Discoverability for indie games has always been an issue. Countless articles on the subject, pleas to Steam to tweak their systems, and folks suggesting itch.io to friends are just a few of the things I see regularly on social media. Sometimes, a game will serendipitously land in your lap, on the Discover tab somewhere, or be a repost from a friend. Fading Serenades came across my radar through the So Many Games review queue. Intrigued by the title, I took a gander at the Steam store page and judged a book by its cover. Little did I know, I would find one of my favourite games of the year.
Bernie Wick is the developer behind Fading Serenades. Once my review went live, I was eager to understand more about the game. Not only did he respond, but I am excited to present his ideas on game development, from his experience to his design philosophy.
How are you doing? What games are you currently playing?
I am doing well, thank you! I’m definitely a little exhausted from working on Turbo for a long time without taking many breaks, but it’s been worth it so far.
I’ve been playing through some older games and classics recently! Luigi’s Mansion, Patapon, and Ticket To Earth. I also open up The Witness every once in a while, as it’s such a cool exploration of a seemingly simple concept. I find it such an interesting game, but one that takes a lot of concentration, which I don’t always have at the end of a busy day.
How much of Fading Serenades’ story is in reaction to the pandemic and the advent of AI? Or is that something that I read into it?
The game’s narrative really is a reflection of my thoughts, or parts of them at least, about our modern world and recent years. So, yes! There is a lot of reaction to those events, troubles, and changes of everyday life in there.
Nearly everything new and digital aims to accelerate things, be it our communication, our consumption of media, or our productive output. Within all that acceleration, attention is the new currency; it’s what everybody wants to take from you and have as much as possible. In the pandemic, we noticed this collectively for the first time. LLMs and the push of every company to put semi-working chatbots everywhere just exacerbate this phenomenon.
But aside from those events, there are a lot of thoughts about social media buried in the game, too. We have everything we could ever want (we are told) in the palm of our hand; what else could we possibly want? But … is that even a good thing, or are we just frying our brains with content that is specifically made to hook us instead? That’s the core question with which the idea for the narrative of Fading Serenades started for me, and also one that I will probably explore even more in the future.
The font choice in Fading Serenades was one of the immediate visual draws for me when playing the game. What inspired that choice for the games’ menus?
I’m just a big nerd who wants everything to look and feel right. That insistence on aesthetics transfers to fonts as well! Fonts and typesetting in general have a super interesting history, going back all the way to monks hand-copying books, to the Gutenberg Press, to entire design movements that evolved out of typesetting. Movements that we take for granted nowadays and don’t even think about. For example, nearly all the design trends we have seen in the past decade or more in the digital space, all that minimalism, really go back to the “Swiss Style”; typography and graphic design from the 1950s also brought Helvetica to life! In my eyes, knowledge about these topics gives a designer the tools and possibility to create somewhat coherent designs. Though most of the time, I still feel like I’m guessing, as there’s so much to learn and explore.
The paper theme throughout the game appeared naturally through just working a lot on it, going through many iterations, and finding something that sticks and fits. Paper on an “offline” island is just too good a metaphor to not do it. I myself write all my ideas, to-do lists, calendar dates, etc., on paper, so there might be some indirect self-conditioning here.
Music is a prominent aspect of Fading Serenades, from the game’s title to important plot details to the stellar soundtrack. What is your relationship with music, and what motivated you to make it such an important part of the game?
It’s an important part of my life and usually my biggest well of inspiration. Music lights up the human brain and evokes emotion on a very deep, even evolutionary level, like no other thing. It might sound a bit far-fetched, but there are entire fields of study for this (e.g., https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/how-music-resonates-brain) If you look enough, music is everywhere in the world. There is no emotional atmosphere without a good soundscape, right? To me, it’s also something deeply human. No matter which chapter of your life you are currently in, you will find a certain soundtrack that just fits right, in a way you haven’t thought to be possible. In my eyes, that’s such a beautiful aspect of life and something we shouldn’t ever give up.
