Each video game is a miracle. Long hours, unusual technical and artistic requirements and interdisciplinary cooperation: the act of creating games is difficult and leaves a place for catastrophic mistakes. It is amazing that any of them is completely released.
Supporter of the supportnew PlayDate Exclusive From Jay Ma, co -founder of Indie Darling Submet Games, is one of such wonderful games. This is the first new release from the studio with the recognition of critics of 2018. In violationThe MA field began to work on Supporter of the support Following the Covid Infection life, which significantly reduced its quality of life and the ability to do what it loves.
Story Supporter of the support It begins after a trip made to Vancouver, Canada, in August 2023, to see the co -founder of the subset of Matt Davis and several other members of the studio personally. At that time, the team worked on more than one game. According to Ma, one of the largest, more promising projects was “struggling”, but the trip led to a breakthrough. Then she caught the Covid-19. “It was a rather unsuccessful time,” she said. “For the first time in a while, I was a Gung-Ho about finding out this game.”
At first, the last MA fight with coronavirus did not seem different from her previous experience. She returned to her house in Kyoto, Japan, quarantine and ultimately recovered from acute symptoms, but never completely bounced off. “I think this was the first day when I went outside, on a bicycle, did normal things, and I just closed completely,” she said. “I could not get out of bed for about four days.” She realized that she was experiencing a long Kosvid.
When we chatted over the Google Meet, Ma often made long pauses to collect her memories together and find suitable words to express their loss. “I am another person,” she told me after one such break. “I go with a cane. I need to definitely structure the way I do something on the street. I need to know where all the chairs are. I go at the pace of my grandmother, and I am constantly forced to maintain the awareness of my physical condition, because if I do too much, this is too late. Everything feels dangerous. ”
During the first four months of her illness, Ma could not work at all. “Even when I was more accustomed to wearing myself, it was not only more difficult to do what I used to have naturally for me, but I would also be lost in my head,” she said. She was worried that she could never make games again.
Supporter of the support There was a chance to prove to herself that she could still do what she loved. Mauro López's Submet provided additional programming and composer Aaron Cherofmost famous for its work on Minecraft's Updating tracks and tails, created music for the game. Panic contacted Mas about the project after she showed several friends the game during the annual time of Kyoto Bit summit Indi -games festival in the summer of last year.
“I woke up in the morning, thought about the game and made progress every day – even if it was only a couple of hours – it did something really important for my psychological state,” she said.
In the preliminary viewing published by Panic, MA describes Supporter of the support As a game that begins slowly and relaxes, but gradually increases until it becomes crazy chaos. ” You can see the connecting fabric between it And the previous work MA. Players can earn updates to facilitate the run. Then the success depends on the combination of a good goal (using the proprietary PlayDate crank), smart decision -making and well -thought -out assembly. I expect that he will have the same addictive quality “another mileage” that knows other subservient games.
This disease significantly reduced my world and perception of time.Jay Ma
“WITH In violationIf I wanted to add one enemy that one enemy would have changed how maps were developed, how the character’s weapon was developed and how the scaling works, ”she said. “Therefore, one new idea requires you to hold everything in your head at the same time, and this, in particular, is just that I am trying to do it now.” Supporter of the support Ma taught how much she perceived as a very reasonable ease with which she juggled these various dependencies in her mind.
Ma did not find a doctor in Japan who knows enough about the disease to offer her a convincing diagnosis, and the state of research in the area of the long Covid as a whole is born. “They hate to make vague calls,” she explained. The only thing she discovered that she could make frequent tests for dementia to track the state of her mind.
“I feel that I need to live with the fact that it will not leave, so I just work with this thinking,” she told me. “This disease has significantly reduced my world and the perception of time. My memory is much worse. I will forget what happened like a week ago, and I don’t think about the future at all. And so I'm just in a constant gift. It seems to me that I am forced to train in order to be a monk. ”
When I asked what could mean her disease for the future subset, it took a long time to consider her answer. “We have established the rule that we will not declare anything if we are absolutely sure that it will come out. We want to live with the freedom of the possibility of canceling, and not feeling that we were stuck in the fact that we need what we do not like, ”she said. “Thus, the subset is all right, but my way out fell to 20 percent of what was before.”
Davis, she adds, was productive, but he also had to adapt his work schedule, in his case, from two young children. “If we want to do another In violation-Thisic game, it seems that we may need additional assistance in the long run. I need to come to terms with the fact that I cannot do all art, as before. ”
Ma went so much, and yet Supporter of the support Not a game of chronic health problems, disabilities or loss of memory. It seems that he carefully avoids the borrowing of any biographical details from the life of the MA in general. People will play and enjoy this, knowing nothing about the difficult circumstances in which this was done. It turns out that this is the only way that MA will have.
“I know many developers who invest in their game. You can see the author’s intention, emotional state and what they processed in it. I was wondering what it feels like to do such a game, but I have no idea how. Basically, the only thing that controls me is mechanics, ”she told me. “So I have no expectation, or I really wish people to see the author in the small arcade games that I do. I would be very glad that it is never perceived. ”
Supporter of the support – Along with 11 other games – arrives as part of the second season of PlayDate weekly games, starting on May 29. You can Preliminary order second season For $ 39 through the catalog.