The origins of Avenging Angel can be traced all the way back to New York City and the summer of 1991. I had just purchased the first three books of Steven King’s hallowed “Dark Tower” saga from Macy’s. I remember the kind gentleman who sold me the books calling me “sir”. That was a first. That summer had a lot of “firsts”. I guess I was old, or mature, looking enough to be able to buy drinks in the bars. If I remember correctly, during that time persons under the age 21 couldn’t buy booze. I was barely 17. I do not know if it’s a good or bad thing, but boy, did I have a blast. I missed my Commodore Amiga 500, which was back home in Helsinki, Finland. “Carrier Command” and “Zarch” had been my favourites from the late 80’s. I clocked a few hundred hours with the first “Test Drive” as well. “Batman The Movie” game from 1989 was also nothing short of spectacular. I loved those games. I guess, I still do.
Then there was music. I bought The Four Horsemen’s “No One Said it Would Be Easy” from a record store in TriBeCa. Tyketto’s “Don’t Come Easy” had just been released and “Forever Young” from that record was, and goddamn, still is one of my favourites. The Cult’s “Ceremony” and “Sonic Temple” were also something I associate with that period of time. It might be because I was so excited to see the very same places portrayed in the video of “Edie (Ciao Baby)”. I remember Fishbone’s “Reality of my Surroundings” blowing my mind for good. I bought Extreme II: Pornograffitti (A Funked Up Fairy Tale) on vinyl. Those were the soundtrack of my life and times back then. It would be a year later when I discovered Ennio Morricone and the world of soundtrack music. I had been playing classical piano from a very young age, but in late 80’s, I was so fucking fed up playing something that was completely dead in my view and from an age I had no interest in. I traded the piano for another percussive instrument, namely, the drums. I wanted to play rock n’ roll. So I did and still do.
I read the Dark Tower books during that summer and decided that I want to write. I tried. I sucked. I tried again. I sucked some more. I somehow reasoned that when humankind would run out of fossil fuel, they would turn to steam devices. My father was, and still is, somewhat of an enthusiast when it comes to locomotives and steam engines, and in this case, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. I dreamt of artificial intelligence. I envisioned them to be inter-dimensional and having a bio-mechanical interface to our world. I understand why fiction writers want to depict artificial intelligence with very human attributes, but in my view, it takes something really important and fundamental away from the entire concept. I know it is easier for readers/gamers/viewers to relate to something that has familiar characteristics, but I really tried to understand and comprehend how would a non-human entity with access to another reality perceive human beings and their odd metaphysical structures. That was, and still is, the premise for “Machinimus Artificialis” -machines in Avenging Angel and The Land of Strange Gods.
I also wanted to explore what would ultimately happen if a human mind would be transplanted into a network and a machine as a form of incarceration. This thought ultimately manifested in Avenging Angel character “Antero” who was given a choice: a death sentence or to be sentenced for life. What happens in the game is that Antero has chosen life, but those who imprisoned him neglected to tell him that his “life sentence” would last literally forever. He is a being, or essence, who haunts the Thunderhead Point island network jumping from a robotic chassis to another. He is starting forget his humanity since he knows no hunger or pain. His sense of psychological time is completely different than for a human being. He wants to opt out. Badly.
All the NPCs in Avenging Angel operate from their own selfish motives. Each character has an agenda. There is no dualistic and childish good vs. evil in play here. That makes the conflicts presented in the game much more complex and much more enjoyable in my view. We did not want to include any kind of point-based “Karma System” in the game. The game world reacts to player’s choices and that’s that. If you shoot first and ask questions later, the world becomes more hostile and you might miss a side quest.
My deep affection for Art Nouveau, Scandinavian Jugendstil, and Art Deco architecture and style is a childhood thing as well. I grew up in downtown Helsinki in an apartment building from 1911 and my father is an avid collector of Art Nouveau. I don’t think my childhood home had a single light-fixture newer than 1930’s. Those shapes and curves are aesthetically so pleasing to the eye. They communicate something larger than life to me, which is ethereal, beautiful, and meaningful. Art Nouveau in particular had a profound impact on how I envisioned the world of Avenging Angel to be. Now looking back, these are the foundations of Avenging Angel and The Land of Strange Gods: Stephen King, New York City, music, architecture, steam engines and a very, very vivid imagination.
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It would take twenty years and a different format to really bring to life what I envisioned in summer of 1991. My path and career choices took me far away from the land of fiction for two decades. I would return to my writings when I had a chance, but one could hardly call it professional work. Around ten years ago I came up with the name “The Land of Strange Gods”. It felt right immediately. The title encapsulated what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I started to bring more metaphysical and existential elements into my writing. I started to ask questions about the very essence of modern stupidity. Why is this planet such a shit-hole? Why are human beings so inescapably violent? Why the fuck are we here? Some of that work went into “Dark Zen”, my non-fiction book, which will be released in mid-May 2015, and a lot of it bled into the world of Avenging Angel.
