Tyler Glaiel is programmer and game designer for Closure, but he looks more like a PAX attendee than an exhibitor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he made the PAX 10 though. At nineteen years of age, he’s already spent eight years developing Flash games, and five years working with Closure’s artist, John Schubbe. Read on for what’s new in Closure, a look at Tyler’s design process, and even a little bit about why platformers have been so cool lately.
Pixelsocks: For context, can you tell me about your game?
Tyler: Closure is a puzzle platformer where the world is shrouded in darkness and there are orbs of light that you move around. The twist is that the only things that exist in the game are whatever is in the light. If you jump into the darkness, you’ll never hit a platform, because it’s not there. At the same time, if there’s a wall blocking your way, you can move the light away and just jump through. Every other mechanic in the game is derived from that concept.
Pixelsocks: Closure was originally released as a Flash game. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s different between this build and the Flash build?
Tyler: Everything? It runs in high resolution now. There are physics puzzles with balls you can roll and boxes you can push. It has water mechanics. There’s also a lot of miscellaneous polish to make levels clearer and less about guesswork. The animation, graphic styles, music, and the level design are new. I mean, everyone who plays the flash game can instantly recognize the connection between the two, but at the same time they also recognize that this is much newer and much better.
Pixelsocks: How far along would you say this build is?
Tyler: We’ve worked on it for about four months so far, and we have about twelve to eighteen to go. We’re planning on a public release, definitely for PC and Macintosh, and we’re in negotiations for other deals.
Pixelsocks: Lately there have been a lot of platformers that violate genre expectations, like Braid and Chronotron. What do you think is behind this sudden renaissance in platforming?
Tyler: It’s easier to get involved in it now. There’s a lower barrier to entry, which is why you’re seeing a lot of smaller teams and independent developers making games.
Pixelsocks: If that were the case, it seems like you’d see a lot more people trying and failing.
Tyler: You just never see those people. Well, sometimes you do, but a lot of the ones you end up hearing about are like Braid.
Pixelsocks: So, what inspired Closure?
Tyler: I was trying to figure out a way to work black and white graphics into a game and it just came to me during a brainstorming session. Like, “hey, what if what you can see is all that exists?” and then we evolved the concept from there. So the flash game was just the concept and now we’re implementing it.
Pixelsocks: Can you tell me a little bit about how you do level design?
Tyler: I start laying out the grounds, and then I think about what path I want the player to take to the end. Depending on how easy it is, I put a few more options in to confuse them so there isn’t just one extremely obvious route. Of course, I don’t usually end up having to add distractions, because the set solution is usually complicated enough—all the objects seem like they can be used any time during the puzzle. When I’m done with that, I send the level to Jon, and he draws the art to make it consistent with the rest of the game.
Pixelsocks: How long have you been working on game development?
Tyler: I’ve been working on flash games for eight years now–since I was eleven. We never finished a game until the flash version of Closure. We have work with other people, and we work on our own stuff in the meantime. But we worked on this concept and it took off, so we’re spending a lot of time on it.
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