Unrest - Interview @ Technology Tell

Technology Tell had the chance to interview Pyrodactyl Games Arvind Yadav about his recently released kickstarter games Unrest. Here is a short sample of the interview.

Warning: The interview contains some spoilers about the endings.

GT: Do you have any creative reasons for not providing resolution to any of the characters’ stories within the game?

Yadav: Yes, absolutely. Morality in RPGs tends to be a matter of action and consequence; you rob a man, get five evil points, he dies, your party’s reputation decreases by six. Providing this much focus on ends, not means, has a reductive effect on how players interpret those systems.

Unrest offers the idea that sometimes, there is no right and no wrong decision–sometimes actions must be weighed and judged without knowing what the consequences will be. Even someone playing the game a second time has no way of knowing whether Tanya’s marriage to Hanu will end in an uneasy alliance or an abusive, miserable domestic hell–and each time the player chooses, they must choose not based on what the outcome will be, but on what they feel is right.

GT: Who made the decision to end Unrest on a cliffhanger, and why?

Yadav: The decision emerged organically. One of the main ideas of the game is that casting Unrest’s story as Asha’s Heroic Narrative–her fall from safety, her struggle to survive, her triumphant rise to power–is absurdly, inherently artificial. Obviously the story of Bhimra’s troubles began far before Asha came into being, and obviously it will continue long after she gets her “happy ending.” Unrest has a cliffhanger ending because to the real story, the story of Bhimra – told in part through Tanya, Bhagwan, and Shyam – has no clean ending.

GT: Was the abrupt end due to a lack of funds?

Yadav: We might have tied a few things up if we had more money, but if we weren’t happy with how the game ended, we would have kept working on it. This game was made by a team of five on a budget of $30,000 over the course of 1 year – and to be honest, that is not enough money to pay enough wages to one person, let alone five. During the year, one of us worked at Home Depot, and three of us had to freelance alongside making the game to pay the bills.