The Independent Gamer is a curated roundup of news from indie gaming, landing here every other Friday.
As the daughter of a mechanic, Annika Stonefly has absorbed a certain amount of passion and knowledge even if she isn’t quite sure how to exercise those muscles. A great adventure to recover a family heirloom awaits her in Stonefly, the upcoming action-adventure game from Texas-based developer Flight School Studio and Los Angeles publisher MWM Interactive, both of which have teams well populated by women.
Hearing about the “non-violent but very action-oriented” pitch of Stonefly was appealing for Mel Ramsden, a Montreal-based technical game designer and artist whose background includes work on AAA games such as Mass Effect Andromeda and Star Wars Battlefront 2. “My favorite types of games are the kinds that have stories and gameplay that match really nicely, so every action you do in the game feels like you’re part of a world, you’re participating, you can really get into the immersion of the game,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Related Stories
In Stonefly, the environment — laced with tree canopies, plants and shrubs — is populated by bugs that have their own characteristics and abilities. “The world was so enticing to me because I love little things,” says narrative writer Belinda Garcia. “I love different perspectives; thinking about what the world looks like to an ant or a mouse or a cat or a lizard or a rabbit.” She recalls a series of animated films: The Secret World of Arrietty, Thumbelina and A Bug’s Life, as projects that exemplify these outlooks on life.
While expressing interest in the “mystical, forest-like” type of world that Stonefly offers, where “magic doesn’t fuel anything, everything is so mechanical,” Garcia summons a curveball reference: Star Wars. She explains that some influence for the mechanical parts of the game — where Annika uses her skills as an inventor to upgrade flying rig contraptions to get around — came through from the franchise in terms of how characters travel in space at different speeds, go into different planets and biomes and experience different creatures and races of people.
“Just thinking about that we can do that with tiny people,” she says, “it’s just such a believable world. You don’t even know if us humans exist, it’s this whimsical, gorgeous, nature-like world.” When Garcia joined the creative team during initial concept stages in late 2019 to build up the missions and the overarching story of Stonefly, she was intrigued by the narrative potential of this type of game and story. “Getting to build a crew was the absolute best part,” says Garcia, adding a mention of Star Wars Rebels and its crew from different backgrounds, who come together with a specific goal.
Along the way, there were some personal touches that Garcia was able to infuse into the game. “In the beginning of the story, Annika disappoints her dad, and that was totally touching upon a feeling: my parents emigrated from the Philippines, and they did everything to give me everything. And so when you disappoint them, it’s the heaviest thing you could ever feel in your whole life.” She says that the crux of the beginning of the game is that Annika understands, very harshly, what her parents feel. As the game’s protagonist, she moves forward and decides to do something about it, not knowing how big the task actually is.
Garcia studied screenwriting at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, which didn’t cover writing for games specifically, but instead writing for movies, TV and digital media. “I’ve loved video games all my life,” she says, noting that her introduction to the games industry was through working in public relations. Prior to working on Stonefly — which is the first writing that Garcia has done for a game — she did PR for Rainbow Six Siege and Flight School’s previous title, Creature in the Well. “My goal was to learn about the industry, talk to devs and people that make games.”
Of Stonefly’s mechanics, Ramsden explains that design elements were driven by where Annika would be in the story at that moment. Some of the ideas Annika gets are gained through combat with bugs, while others come through her own natural progression as she moves through the story. “It was really important to me that if I was building out the mechanics of a mission, [to figure] out what abilities would make sense for the story,” says Ramsden, giving the example of how Annika sometimes uses gusts of wind to traverse the landscape — a mode of traveling that fits the tone and non-violent feeling of the world.
Considering the state of diversity in video games, Ramsden notes that while a lot of the earliest developers creating games were women, there is obviously a long way to go. “Throughout the 90s, the sub culture of gaming started to take hold as very gendered; leaning more toward pandering to a male audience. I think a lot of people got their start in games during that time, so there’s a lot of practices baked into the fiber of a lot of studios foundations that are still reminiscent of that time and that era where things were very binary.”
Ramsden grew up playing “bright, exciting platformers” like Sonic the Hedgehog that made her feel like she was going fast or flying — sensations she wanted as a child — before moving to more heavier and intense games like Halo, Demon Souls and Battlefield. In her household, she was never subjected to the idea that ‘video games were for boys’ (Incidentally, her parents gifted each other a Nintendo for their wedding). These days, Ramsden emphasizes that “games are for everybody, and they can be made by anybody.”
She adds that “creating products and art that speaks to that and makes players feel welcome instead of a barrier to cross or a gate to unlock” is something she’s conscious of as a designer. “I feel that, in the interest of overall making the industry a better place, I keep that in mind with all of my art — and making sure that things that accessibility matter, and making it feel like its not targeted toward one specific gender, but for everybody to feel safe and welcome.” Her hope is that more big and small studios foster inclusive language and gameplay and become even more open to those kinds of ideas.
Garcia, who explains that, in contrast, her parents didn’t really know what video games were, was introduced to games by her older cousins who had SNES and Atari systems. “Every family gathering, I’m in their separate room, just playing video games,” she recalls, “whatever they had.” Among these games was The Emperors New Groove for PlayStation 2. She went on to play a lot of Halo and Call of Duty — but only their campaigns; never multiplayer.
Later on, she received a GameCube and spent a whole summer playing the two-disc Japanese role-playing game, Tales of Symphonia. After high school, she picked up BioShock Infinite, and that was a major turning point. “I was like: games make stories that make you think about them for three months after.”
She recalls that when the games industry started to integrate women characters into games, it was always from the male gaze. “They were overly sexy and had three lines each.” While these characters evolved into physically strong protagonists — which have their place — Garcia notes that, obviously, women come in all different kinds. As the industry progresses, her hope is that stories that feature characters from all different backgrounds, but who have something in common, will regularly emerge.
“Annika is all of us combined, in her small little body,” says Garcia (“us” being the team who contributed to the game). “I think a lot about Tangled and Rapunzel and how she’s not a physically strong person, but she had a goal. She wanted to see the floating lights, and was her whole story. She is still tough, and she does still have agency. That was kind of what I drew [upon] with Annika. This game doesn’t have to be violent, she doesn’t have to be violent, she just have to have a heart and goals and wants and needs just like any other woman in real life and in fictional life.”
Stonefly launches June 1 on PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Sci-Fi Noir Detective Game Comes to Windows PC via Steam
Lacuna is the debut title from micro game development studio DigiTales Interactive, based in Germany. The game, which features branching dialogue options and multiple endings, follows a Central Department of Investigation agent seeking to unravel a mystery.
It is published by Assemble Entertainment (known for Leisure Suit Larry). Lacuna is now available on Windows PC via Steam.
Puzzle Game Triversal Hitting Steam in July
From Canadian studio Phantom Compass, Triversal is a pick-up-and-play title that recently won an NYX Game Award for best puzzle game.
The game, which is accompanied by a lo-fi soundtrack, arrives on PC via Steam on July 13. Through May 31, a playtest will be available on the platform.
