between 2 generations of console? I hope so.
And it happened again when we moved from the Super Nes to the PS1 era! (and N64 - that I didn’t own). I think I was lucky to grow up during that age. And in parallel, we saw the number of personal computers increasing in everyone’s home, which attracted more and more releases of games. There was a time where I was passionate in the hardware too, and it was incredible to buy the all new 3dfx video card, and see the difference in the games. The GameBoy also influenced me a lot: bringing the console in my pocket and playing everywhere was great, and it participated to my passion for video games. Even today I enjoy playing with my DS or 3DS in my bed, where I can discover many great games of all genres (Fire Emblem, Ace Attorney and many more).

After this long explanation, it is very difficult for me to say which games are the most important for me. There are many games in many genres that made me what I am today! Yoshi’s Island impressed me a lot and I think I really enjoyed its 2D art style. My favorite one on Super Nintendo was without a doubt Donkey Kong Country 1: it was a great platformer with a very funny world, but moreover it was my first encounter with CG pictures (3D). I’ll never forget it. My next important discovery in video games was certainly Final Fantasy VII. I didn’t have the PS1 at that time, and my brother purchased this game while we didn’t know anything about it (there was not internet to tell us which games to buy!). We quickly gained a huge interest in FF7 and we played the game together until the end (twice!). The long and rich story really moved us, and the vast world of the game, with its fantastic music, are still today some of our favorite ones. Then even later I discovered several adventure games in a few years that I still consider today as some of the best created ever: Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey and of course… Riven! Since then I have played a very lot of other great games (maybe better than these ones), but the games in this list still have a very important place in my heart today.

More recently I enjoyed the Mass Effect series, which made an echo to my new passion for scifi. Also I can say that I globally enjoy most J-RPG games. I have been very inspired by japanese art, read a lot of mangas and watched many animes that inspired me too. I am of course a huge fan of Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki’s work. They’re another important part of my inspiration, and that’s the part I’d like to show in my other series Mon Village est Magique. Maybe next year?
Thanks for reading, and you can ask me anything by email or on Facebook. You can find even more about me on my new Patreon!.

#blackcubejam2016