The Stillness of the Wind is about “nostalgia and loss” — an interview with Coyan Cardenas about his new recreation

The Stillness of the Wind is about “nostalgia and loss” — an interview with Coyan Cardenas about his new recreation

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Followers of slow-paced video games about farming would possibly bear in mind after we featured The place the Goats Are on the itch.io weblog. The sport was a gorgeous slow-burn a few girl dwelling with the titular goats whereas attempting to make ends meet. Immediately we’re completely satisfied to report that the sport has obtained a completely featured follow-up referred to as The Stillness of the Wind. I bought to speak to the developer, Coyan Cardenas, on the eve of the sport’s launch. We spoke about what’s occurring inside this new journey:

Okay, let’s begin with the fundamentals: Who’re you and what precisely is the Stillness of the Wind?

My identify is Coyan Cardenas aka Reminiscence of God and I’m a solo developer and director of Lambic Studios. The Stillness Of The Wind is a slow-paced, melancholy recreation about life and loss, the place you play as Talma, an aged goat farmer as she tends to her remoted homestead whereas nostalgic tidings from your loved ones within the metropolis flip ever darker.

Stillness of the Wind is a observe as much as your earlier recreation The place the Goats Are. Why did you determine to develop on Goats slightly than make a brand new sequence?

The place the Goats Are was initially meant to be a month lengthy undertaking completed for follow in my spare time. It ended up taking round 3 months however that’s nonetheless a really quick time for a recreation dev cycle, and it additionally meant that for two/3rds of the event time I used to be “late” and dashing to launch as quickly as attainable. The scope was minimised with a view to match the timeframe, and though I feel the restricted scope is without doubt one of the recreation’s most important strengths and was the #1 cause I completed the sport in any respect, there was nonetheless quite a bit that I wanted I may have explored however didn’t have the time. So though the sport was completed I didn’t really feel “completed” with the thought, therefore The Stillness of the Wind.

What have you ever added to the sport that may shock gamers of The place the Goats Are?

Hopefully quite a bit! With out eager to smash something, I feel Goats gamers can be pleasantly stunned by the truth that the digital camera really strikes this time round which permits for a extra intimate view into Talma’s dwelling and work and permits for exploration of the world surrounding Talma’s homestead. There’s a bunch of latest mechanics like goat breeding (sure, child goats), gardening, foraging, gentle customisation of the homestead, the story is all-new and so on. And there’s a good few easter eggs for gamers of Goats to select up on in the event that they’re paying consideration.

Goats was, and Stillness is shaping as much as be, a extremely somber expertise. What attracts you to inform these sorts of tales?

Truthfully, I don’t know. I’ve simply at all times been drawn to darker, extra melancholy tales, so when it got here to creating my very own I naturally gravitated in the direction of that. A couple of of the primary inspirations for the themes of nostalgia and loss had been movies from two of my favorite movie makers, “Nostalghia” by Andrei Tarkovsky and “The Turin Horse” by Bela Tarr, and the ebook “100 years of solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, which all have fairly bitter ends. For me, there may be nothing higher than a very good, tragic story :).

Stillness is a recreation that takes a extremely intimate have a look at rural life. Why did you go together with this setting, and the way does it tie in to the story you need to inform?

The seed for the unique recreation was impressed by the truth that my girlfriend and I had been getting uninterested in life within the metropolis (we had been each dwelling in London and dealing in Structure practices on the time) and we’d fantasize about leaving London and our jobs to dwell out within the nation someplace on a bit of homestead and lift goats. So the unique thought was to just do that, make a recreation the place you simply increase goats on a farmstead. It was solely after I’d began engaged on that recreation that the story because it’s advised emerged, and for me probably the most attention-grabbing a part of it was not the story itself, however the truth that the occasions are occurring elsewhere, and you might be solely studying about these occasions by means of the phrases of different individuals. In order that feeling of isolation you get from being away from “civilization” is intricately tied to the construction of the narrative and the construction of the sport itself. If the sport occurred within the metropolis for instance the sport can be fully totally different, so the agricultural context is crucial.


In a means, it was a acutely aware effort to place the sport because the antithesis to among the mainstream developments I observed in videogames: You don’t journey the world on an epic journey, you don’t develop extra highly effective as you overcome more durable and more durable obstacles, you don’t management a younger, athletic protagonist, you don’t kill something, you don’t save the world. As an alternative, you play as an aged girl dwelling out her quiet, remaining moments on an remoted homestead.

The Stillness of the Wind is offered now.

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