Exclusive Interview: Gamemaker Jasper Byrne Talks LONE SURVIVOR, Horror Gaming and More

Gamemaker and Musician Jasper Byrne on horror gaming and why ‘retro’ is a bad word.

Anyone who’s gone weeks at a time living off the carbs of Top Ramen and the caffeine of Coke cans can find truth in Jasper Byrne’s LONE SURVIVOR. Sure, it’s a psychological horror adventure game about a post-apocalyptic town besieged upon by an unknown virus, but even amidst end-times, its protagonist, the (you guessed it) lone survivor, is plagued more by nagging fatigue, hunger, and his loss of grip on sanity than any one of the game’s mutant villains. Conceptually, aesthetically, and on every level of gameplay, a Jasper Byrne game seeks to crawl inside your head and stay there — while, of course, allowing you to blow some others’ off in the process.

Since the breakout release of LONE SURVIVOR in 2012 on Microsoft Windows and OSX and its Director’s Cut on PlayStation 3 in 2013, Byrne’s name has been recognized by many as an essential staple of 21st-century game design. The founder of Superflat Games and a seasoned club DJ, Byrne’s imprint is also in the pulsating, synth-laden grooves of Dennaton Games’ HOTLINE MIAMI franchise, on which he served as a composer for its original soundtracks.

SHOCK caught up with Byrne to pick his brain on his distinct background and influences, horror gameplay and design, the themes that recur throughout his Superflat titles, and the future of game art.

SHOCK: The term “Superflat” was coined by artist Takashi Murakami as a descriptor for the “shallow emptiness of [Japanese] consumer culture.” Does the name of your gaming company, Superflat Games, allude to the same phenomenon, or does it mean something else for you?

BYRNE: I liked it as a mantra. My own work tends to sprawl by nature, if left to its own devices. So it’s hard for me to finish projects unless I somehow ‘flatten’ the problems down and simplify them. I do love the Superflat movement in general, and was living in Japan when it was in full swing so it was a definite influence, visually as well. I’ve always gravitated towards the surreal and the psychedelic, but also towards the Japanese aesthetic, and minimalism in general; it seemed to combine all of those elements. I was lucky enough to get to know Koji Morimoto in Tokyo also, as he used to come down to the club I was resident DJ at, and he is one of my favorite artists associated with the movement.

As to the emptiness of consumer culture, well… I do feel that strongly, although it’s not a guiding principle in my work. I suppose I am determined to try (and fail if need be!) to make ‘art,’ rather than products, things motivated by commercial considerations.

SHOCK: You’ve said on your website, “I think games are the highest level of art being explored at the moment, but are still in their infancy. I feel like we’re on the cusp of something incredible, like the first tentative steps of silent movies into talkies.”

BYRNE: The artistic side is still only just being tentatively explored, and there is still so much more to do. Movies do have a far better track record at producing things of genuine artistic value, especially in the larger budget arena. The recent success of indie art-games is a good sign, though. I’d also like to see more games, indie or mainstream, that somehow tread the line between being very mechanically tight, and being inspiring conceptually and artistically.

The ones that do have that value (and are still an ‘enjoyable/not overly-frustrating-at-least’ play experience’) are frustratingly rare. The odd mainstream game gets under my skin, like SILENT HILL 2, METAL GEAR SOLID 2, both as a piece of design, and a piece of art. The indies have definitely moved things forward on the art front, but often lack the design to make it whole (although there are exceptions, HOTLINE MIAMI was a great example of both aspects being very strong).

SHOCK: Perhaps most crucial for horror games, and the most ‘cinematic’ of their elements, is atmosphere, which your games have in spades. What are some of your cinematic influences when making games?

BYRNE: My influences come mainly from film. My papa was a screenwriter (DOCTOR WHO, SPACE 1999, ALL CREATURES GREAT & SMALL, etc.), and I grew up watching late night double bills on VHS with him and going to the pictures, and it’s something I’m still massively into. My favorites are quite predictable really: Kubrick, David Lean, John Huston, Hitchcock, Polanski, Kurosawa, the Coens, David Lynch. On the more obscure end: Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray, Charles Laughton, Mamoru Oshii, Andrzej Wajda… Perhaps there is a common thread of thick atmosphere there?