I am not a musician myself (in another life, hopefully), aside from a little bedroom guitaring and my general interest in music theory, but I have a good collection of records I can always go to when I need ideas or just to wind down with my messy thoughts.
This importance in my life naturally transfers to my games and really everything I do. I strongly assume the tie between game, story, and music will only get stronger in future projects. Music, literature, and art are the pillars on which I grew up in some way (though my parents are not artists), and within games I always saw the ultimate, interactive combination of those disciplines. I see myself more as an artist than anything else; that’s why I’m making games.
What feature or detail are you most proud of in Fading Serenades? Why is that feature or detail the one that comes to mind?
The little animals that run away when you get too close to them! Not because there’s anything technically special about them (there really isn’t), but it made my girlfriend laugh the first time she played it. That’s always a delight, having people you love play the game and genuinely liking it.
On a technical front: the backpack and inventory management, of course. It’s the most complicated thing in the game and generally one of the more complex pieces of game mechanics I have done. And that’s not because it’s super difficult to implement, but there are a lot of edge cases and way more traps to softlock yourself as a player, which need to be elegantly designed around, than I would have thought at the beginning of the project. I fixed such cases all the way until the very end of development, with myself and testers finding more and more complicated ways of breaking the game.
What do you think was the biggest lesson you learnt in making Fading Serenades from your previous game, A Story About Birds?
A Story About Birds, in many aspects, was a practice project. On a technical front, it was my first time working with the Godot engine. On the publishing front, I wanted to learn the technical process of selling games on Steam. I’ve worked in games before that. I even published a tiny game before on itch.io, but I knew there were many things that I was still blind to.
For Fading Serenades, while I definitely improved as a game developer and designer, the biggest lessons I’ve learnt this time around were mostly outside of the development itself. I have been doing software development and programming for over half of my life now, much of that time professionally, so on that front, I’m very comfortable, like with planning how long something takes me to do and what I’m capable of doing and learning in that time. Fading Serenades was built and released within 8-9 months of work, a timeframe that would have been impossible for me if I hadn’t worked on many games before!
Where I’m out of my comfort zone and where I have learnt the most this year, by far, are the aspects of marketing, press work, finance, and timing decisions. All are incredibly important areas of game development, and even more so as an independent developer. I am lucky to have an incredible network of people helping and consulting me. Whenever I can, I try to actively reach out to others who know the things I do not, ask them questions, and listen to them.
This past year, I’ve made a lot of mistakes that have been incredible lessons. And now that I take the time to calm down a little, I realise that most of those mistakes boil down to my rushing very hard for many things. So, the biggest lesson: just … don’t rush things. If you think you can do something in X time, you might be able to, but it’s probably way better to just take more time. Do it slow, do it steady, do it well.
What I am ultimately trying to do is create a sustainable business to work on my art for others to enjoy, which means I can’t be rushing all the time. That’s far from healthy or sustainable. In the end, it’s all a lesson to learn, I guess. I aim to live from making games, and so I try to learn as much as possible, as continuously and responsibly as possible, to achieve this crazy dream and drive to nudge the world to something just a tiny little bit better while doing it. So far, it feels like I’m on the right track, but who knows?
I will surely make lots more mistakes, but I can’t wait for those lessons, either.
Now that you’ve released Fading Serenades, how do you view A Story About Birds retrospectively? Is there something about A Story About Birds you would have done differently, or something you would revisit in a future game?
I love that little game, and I don’t think there’s much I really would have done differently. Of course, now I know more about the tools I use and have more experience in general, so there are surely things I could have done better. But, with the knowledge I had back then, it turned out quite well, I’d say!
There are aspects and ideas I might revisit and have revisited within Fading Serenades already that might appear in future games too. I can’t really say yet.
As a Vienna-based game developer, was there a desire to represent Austria in Fading Serenades?