Let us fast-forward now to early winter of 2013. By then I was putting my writing skills to good use making the script for a horror game as a subcontractor. I was pulling a triple-duty in that project, since I was the sound designer and composer as well. It was in that ill-fated project, where I met Mr. Pukki and Mr. Ronimus. Mr. Pukki was the Art Director and lead designer and Mr. Ronimus was the technical director. When the project was ended in early winter of 2013, it was very natural of us to start Dark Amber Softworks. We agreed pretty much everything from the start, the communication was effortless, and we simply got very well along, despite the tree of us coming from very different backgrounds. I called the local city development company, and Mr. Mika Lammi there, for free office spaces and thus we moved our gear into the offices of a defunct paper mill. The office space used to be a machine workshop in the 1910’s and has magnificent tall arch-windows framed by red brick walls. The 30-feet main room was recently painted white and oozed just the kind of Steampunk vibe I was looking for. The facility itself was owned by the paper mill, but operated by the local development company, Kinno, and their “Protomo” program, which was an incubator for starting businesses. The Kymenlaakso (our region) Protomo was managed by Mr. Tommi Sundström (whom we immortalised in the game lore as “Alchemist Sundstroem”) and assisted by Mr. Risto Uotila. We were given keys and two cubicles. Just before the Christmas of 2013 we started to sketch ideas for a new game. We were so sick and tired of the previous project and the half-lit world of horror games (nothing against them, but at that time we just did not want to make that kind of stuff). To be completely honest, we were, and in some ways still are, noobs at the time. We did not have much experience about making games save for that horror game, which provided us useful knowledge on how not to do things.
We had a crew of three people: a writer and sound guy (me), art guy (Mr. Pukki), and tech guy (Mr. Ronimus). We asked advice from the local “elder statesmen” of game industry and everyone kept telling us to do mobile and something small. We shrugged and thought “fuck it”. I do not remember who it was who suggested that we should do a small tower defence game. We initially kind of liked the idea and started sketching the game. We have always worked really, really fast. Since Mr. Pukki has a tendency of sketching in Mud Box, we get stuff prototyped in minutes. We kept working on it for a few weeks, but everyone felt that something was off with the whole concept. I honestly don’t remember at what point we decided that, no, we do not want to do small, and we do not want to do just a goddamn tower defence, but it was Mr. Pukki who suggested that we should do a bigger game based on the world I had created, The Land of Strange Gods. In mid-January 2014 we decided to take the tower defence idea and build something bigger around it. We all have always loved Morrowind, Final Fantasy VII and Fallout. It was pretty clear that we wanted to do something along those lines. Everyone thought that we were nothing short of insane. "One does not simply do a game of that size with a crew of three". The very first script of “Avenging Angel” had the tower defence portion as the last “boss fight” of the game. I think the entire tower defence idea was scrapped in February 2014. When March 2014 was lurking just around the corner, the current version of Avenging Angel was pretty much sketched out, but we were in trouble. Then a miracle we needed happened.
I had been applying for all kinds of game program grants, but since we had not actually released anything, we were not even considered by most places we reached out to. The majority thought that what just the three of us trying to accomplish was not doable. We were quickly running out of money when Mr. Timo Ylikangas from Kinno pointed me to a government organisation called AVEK and their Digidemo program. I applied for the grant, and I was pretty much sure that we wouldn’t see a dime. We did. They approved our application essentially saving the entire project.
In Summer of 2014 the first version of the Avenging Angel demo came out. We have been at it full time ever since. Along the way we have had the usual and unusual hardship, heartbreak, financial trouble, writer’s/artist’s blocks, but also laughter, joy, accomplishment, and getting shit done. We have learned as we have trotted along.
At the end of the day, we wanted to prove that only three dedicated individuals with the right skill set can make a good game. Yes, that is what we set out to do and that is what we want to do. A massive thank you goes out to those individuals mentioned here who helped us. A massive thank you goes out to the numerous people who believed in us and encouraged us and were not mentioned here. They are our families and friends, the folks who voted for us in Steam Greenlight, liked us on Facebook, followed us on Twitter, made YouTube videos, journalists and gamers wrote articles for various medias, sent encouraging emails and tweets, and played the game demo in various expos, and those brave individuals who invested money in our IndieGoGo campaign, which by the way tanked.
We see you all and we hear you all. You all have our gratitude.
(Note: stay tuned for "Part Two" of this journey in a few days)
