Mikkel Brons-Frandsen Launches His Free Game "Look"

Look byMikkel Brons-Frandsen

Mikkel Brøns-Frandsen is one of a number of talented students to have graduated from the excellent Animation Workshop in Denmark in recent years. Mikkel has just released a free new game for the PC, titled "Look - an Interactive Poem". FLiP asked him to talk about the game and how it came about. 

Look - an Interactive Poem

FLiP: You've just released a new indie game - tell us about it!

  
Mikkel: the release is for an indie game site called GameJolt.com where all games are free, so it's not like a huge release where anyone is risking a lot of money or their reputation. Still, it does feel really satisfying to finally show my first game to the world.


Visual Development art

FLiP: what was the inspiration for making it?



Mikkel: Heh, please don't make fun of me, but the game is actually a dream I once had. I don't know why I dreamt of climbing a mountain to get closer to the moon and why I found what I did at the top, but in any case I immediately drew a sketch of it when I woke up. I'd been wanting to learn more about game development and particularly about programming so I just figured that this idea would be as good as any for my first personal project.



Look - An Interactive Poem

FLiP: What software did you use to make it?


Mikkel: Unity, Maya and Photoshop

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Look development

FLiP: What are the biggest hurdles to overcome when making a game?



Mikkel: Story telling in games can be quite difficult. I'm educated as an animator and so I'm used to just making the assets move and that's the end of it. Once it's rendered nobody can tell how it was made and the audience only sees what you want them to see. In a game, you don't have the luxury of hiding the mess you've made behind the scenes. If it's in the scene, it needs to work properly and it needs to work no matter what the player does. You never know if the players are going to feel what you want them to feel and thus you cannot be sure they'll do what you want them to do.

 It's like they say: "you can lead the horse to water, but you can't make it drink".


 

Look Development

FLiP: What advice would you give to an aspiring indie game designer?



Mikkel:  Start small. If you jump straight into making a huge project, it's very easy to get lost in all the different problems of making a game and lose the motivation. The game I just made takes between 5 and 15 minutes to finish but it took me 6 months to make. When I started I didn't know how to program, I wasn't very experienced working in game editors and even importing assets could become a mystery but now I'm much better prepared for my next project.

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Look Development

FLiP: Where can we buy it?



Mikkel: I'm  really sorry that you'll be unable to pay for it, but you can download my game through this link: www.gamejolt.com/games/other/look/36124/

To see the game, follow this link: http://gamejolt.com/games/other/look/36124/ .