I came across Year Of The Lady Bug (YOTL) during one of my daily scourge of the internet. A horror survival game where the horror doesn’t come from the dark unlit corners but from shiny and well lit corridors. A horror game which would boast an understandable stories. A survival game which would not make gamers feel utterly helpless.
It was too good to be true. Turns out, it was, FOR NOW. Currently Year Of The Lady Bug is just an idea, a concept, a pitch. A pitch which is slowly gaining more meat and momentum as it rolls on. I decided to talk to the mind behind Year Of The Lady Bug and and find out how big the idea really is. I connected with @MintMentis over Twitter and soon we were in a chat discussing the game. He was also kind enough to show off some exclusive artwork from the game, right here only on IndianNoob. Excerpts below:
What inspired you to make The Year of The Lady Bug? We noticed The Shining mentioned on the website. But any other source of inspiration?
I have been a horror fan all my life. I watch a lot of horror movies and games and every time I do so I often think about how I would do things differently. I am not saying that I am better than them. I just simply wanted to create my own world where I can put down all the crazy thoughts and ideas I had since I was a kid. If The Shining is the main driven force of my inspiration, I will openly praise films such as American Psycho, Skin I Live In, and games such as Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 4.
Most horror games tend to make use of darkness or dim lit surroundings. Why did you decided to use bright lighting instead?
About ten years ago, I walked into a massive public washroom at a conference. As I was standing there taking a leak I realized how bright and clean the place was and all I could hear was them water drops. I had the most insane chill. Horror comes in all kinds of forms yet we rely so heavily on darkness and gore. We wanted to explore the other side of the horror through Year Of The Ladybug.
Once again most Horror games tend to play on making the player feel powerless. Will YOTL employ the same tactic?
We definitely want to stay away from just running away. The game is far from constant hack and slash but we are aiming closer to Condemned than Outlast. We want the players to feel powerless by providing oppressive sound designs, dreadful visual elements, and tough to beat enemies.
Tell us more about the story. How did the script come into being? Who was involved, what were the inspirations. Will YOTL be an open ended game or will the game have just one final ending?
Considering how it seems like nine out of ten horror games don’t even bother making a decent story, I think our story is good enough. I finished the story way before I started working on the art assets so it is definitely not a quickly put together script that was added to the pretty pictures. It is nothing amazing by all mean, but I can guarantee that it won’t make people angry at least. I wrote the story myself (I am an artist not a writer haha) and we are currently working with a professional who is rewriting it. There are going to be two different endings and an achievement item that will reveal the setting for the possible sequel if obtained.
Why did you choose a pitch over a crowd funding option? How do you plan to bring the game into production?
I am going to be honest with you and say that crowd funding seems too scandalous for my taste. You hear about bad stories left and right and I just simply don’t want to deal with those stressful situations. I am an art director at a mobile game studio in Toronto and I have a good life doing what I do at work. I started working on Year Of The Ladybug simply because I love doing anything horror related, with or without profit. I know it is an unorthodox way of doing it but our plan is to continue making art assets that are good enough to capture both the public and the publishers attention. The exposure happened way sooner than we anticipated so now we are working on the actual website while making more concept arts. Will a developer contact us for buying the project? Maybe, maybe not! When the website is ready we are going to start contacting developers ourselves.
The website also mentions that the game is already in development. How much of the game is ready?
Like mentioned above, the story is written and more concept arts are being produced. For us it is like making an art book for a game that doesn’t exist yet. I mean wouldn’t you want to play the game if you saw an art book of say God Of War 3? We would like to see and find out.
Apart from yourself, is there anyone else who is a part of YOTL?
There is just another person who is in charge of the business side. He is an old friend who will handle all the legal stuff if we ever get there:)
Talking about yourself, the Twitter About Me is really vague and the Contact Us section on the website is WIP. So tell us a little more about yourself, and what have you been upto before YOTL?
I created Mint Mentis so I can detach this identity from my other life so I won’t mention the name of the company but I am an art director at a mobile game studio in Toronto. I have been in the game industry over eight years and I make fun apps for the world. I would like to get back to my fine arts root as soon as I am done with Year Of The Ladybug project.
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Visit THE YEAR OF THE LADY BUG official website
There you have it, Year Of The Lady Bug. A fresh new idea in the Survival Horror genre. The concept has our horror buds tingling, and we sure hope the games comes out and lives up to its expectation. If you like what you saw, please make sure to head over to The Year Of The Lady Bug, and show your support for the game both on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any other questions. Let us know in the comments. Before we go however, here is an exclusive, not yet on the site look at one of the puzzles design in the game.
