A roguelike with face tentacles. That’s what Eldritch is. Minor Key Games‘ debut is a first-person action game that populates an ever-changing assortment of randomly generated levels with the twisted creations from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu universe. No two trips into the game’s maddeningly designed dungeons are the same, save for the fact that, sooner or later, something, somewhere is going to kill the crap out of you.
David Pittman, co-founder of Minor Key Games
Welcome to Eldritch.
Minor Key Games is a two-man operation, but Eldritch is actually the product of just one of them: David Pittman. A former 2K Marin programmer who worked on AI code for BioShock 2 and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Pittman left his safe industry job to form Minor Key as a product of the fatigue he was feeling with the AAA development process.
“A lot of people that I really respected and learned from had left the company and that was causing the creative direction of the studio to diverge from what I was interested in,” Pittman tells Digital Trends. He’s talking about guys like BioShock 2 creative director Jordan Thomas and Minverva’s Den DLC lead level designer Steve Gaynor, both of whom left to pursue their own creative endeavors; Gone Home for Gaynor and his crew at The Fullbright Company and something unannounced for Thomas, who left his 2K gig during summer 2013. Pittman noted these departures and started to feel the pull to leave as well.
“It was kind of a gradual thing where I was losing interest in what they were doing and then I had the financial opportunity this spring to finally make the jump and become independent, so I did.”
Minor Key Games is actually a collaboration between David and his twin brother J. Kyle Pittman, who left his own job at Gearbox Software after a successful run working on Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Their new studio is unconventional in that it exists as a collective, as opposed to the team-oriented development approach in place at most studios. David and Kyle are working on their own, separate projects. Eldritch is David’s, and Kyle’s remains unannounced for the time being. Both brothers then shoulder the business responsibilities of running a studio.
“We started programming with BASIC. We went to college together, we went to grad school together.”
The collaboration comes easily for two brothers who have walked
very similar paths through much of their lives. “We both learned to
program when we were really young, like six years old,” David Pittman
tells us. “We started programming with BASIC. We went to college
together, we went to grad school together. And then when we got our
first jobs in the industry, he stayed in Texas where [he went to school]
and I moved out to California. That was six years ago. Now we’re back
together at least in the company if not physically in the same space.”
Pittman tells us that it was never his goal to directly adapt the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but rather to channel the creative sensibilities of the horror author. ”I’m certain there are Lovecraft purists who will find things to nitpick about the way that I adapted it [in Eldritch],” he says. “I also find Lovecraft to be a little bit difficult to be a fan of, just because he had some very problematic viewpoints. He was well known to be a racist. So I definitely tried to distance Eldritch from the problematic aspects of his writing. But in terms of the world he created, the monsters, that kind of stuff, it makes for a really great video game.”
“In terms of the world [HP Lovecraft] created, the monsters, that kind of stuff, it makes for a really great video game.”
If Lovecraft informs the visual and (loose) narrative identity draped over Eldritch, games like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac,
with their randomly generated levels and replay-driven mentality,
inform the overall design. It’s more than just a love for roguelikes,
however. Pittman’s background as both a gamer and a developer leans
toward less rigid narratives, and an emphasis on player choice. No
surprise for a guy who came out of a studio like 2K Marin; the team
there didn’t create the BioShock universe, sure, but they managed to
deliver a crowd-pleasing take on it.Pittman was still at 2K Marin when the original Deus Ex inspired him, but the idea stuck and never went away. When it finally came to a point where he was ready to leave the relative comfort and security of a corporate studio job and go indie, an immersive sim colored by these “randomly generated small scenarios” was the natural direction to go in. BioShock is an obvious, and intended, touchstone, right down to the weapons-plus-magic combat, but the element of randomness is always there to keep things feeling fresh.
All of those pieces are now assembled, and Eldritch is nearly ready for public consumption. Pittman tells us that the game is currently feature-complete, and being put through the final polish and bug-fixing process before its October 21, 2013 release. The game is up for voting right now on Steam Greenlight, and you can pre-order it now at eldritchgame.com to get in on the beta period.
“It’s going to be open beta before the end of September,” Pittman says. “It’s kind of a soft release at that point. There won’t be any new content being added. I’m just giving myself a little bit of a window in case there’s compatibility issues, because I’m one guy and I have one computer to test on.”
Once Eldritch is out, the brothers Pittman will continue to work on growing Minor Key Games. There’s still the question of Kyle’s unannounced game, along with whatever else the brothers cook up for their new indie label in the future. “We have a lot of shared values in the kinds of games we want to create,” David says. “In particular, we’re not interested in doing really linear, story-driven narratives. We like things that invite the player to be a part of authoring the experience. So that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have a game that has a strong story, but it would be something where the player is at least making meaningful choices in that game.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLEur4Gpl4A&feature=player_embedded#t=0
By Adam Rosenberg
http://www.digitaltrends.com
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