Arts

Press Start

‘The Sprawl’ continues the old-school indie renaissance

Having journeyed through the decaying city, I enter an area littered with crumbling neon bio-organics and signs written in an alien language. I feel only apprehension. In the center of the room, a humongous, bulbous cocoon shakes and bubbles ominously. I steel myself and swallow hard as The Din Emitter emerges—a massive moth-like beast with what appear to be razor-sharp tusks and jagged neon wings. Pulling out my trusty whip, I dash toward the monstrosity and crack at its face with ferocity. Orbs of deadly energy appear around it and zero in on me for the kill—a laser builds up power within the maw of the great beast; I speed away but not nearly fast enough. I am undone, and so do I come apart like ribbons in the wind.

This is The Sprawl from two-person development studio Rust This World, and I love it so much I might cry.

“You actually did better than I would have,” artist and animator Aileen Mell tells me of my untimely passing. Before The Din Emmitter, I’d survived the Paradise Mall hub area, climbed the heights of the Radiant Echoes District and fell to the depths of the Buried Fire District.

Mell is developing the forthcoming platformer/Metroid-Vania style game alongside her husband, the artist Dylan Pommer. In the roughly one year since the married couple has been teaching themselves to code, design and execute a video game—all from home—The Sprawl has grown into a rather impressive homage to classic side-scroller games, but with an identity all its own.

As development continues, the couple has now entered a labyrinth of play testing, the search for potential funding and/or grants and the tedious process of eliminating bugs. Making a video game is mountains of work, but as Mell and Pommer entered the pandemic without jobs, years of what-if conversations have finally become a reality.

“We went to grad school at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, which is basically like a scam,” Pommer says. “My major was game design, hers was animation, and we hated living there. Coming from the desert of New Mexico to the most crammed city in the country was culture shock. You could barely see the sky. We felt trapped. The game is like an allegory for how we felt in that city.”

Players enter said city as The Daughter, a humanoid spirit creature with mysterious origins who’s sent into a rotting metropolis of dead malls, dilapidated docks, abandoned factories and horrifying monsters in search of her brother.

Like Pommer and Mell, The Daughter is of the desert, and if the mutated beasts don’t get her, the soulless steel and concrete might. But whereas Mell describes The Daughter’s missing brother as more of a brawny warrior, our heroine is stealthier, more measured—a cartographer who utilizes agility and wits over brute strength. As such, her moves are about quick attacks and careful planning. In the early demo-caliber build I played, The Daughter can whip and perform a dash move, and it seems a cat-like attack-and-retreat strategy works best. Still, it’s early in development, and Mell and Pommer say they’re still narrowing down what types of other moves and passive abilities they might give The Daughter as they go along. Such abilities could open up a world of play styles, and with the couple having long been tabletop and video game nerds, they know what to do to make something special. Case in point? Taos-based musician Sarah Martinez created a few pieces of music for the game, and they’re unexpected and brilliant.

On a broader scale, The Sprawl illustrates an ongoing gaming renaissance. Surely most everyone recalls classic platformer titles like Super Mario World, Metroid and Castlevania, but as gaming phased to 3D styles in the mid- to late ’90s, that genre entered a state of flux, at least within the mainstream. Over the past decade-plus, however, games like Limbo, Little Nightmares, Cuphead and Hollow Knight relit the torch—both for players and developers, but also for artists looking to match exceptional evolving tech with unique visuals. And though The Sprawl could easily join the ranks of the most vaunted platformers (seriously, it’s already so fun, even in demo form), its collaborative design has a decidedly more varied and modern art style than its Super Nintendo-era inspirations or even its contemporaries. Even so, the heart beats similarly.

The Sprawl is built using the Unity engine, but tech specs aside, Mell and Pommer are creating its visual design and aesthetics by hand. Certain animations—like The Daughter’s death, for example—are drawn by Mell by hand, and the pair collaborated on level and enemy designs. Unity has allowed them incredible freedom to experiment with the guts of the game, but anyone familiar with Pommer’s work will find something familiar within; Mell’s additions are like icing.

And it’s nearly time to seek more robust funding.

“There are different grants we’ve looked at, and a lot of them are from people who make indie games,” Pommer says, adding that being selected by an outfit like Indie Fund would not only mean more runway, but access to expertise from industry vets who’ve made best-sellers.

“We’ve got a timeline and are hoping we can have a Kickstarter, too,” Mell notes. “After that, maybe we’ll make it to some trade shows.”

“The weird thing about applying for video game grants is that a lot of arts funding doesn’t include games,” Pommer adds. “It’s this little niche that’s kind of new—but if some random sugar daddy wants to invest in our startup...”

“I’ve done budget research,” Mell points out, “and there’s a way this game becomes a good, profitable investment.”

It’s heartening to know a small team can dig into something meaningful like this. If we can search for silver linings within the pandemic fallout, The Sprawl would firmly be a part of that. For now, it’s worth popping by rustthisworld.com to see what Mell and Pommer and cooking up. It’s not just for nerds.

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