There was no conscious desire to represent anything but my thoughts and fun gameplay, to be honest! But I am a product of my environment, so subconsciously there’s definitely something in there. I try to be observant and aware of my surroundings when I’m out and about, and there’s always so much to see and hear and just so many stories in general. I am sure these experiences influence me and make themselves shown in the games I make. And maybe that will happen a bit more intentionally in the future; who knows.
Austrian indie games have had at least a ten-year visible presence in the industry since Moon Studios’ Ori and the Blind Forest, culminating now with Microbird’s Dungeons of Hinterberg and your Fading Serenades. What do you think the history of indie game development in Austria has been? Is that something you are thinking about?
I feel flattered to be included in the same sentence as those games! I hope I create something at some point in the future that shares similar success and impact as theirs.
Austria is a bit of a challenge for indie games and the incubation of new and small studios. It’s quite expensive here, with inflation soaring over the past few years. Creating a proper business, more than just a simple self-employed status, is tied to a lot of bureaucracy and taxes. Combining those two points also makes it quite costly to actually employ someone.
There are also few to no grants or funding opportunities for games here, with some entertainment-focused grants even specifically excluding video games. A lot of great talent is drawn away to the big studios and moves to Germany, France, and the US.
There is, however, a growing gamedev scene. There is a community that regularly meets up, and more and more people are daring to create games here. For the not-so-indie part of the scene, THQ Nordic has been in Vienna since forever and has been quite successful, from what I gather.
I’m trying to be part of that small-knit community, as well as finding my own bubble in some spheres in Vienna, and really enjoying it, too! Overall, I try not to think too much about it and instead see where it naturally leads. This is where I live and have my life after all, so of course I want to make it here! Maybe I’m even able to be a small part of the change to a bigger and more vibrant game development culture and make it a little easier for others in the future. Assuming I get that far, that’s a beautiful thought.
Your website describes your game design philosophy as “telling stories through short-form, retro experiences.” What inspires you to create games with those characteristics in mind?
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think too much about that line when I added it to the website! But let’s break it down, because words have meaning, and while I like to ramble a lot, mine usually do too:
I’m a lover of things retro, be it tech, games, sci-fi, or what have you. And going further, some of the most enjoyable media for me invokes nostalgia without even having a direct connection to the (or my) past. It seems like a paradox, but it works surprisingly well in practice. Take Teenage Engineering’s products and design language as an example. Or take John Mayer’s Sob Rock album. Mayer even said in interviews he wanted to create music on that album that makes you think, “I’ve heard that before!”, implanting false memories in the listener, so to speak. I think deep down, I would love to achieve something like this with the games I make. Influenced by so many amazing things, making the player feel right at home, making them think, “I’ve seen this before” in a good way.
The short-form aspect really comes down to my favourite games usually being games on the shorter side. If something is expected to take 100 or more hours to finish, possibly even open-ended, like competitive games, I lose interest really quickly, aside from not actually having the time for it. I enjoy good stories, and while there are many good stories that go on for a long time, there is something so enjoyable about something short, punchy, and to the point.
What do you hope is the biggest takeaway players get from Fading Serenades?
Just to think a little bit about our modern world. Of how everything is going so fast and how everything makes you think going slow is bad, and realising that maybe, just maybe, that isn’t actually the case. Offline, there is a world too, and it’s a beautiful one at that. There are many ways to live life and many things to do, many of which don’t, in some shape or form, try to manipulate you the entire time, for whatever purpose. Sometimes, it’s nice to just hike around nature a little bit or sit outside with a cup of coffee, chat with a friend, or …
You get the point.
I’d like to thank Bernie for his generous time and thorough insight in these answers. Fading Serenades is a tight, pixel-art wonder available now on Steam. Read over my review to see how I found Fading Serenades to be an indie strand game, rooted in connecting an island community in the face of AI, pollution, and mystery.
