It's been more than two years I went in Sweden and I still never had the opportunity to publish the interview I made of Nifflas. He has a place on Wikipedia now! But he surely deserves it
Here is the content of our meeting :
Nicklas Nygren, also known as Nifflas is a young independent game developer well known around the world. He lives in Umea so I had the chance to meet him for an interview. He kindly received me at his place to talk about the video games he made. Tea and almond pastries went with the chat.
For Nifflas, creating a video game is first a way to relax. He works a couple of hours every day on his computer and founds everything he creates on music vibes. It is very important to start with a sound or a music to develop a world around and turn it into a game. Influenced by electronic music, Nicklas adds he also founds a lot of inspiration in jazz music. From this starting point he elaborates the level design, the graphics and the game mechanics with the great help of his friend community.
About the sound effects, Knytt's walk noise was recorded by a friend’s fingers typing on some paper. He likes to realise jazz improvisations by quickly adding some random samples with ModPlug, organizing them and adjusting the whole to get a pretty good sound!
When it come to graphic making, Nifflas use to mention he doesn’t feel very good in this speciality, he prefers to ask for the help of some friends.
Concerning the level design work, Nifflas uses to keep the map of his games in the head. Knytt Stories contains around 800 screens; it’s more than the whole Knytt. Regarding the difficulty of his games, he admits he usually set it pretty hard. His foreign games didn’t used to be very easy and when I asked him if he already made a level too difficult for him, he answered he once made one boss that was "kind of hard to defeat" but anyway, he won thought it! Now with the accumulation of knowledge he has since he’s creating games, he knows how to balance the difficulty. His games are also made in a way to reach as many players as possible, that’s why the games shouldn’t be insurmountable; Nifflas takes it for granted even if I am sure he’d prefer some more harsh levels for himself...
Since he develops games Nifflas obviously sees his entertaining production as a progression but he knows as well which mistakes are to avoid in order to achieve a game. First he remains realistic. It’s true that a lot of non professionnal video game's designers are too ambitious from the beginning and Nifflas deplores it. A lot of friends around him triy to make games with too much content. This leads them to demotivation because of its usually too much large-scale systems. He admits he once started to create a RPG game in this perspective but had no longer time and inducing to finish it. He keeps in mind that a game should remain simple.
And of course Nifflas enjoy playing his games, it’s a good reward. He kindly invited me to play Knytt Stories before it’s been released. He took some notes, for example to add some save points while I was playing, then he finished the level with an abashing readiness. Then he shown me Samorost 2, a point & click he particularly appreciates due to its fascinating atmosphere and interesting gameplay.
Another game, Ballance, where you control a ball in equilibrium on an architectural labyrinth ; inspired him a lot. While playing it he added he finds interesting the way the songs where randomly inserted in the game, letting some place for the silence and the sounds of the environment. He’s keen on developing poetic atmospheres and has principles about which message his games are ready for : as an example, enemies couldn’t be killed. It's a principle close to his heart to have no violence in his games.
He mentioned Ico and Shadow of the Colosseus because as well, these games didn't left him uninterested. These games that put you in a dreaming and melancholic world somehow influenced him and you can feel all through his work.
Nifflas is not against commercialising his games for now. He prefers to build customer loyalty and to make his game better known by people. In this aim the level builder delivered with the game would allow more people to be interested in his creations. When I asked him what could be his next projects, Nifflas answered he wishes to create the same kind of side scrolling game as Knytt, using photography. For this he planned to buy a camera as soon as he can afford it.
I thank Nifflas very much for the interview, the tea and this pleasant time. C
