The Making of Aquaria (Part 1 of 2)
An interview with Alec Holowka

Conducted on December 29th, 2007

by Gamer-girl

Alec Holowka is a programmer and composer who has worked on a wide range of indie game projects. The only thing that brings him comfort while programming to dawn through the long winter nights is the faint memory of playing Final Fantasy 6 for the first time.

This is the first half of a two-part interview. Read the second half, between Caffeine and Derek Yu, held in late January.

Click to download the Aquaria demo

G-G: How did the project get started?

Alec: I heard about the I'm O.K. project and offered to do music for it, so that's how we started working together. I hadn't heard of / met Derek before that. Basically while working on I'm O.K we started talking about what we liked and didn't like about games and what kind of games we wanted to make. It seemed like it would be fun to work on something together. (See a video of the I'm OK project)

G-G: Whose idea was the game, primarily?

Alec: The idea for Aquaria was initially mine. I worked on an underwater game with my girlfriend a number of years ago. We did it in about 2 months and it wasn't a terribly great game but we had fun making it. I figured it was something I could revisit at some point, but actually make it something I'd be interesting, something more worthwhile. So I started playing around with a few underwater ideas and thinking about the games I really liked, Final Fantasy, Legacy of Kain and that sort of thing.

That lead to me building a simple prototype called Aquaria which had my own graphics (prerendered 3D done in Blender) and the basic movement and interaction code. You could swim around an underwater castle a bit. I was also planning out elements of the plot and music. But then a promising project came up elsewhere and I ended up dropping it for the time... but after I met Derek and we were throwing ideas around, I happened to mention Aquaria and sent him the prototype. He was initially not that interested, but after we talked about it a bit he started to envision how it could be this whole new fantasy world filled with creatures and interesting things to explore.

G-G: I imagine it changed a lot from the prototype to the final version.

Alec: Yeah, the game actually went through probably... 3-5 major changes, instances where we'd throw out the existing gameplay and progression and start again. Throughout each the code was kept and evolved, and the gameplay would become a bit more interesting, and the plot would be a bit better integrated. There was one version that was very much more like an RPG with a lot of pages of branching dialogue and that kind of thing... Basically we found that it got boring pretty fast, and that we were more interested in swimming around and exploring the world than watching people chat. So we shifted the focus of the gameplay and story after realizing that - but its a big decision to do changes like that, and it takes time to come to those realizations.

G-G: So when in the cycle did you have different parts of the engine nailed down, collaboratively?

Alec: It's all kind of spread out. The first prototype was very basic movement and some ideas of how to interact with objects. (which was scrapped). In some of the early builds we had an item system, but we threw it out. Somewhere in the middle we got to a point where we took everything out and focused on the basics and rebuilt the gameplay. That was when we added singing and integrated it into the game. Initially the game had a more traditional "ability" system.

G-G: It seems strange imagining the game without it!

Alec: Yeah, it's interesting to go back and play the old builds.

G-G: What was a day of development typically like for you guys?

Alec: I don't know, it wasn't so much days as years. Like the days kind of blur into each other. We tried to set regular hours at one point, but that didn't really hold. So really just get up, work until tired, sleep, repeat. We just talk online. A couple of times we met up in the States and worked together. Which is a lot more fun...

G-G: Yeah, I imagine. He's not from the States, then? Or you aren't?

Alec: Derek's in San Francisco, I'm usually in Vancouver, Canada.

G-G: So what was the most challenging part of development?

Alec: Living in Vancouver. jk. Um ... I guess the hardest part for me was persevering. Its a really long time, and I was living and working on my own, which sucked. So I got pretty depressed at times and felt like giving up. But other than that, making the game itself is fun. And working really hard on it is fun.

G-G: Well, we're all glad you held on. Do you give the credit for your perseverence to anything in particular?

Alec: Canadian Whiskey.

G-G: (laughter) Can you talk about the process you use for composing music?

Alec: I don't know if there's much of a process, I get inspired and come up with stuff. I guess I started writing the music early on, so I had a lot of time to listen to it repeat while working on the game. So I could tweak the repetition and adds tracks where things started to get boring, etc. In Aquaria there are a couple themes that carry through various tracks in the game, but there's one that is in almost all the tracks and it was cool finding ways to introduce that musically. People who have beat the game know what I'm talking about.

G-G: So how successful did you expect the game to be?

Alec: I didn't expect it to have any kind of success, I expected everyone to hate it. But that's just who I am I guess. I think Derek expected it to do alright.

G-G: And now you can retire on piles of money, right?

Alec: Nope. But we did sell more than 2 copies, so that's nice. That was my prediction.

G-G: Oh! Well, congratulations!

Alec: (laughter) Yeah, we did pretty good I think. I was happily surprised.

G-G: Have you been contacted about publishing deals for it, like online or retail?

Alec: Not about retail, no.

G-G: But other modes of distribution?

Alec: Yeah, there are some cool options. Of course I'm not allowed to talk about any of them yet. Next thing we're going to work on is the Mac version I think.

G-G: How long do you think that will take?

Alec: Not entirely sure, we've been working on it already (started a number of months ago) so the game runs, but it needs tweaking and testing and fixing of a few odd issues, etc. All that fun stuff.

G-G: So any plans for after Aquaria?

Alec: Yeah, lots. We've been throwing around about three potential ideas of what to do next. I started writing some music and code for the one I want to do. But I'm not sure when we're actually going to start work on it. I think one thing I'd like to do is make a game that non-gamers could get into that would still interest me.

G-G: What kind of games do interest you?

Alec: There seem to be less games that can actually draw me in these days. The last games I really into were the games of the Pheonix Wright series. DS is kind of a breath of fresh air for me I guess. The next gen consoles don't seem to have enough interest games to warrant buying them yet, at least for me. I don't know, it seems like a lot of games look the same, and play the same now. Sound the same. Back in the older days the music was done on crazy sound chips, and every console sounded different. There seemed to be more pioneering and creativity back then. So I guess that's why I'm interested in the indie games scene.

For instance, in FF6 you can kinda feel the passion that the creators had for the game.I don't know if I feel that so much in many newer games. I think the games made by individuals or small teams tend to feel different than those designed by marketing focus groups most of the time. But even within the indie scene there is a lot of generic crap. I guess good games are just rare anywhere.

G-G: Well just because some dude CAN make a game by himself doesn't mean he should...

Alec: Yeah, some people start out that way. They just want to make something. Which isn't really a bad thing, it just gets weird when they try to sell it and claim that its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

G-G: Do you think you'll always work primarily by yourself, or in small groups, or would you ever want to join a larger dev team?

Alec: I worked with some larger teams on startups that didn't end up going anywhere. It's a lot of fun, its definitely a lot more rewarding to work in a room with a group of people than over the internet. It would be cool if Bit Blot managed to get some office space somewhere and grow a bit, but we'll have to see what happens in the future.

Read the second half of the interview

Respond on the forums
Return to the features listing