PAX West 2024 Conversation with James Wragg, the Creative Director of Lovely Hellplace – Dread Delusion
It’s a low-poly horror RPG in the Bethesda-style open world where you can explore strange places and encounter dark perils, and really it’s a game with a strong sense of narrative but also a strong sense of weirdness. We really want to entice players to explore a bizarre and novel place.
How long was it in development?
About four years. It started off with just me as a solo dev, but then we got funding from Dread XP and I was able to bring on more team members, and by the end we had 3 full-time team members and then a bunch of contractors as well.
How is that relationship with Dread XP?
Oh, it’s great! I love these guys. They helped the game grow from humble origins to becoming this huge open-world by the end and they supported me all the way through, and I absolutely love to work with them.
I played quite a bit of Dread Delusion when it was in early access and the initial impression I got from it was, at least visually, this sense of aesthetic freedom from the color palette to the creature, character, and sound design; was it a distinct challenge pulling together all these parts in this kind of cohesive chaos or would you attribute it more to a genuinely organic originality?
Partly the aesthetic sensibilities came out of just really trying to stand out on Twitter, because like when you’re starting out as a game dev, I really felt the need to set the game apart from other games just so people would notice it. As you know, the internet is somewhat crowded these days.
But then really the strange aesthetic qualities really lend itself to great writing prompts as well, because I could have worked backwards from, you know, I make the sky red and put a huge giant glowing star there and all these floating islands just because it looks cool? But then that gives you great narrative prompts to say “well why are people on these giant flying islands, maybe it’s because the world’s surface was destroyed in an apocalyptic event,” you know, if your own aesthetic inspires you to ask questions that’s great as a writer to come up with cool world-building narrative.
Would you say the narrative came more out of the visuals first or vice versa, or more 50/50?
More 50/50, they informed each other. I always wanted to make something quite bizarre and strange, like it was always going to be kind of a rich tapestry of strange things, both in design and in narrative. So I’ll say they kind of bounced off each other.
And it’s really the graphical design of it that struck me the most, it looks like that specific era of RPGs, like you mentioned Bethesda-style RPG, was this an intentional reflection of that era or had it anything to do with technical limitations?
The style grew also out of – there’s a number of game developers using this style now. When I first started out I was very involved with the Haunted PS1 group and what I and all of these other creators have in common is that we love the style of early PS1 and PC games partly because not only is it nostalgic, but putting these limitations often fosters new creative ideas.
And also, by breaking down the game into more chunky, cohesive elements, I think it really highlights what’s interactive in the world. So many games these days have this pseudo-realistic aesthetic but there’s a disconnect between the realism that you see and the limited interactions that you can make in the space. Whereas what I love about this style is that it’s immediately obvious, with a low-poly game, what you can interact with, where you can go, and what you can do. There’s a kind of simplicity and honesty to the low-poly style that I think works pretty well with the game mechanics.
I feel like with maybe the tools game devs have to use nowadays, it might be easier to make something that’s overly-polished rather than low poly, were there any distinct challenges with making Dread Delusion in this style?
I would say low poly is definitely easier, that is another draw to it, it’s easier to make low poly assets and you can iterate quite quickly. With level design, I can create all these levels quickly and I never need to go back and add all these realistic aspects, like I can just keep the first draft and then change that quite easily, iterate and change, based on feedback and playtesting. It’s easy to build on your level designs while keeping that finished low poly style. So, I’ll say that low poly is really nice to work with. It’s not easy, I guess, me and the team of Dread Delusion have been working on it so long that we’re used to it but there’s definitely a high skill involved, but there’s less time involved.
I also noticed that a bulk of the narrative, at least from my time with it, seemed scattered across the world alongside that central storyline, a lot of it you discover in these places for the player to find and explore, and the world itself holds your hand very little. How do you feel the practice of discovery and this kind of self-sufficient playstyle serves the player and the type of story you’re telling?
I was always inspired by Bethesda-style open world games where the player’s let loose to wander as they see fit. I would never play the main quests of those kinds of games, I always loved just finding my own stories. So that was the main thing, I wanted it to stand on its own as a game where you can explore and find interesting side quests before we had this really strong story.
Actually, we had so much fun crafting the main narrative that I think although most of the game is optional, I hope that we did a good job with making the main quest interesting enough so that once you finally kind of return to the main quest, and once you decide to chase down Vela, I think that we did a really good job on that. But, it was always meant to have a strong sense of freedom and every nook and cranny we wanted to reward players with an interesting conundrum or a thought-provoking bit of lore. We really wanted to enrich the player with an interesting world.
There are so many little secrets in Dread Delusion and so much of it ties to these side stories that it really is very rewarding. Did you get any specific feedback about that storytelling style from the community while it was in early access or what piece of feedback was most valuable?
The early access was hugely valuable for so many reasons, but actually getting the game into player’s hands and hearing that feedback – a huge amount of the game changed based on player reactions, it really was invaluable. From small things like tweaking the stamina system to be more forgiving to larger things, like in early access originally a lot of the puzzles were more simple, and a lot of the player feedback was they needed more engaging puzzles and deeper level design, so we doubled down on that and really tried to give players what they were asking for. So, I think the feedback from early access hugely improved how the game ended up. It was definitely a challenge having to iterate and release updates for an audience, but I think it was well worth it and shows in the final game.
Were there any, other than as previously mentioned Bethesda-style RPGs, were there any other specific inspirations behind Dread Delusion?
Although the game is very inspired by obviously Morrowind and the like, it’s also equally inspired by something like Zelda, where actually these RPG ideas are condensed down to these simple engaging forms. And something like Dark Souls, where there are times when the level design closes up and becomes a bit more labyrinthian.
But also I love reading old 70s science fiction and fantasy novels and these kind of strange forgotten pulpy stories.
It feels very pulpy in a good way. You take something like a goblin and I know what a goblin looks like but you’re like “it actually looks like this” and it’s not any kind of goblin I’ve ever seen before and I’m totally there with you.
Yes, right.
And a random question: When you have to lock in or you’re under a personal crunch, is there any sort of music you like to throw on or a specific playlist?
Actually, I’m a big fan of lots of music, I’ve got like 70 favorite artists I listen to and try to keep up with new releases. A lot of my friends are big into music and we go to a lot of gigs, but actually when making the game, honestly, I would just stick on YouTube chill beats, the most unobtrusive music.
Lo-fi beats to game dev to.
Yeah, there are certain kinds of playlists of lo-fi beats that I’ve listened to for thousands of hours because I’m really kind of bad about being distracted, and if I put on my favorite music I’d probably find it really difficult to code.
Do you have any final thoughts or anything that you want people to know?
Just that we’re so pleased and humbled by the response of the community since launch and we’re so grateful for everyone who bought the game and showed their support.
