behind the scenes

A Game About A Little Guy

A Game About A Little Guy is a fun fast-paced shooter game filled with outstanding player experience. Developers Lars Stieva, Roy ten Brink, and Wilf Amis decided to lean in more on the ‘fun’ aspect and a little less on making a game that is very obviously about climate justice. This is a strategy to capture people who generally don’t play games or are perhaps not eager to engage in serious social or environmental topics. But don’t be fooled, climate change and climate justice were still pivotal concepts in the development process of this game and are lurking just below the surface. As Wilf says, “Climate breakdown is caused by an economy built on profit incentives which require perpetual growth through increasing extraction, squeezing more and more labour and resources out of us and our ecology. Climate justice is in opposition to that system. The most powerful states are committing genocide, and the most powerful corporations are committing ecocide. Climate justice is recognising the mutuality of that relationship and acting to replace those structures with democratically organised ones. Climate justice is building a new society on a new political economy to incentivise activities conducive to the viability of life on earth.” And this is exactly what A Game About A Little Guy is about… but from the perspective of little critters living in a polluted lake.

The team found a playful way of communicating this message, without making it too on the nose. To accomplish this, they spent hours playing a variety of games, talking about games with each other, and getting everyone around them to share their thoughts on games, too. “This really helped flesh out our understanding of what’s out there, how other people have tackled similar themes, similar gameplay mechanics, aesthetics, and so on. In Session 1, we got a comprehensive grounding in Eco games,” says Wilf. “It’s really important to know the context you’re working in, and as our game ended up engaging with not just the subject of climate change itself, but also commented on the way it is portrayed in games. We also looked outside of the field, which is how we found the bullet hell form. We didn’t want our game to just be fun for a climate justice game, we wanted it to be fun full stop”.

Screenshots from the high-octane A Game About a Little Guy

In this exciting game, the player is a tiny plankton collecting other little crustacean friends to assist in cleaning the abounded lake, polluted by nearby factories and humans. This game is based on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 14 – ‘Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.’ The game’s enemy types and themes are based on ocean emergencies, mainly plastic pollution, acidification, and eutrophication (increased load of nutrients to estuaries and coastal waters resulting in harmful algal blooms, dead zones, and fish kills). The big question asked here is, ‘Can the actions of one little guy make a big difference?’

The game development process was just over a month, from conception to playing the actual game. The Mzansi Climate Justice Game Jam asked participants to subvert their original game idea to increase the player experience and deepen the thought process of its development. For Lars, this twist forced the team to think about the playable story of the game more and what it could represent. “The water preservation theme seems pretty on the nose, but the overarching theme of standing strong together and taking action (anarchy) only started to really solidify itself after the TWIST session,” he says. Wilf has a different take on the session’s results, “I would say the form of the game, as in how the structure and genre differ if you do or don’t discover the factory. If you don’t, it’s a straight-up survival bullet hell; you fight to survive as long as you can and get as many points as you can on a particular run. The gameplay loop can stand on its own like this. But if you find the factory, you’ll find yourself in a boss fight with the machine. And so maybe on your next run, you won’t be fighting to survive, you’ll be training up for the boss fight.”

Roy and Wilf demo-ing their game

But the most important takeaway from all of this is to have fun playing the game, and the creators really want you to experience this for yourself! “I think we did a good job in bringing together a coherent aesthetic,” exclaims Wilf. “It’s sort of arcade-y in a very digital, flash game-inspired way. The mechanics have that high-octane feel that I tried to lean into with the music, and the art has these neon colours and flowing shapes, and the little guys are cute as hell!” Lars is also on the same page. He says, “We spent time making the game feel fluid, fun, and satisfying to play. We also made it slightly frustrating to motivate you to play. I personally only worked on the visuals, which combined with the bopping soundtrack and the fair, but tough, gameplay makes it an all-around pretty fun title”.

You can download and play A Game About A Little Guy here.