Welcome to the Infinite Level
For the uninitiated…
If you’ve made it here, there’s a good chance you got here because of me promoting the heck out of my latest game, The Future Project. And evidently, you thought it looked so cool that you wanted to know a bit more about the developer behind it. First of all, you flatter me. Second, you have rightfully assumed that there’s a bit more to learn about me and my works. For this dev blog post, I’m going to take a moment to reintroduce myself to anyone who has no clue who I am. And judging from my follower counts as of this writing, it’s safe to say that will be most people.
So, the first question that I’m sure will get brought up: is Infinite Level seriously just one person? That is correct, though that’s not say that I never seek outside help whatsoever. Somebody that isn’t me has to playtest these games, and I’ve had people create art assets for me before. But as far as who is actively working on these games at any given moment, that’s me. As you can see on Infinite Level’s site, I have three games listed, them being War Ender, Impressions, and The Future Project. However, I do have my name attached to some other projects as a programmer. While I feel comfortable working in various aspects of game creation, my preferred realm is in programming. I enjoy making the systems designed come to life, hopefully even better than originally envisioned. That said, I do like the design and music creation aspects as well.
Game developers almost always have a history of making games before their first notable or even commercial title, and I’m no exception. I’ve been making games in some capacity since I was a teenager, whether it be simple games I made for myself or partaking in game jams. War Ender is the first game I made with the intention of selling it and actually getting it out there for people to play. An action platformer akin to something like Mega Man or Journey to Silius, it was released in 2018 and got the Infinite Level thing started. Then, in 2020, I released Impressions, a sci-fi short story where you’re a pundit commenting on the arrival of aliens. And now I’m working on The Future Project, a first person metroidvania continuing the story of Impressions. As you can see, I'm not the type to stick to one type of game. There's a lot of different things I want to try in game development, and one of my goals is that people will be able to enjoy a variety of experiences made by me.
Every developer has their schtick, whether it be specialization in a certain genre of video game or some kind of technical goal they’re constantly striving for. My focus as a game dev is the integration of gameplay and story, thereby utilizing video games to their fullest extent. Video games are often described as either narrative or gameplay driven, and while there’s certainly nothing wrong with focusing specifically on a story or game idea, it’s my belief that the absolute best games make the two items work together. Thus, I try to integrate the story and gameplay into each other as much as possible. In War Ender, story is integrated into mission objectives and plays out in real time during gameplay. Impressions, meanwhile, is my most obvious example as it involves the player’s choices directly affecting the details of the game’s story. And of course, The Future Project lets players physically discover more of the story as they explore the game’s worlds.
Originally, I had a website exclusively for War Ender which ended up being used to talk about everything I did. This obviously doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the long term, and I didn't want to try managing a new website for every game I made, so I created the website you're reading this on now. It's meant to act as a central hub for all the games I create, whether they're older titles that are already released, currently being worked on, or something that doesn't even exist yet. The War Ender website had a dev blog of its own, and I intend to preserve it for future reference. As of this writing, there are still some missing blog posts from the old site, but over time I'll be getting them uploaded to The Old Blog one by one. Meanwhile, this current dev blog is where I'll start penning my monthly updates. A new post will be published on the first of each month (unless something necessitates an additional blog post at a different time of the month) and is meant to give updates on a game's development. If there's no substantial updates, then it will instead look back on previous games and recount some design decisions and interesting stories, or give some thoughts on the overall game creation process. Basically, what I'm saying is it's worth popping in here every so often to see what's new.
Okay, I think that should get everyone up to speed. If you haven't already, I highly encourage checking out both The Future Project page as well as the dev blog post talking about the new game. And if you simply must try one of my games now (I don't blame you), then have a look at War Ender and Impressions. Impressions, in particular, is a free short story that you can finish in about a half hour, so it's a great way to get acquainted with my work. That said, War Ender does have a free demo on Steam that you can also check out. Of course, if you want to know what's going on exactly as it happens, then Twitter and Facebook are good places to watch.
Until next time!
-Lance T.