SHOCK: Absolutely. The Man Who Wears a Box and the White-Faced Man, both of whom encounter the protagonist of your psychological horror side-scroller, LONE SURVIVOR, as the game progresses, are positively Lynchian — surreal, foreboding, slightly out of place…

BYRNE: It’s something people very kindly say about my work, and something that I’m drawn to in other work. I spend a lot of time thinking about ‘art direction,’ even though the technique of my art itself is quite poor… Lighting, shading, effects, and so on. Of course being a musician most of my life is probably an influence on this too, as a lot of atmosphere is created by sound, or the lack of it.

SHOCK: Yes, SOUNDLESS MOUNTAIN II milks the tension of its setting with a minimalist, near-silent sound mix. And LONE SURVIVOR incorporates musical styles ranging from ambient, to electronic, to shoegaze, and more to heighten the game’s distinct colors and moods. How do you approach writing music for your games?

BYRNE: I tend to spend as much or more time working on the music and sound of a game, as I do all the other aspects combined. I was a drum’n’bass DJ/producer full-time for about 11 years, signing on pretty much all the major d’n’b labels, and then starting my own, Space Recordings. Touring the world and making tunes, basically. Although I made a lot of games as a kid, in the ZX Spectrum and Amiga era, I made no games while in those 11 years. Nowadays, I’m working primarily on music again, trying to break into different genres.

The things that inform my scoring choices are really hard to pinpoint. I always just say, “I know it when I hear it.” I can end up throwing out a lot of work I like because the feeling it conveys is wrong. So that makes it very different to writing club music. But the aspect of building a club record to orchestrate a moment of drama in a venue definitely applies to the way I sequence music triggers with a game.

As for writing for HOTLINE MIAMI, I was friends with Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström and was giving him a hand play-testing the game, and had seen and loved DRIVE, and it all just fell into place [laughs].

SHOCK: The neon-soaked, circa 1980s inflection felt throughout DRIVE is often attributed to the HOTLINE MIAMI franchise. And the design aesthetic of your own games is also very much founded upon retro 2D graphics.

BYRNE: I try not to do do anything I consider ‘retro.’ I’m fascinated by the future, the cutting edge. It’s a word I try to avoid when I talk about my work.

SHOCK: ‘Retro’ or not, in the case of games like LONE SURVIVOR, Benjamin Rivers’ HOME, or The Game Kitchen’s THE LAST DOOR, some critics have argued that 2D graphics actually enhance the frights of their stories, in that their lack of definition leaves more to the imagination.

BYRNE: If I had infinite time, I’d probably be making games that look very detailed, albeit still stylized, rather than photo-real. I can’t afford, being just one person, to make fully 3D art, so I try to do what is realistic within my budget (and still appealing to me), but to give it as many modern twists as possible, that wouldn’t have been possible in the era of strict 2D. For example, the lighting and CRT/film-grain effects in LONE SURVIVOR, and the music being as polished and up-to-date as I can make it, instead of using a score that sounds like it may have some from a lost NES or Megadrive game, as many indies do (which i’m not saying is a bad thing, just not my preference).

On the other hand, in the case of LONE SURVIVOR and SOUNDLESS MOUNTAIN II, I did embrace pixel art as an aesthetic choice exactly because it left a lot to the imagination, as you say. I always got a little giggle when people weren’t sure if the protagonist was wearing a mask, or just grinning widely. But I think that could have been done with 3D too: the PS1 version of SILENT HILL is probably the most visually frightening partly due to the limitations of the hardware, the glitching, hard-to-discern polygons, combined with the things you can do with 3D cameras.

SHOCK: What storytelling potential do you seek out most when writing concepts and narratives for horror games?

BYRNE: I’m looking for strong themes, above all. So I look to movies and books (I am ashamed to admit I hardly read any more these days, but I did grow up reading a lot of sci-fi, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, William Gibson etc).

My guiding principle with every game I work on is to tell some kind of story that could only be told interactively. I look for a strong theme as a starting point, something I really want to say to the world, and the game design and mechanics are simply there to support this theme. In the same way as was proposed by ‘art game’ movement, (folks such as Jason Rohrer) and as displayed in SILENT HILL, I want the mechanics to have meaning, otherwise games feel exactly like that to me – mechanical things, with no artistic intent, pure design. So the theme informs the design entirely, to the point where I throw out ‘fun’ mechanics if they don’t fit what I’m trying to say. It’s possibly not the best way to design games, but it’s a restriction I like to impose on my stuff.

So, when looking for this all-important theme, I look to stuff outside of game — film, books, life, music etc. — and then I let the theme determine all aspects of the design.

SHOCK: In terms of theme, LONE SURVIVOR feels much like a parable about drug addiction masquerading as a zombie survival story. There are several metaphysical dimensions to the game: dreams, flashbacks, symbolic figures, existential crisis. Where does that thematic fascination with drugs and addiction come from for you?

BYRNE: It’s interesting that you read it that way. I prefer not to share my own interpretation because I think every player’s is equally valid. I do struggle with an addictive personality, and it’s definitely an examination of that. And I guess, coming from being a drum’n’bass DJ, I’ve seen a lot of people in the music world who also struggle with drug use. But it’s also an examination of the ‘positive’ aspects of drugs, too. Severely bipolar patients, for example, can struggle without medication, we all get headaches, etc. It definitely poses the question about mental illness and at what point a drug, whose side effects may not be pleasant, might be the best compromise.

SHOCK: Of all the available horror tropes, zombies are one you return to more than once (on both LONE SURVIVOR and SOUNDLESS MOUNTAIN II). Why is that?

BYRNE: I wouldn’t say they were my favorite! Although I enjoy zombie movies and do watch THE WALKING DEAD, I’m a bit squeamish and have to look away a lot [laughs]. I guess I just find them useful as an allegory, that was the aspect of Romero movies I liked. I’m not at all interested in horror that is purely of a supernatural nature, I’m always searching for human drama, and zombies (if you can call the LONE SURVIVOR enemies that) can easily be used to project human concepts onto. In other words, the creatures made a perfect allegory for the specific theme I wanted to convey in the subtext.

SHOCK: LONE SURVIVOR invites multiple interpretations of the game’s story with its five possible endings, each of which is one result of various ways in which you can choose to play. What are some things you consider when creating a game with multiple endings?

BYRNE: The idea of LONE SURVIVOR’s ‘hidden psychologist’ mechanic was to attempt a new way of implementing something I’d only seen done in a really obvious way but without any real depth (such as morality meters in games like FALLOUT or MASS EFFECT, which I felt made it too obvious what the ‘game results’ of an action would be). The idea that the player would ‘role-play’ more honestly if they didn’t see the statistical result of their actions.

It was initially inspired by the aspects that determine your ending in SILENT HILL 2. I thought it was really fascinating that, for example, looking at the knife or the photo or letter from your dead wife in your inventory pushed your character towards the suicide ending, for example. I felt I could take it much further and have the entire game contribute to the ending, every aspect having some invisible effect, and then doing as much as possible to show the player’s mental state through differing cutscenes and conversations, rather than some visible meter.

This only really applies to LONE SURVIVOR specifically, as the game was an examination of a character whose personality could lie anywhere on a psychological spectrum depending how the player nurtured him. I would say that with all my games I try to have alternative endings that reflect the way I play, it’s something I want to experiment more with in future games. …If I ever finish any more [laughs].

SHOCK: Are there any you’re trying to finish now?

BYRNE: Well, alongside the music I have been working on several projects over the last few years, none of which have seen the light of day. The largest of which, a 3D project, died after maybe a couple of years work.

There’s a rumor that there’s someone called PRDXCL who’s taken and modded or maybe ported a leaked alpha version of that large project, but I don’t really know much more about it. I’ve tried to contact him but not heard back so far.