Interview with Nate & Thomas, Co-Founder of Fnife Games ahead of PAX Aus
BY DRAWZA
Drawza: Firstly, please introduce yourself and your game?
Nate: We’re Nate Tamblyn & Thomas Barrer, Narrative Designers and Co-Founders of Fnife Games – an indie studio from Ōtautahi Christchurch, NZ. Our focus is making fun narrative games with LGBTQ+ content, and currently we’re developing our second title: ShelfLife: Art School Detective, a goofy mystery Adventure Game with Dating Sim elements, set at a supernatural art school.
What is your background?
Nate: Neither of us studied Game Dev in any capacity, we both have bachelors in Fine Arts, actually! After graduating I was working office jobs and Thomas was an in-house Graphic Designer. I had been working on comics, sculpture and music videos in my free time, but was interested in interactive stuff.
Thomas: I was sort of coming up with little game-jam style projects in my free time, but not really making any progress solo! In 2018 / 2019 Nate and I were collaborating on music videos with some of our friends, and ended up enjoying working together a lot. So we decided to try our hand at making games (with essentially no experience – purely vibes based).
Nate: We roped in a few other friends (composer, programmer, other artists) and decided to give “Game Dev” a go, having NO idea how hard it is! We just knew we wanted to make silly projects with queer themes. Fnife Games was eventually founded out of our collective, with support from the New Zealand Film Commission’s Whakawhanake Te Ao Niko Interactive Development Fund.
What made you decide to journey down the path of game development?
Thomas: I’d always wanted to make games – as a kid I was hugely into RPGs, especially titles that seemed character-driven with compelling narratives. I think Suikoden II and Chrono Trigger left the biggest impression on me, in terms of feeling as immersed by a game as I could be by a book (huge Terry Pratchett fan, another big influence). I ended up making a few interactive RPGMaker projects at art school, so I’ve always been tinkering around in the space.
Nate: I think the concept of game development is extremely intoxicating to artists and storytellers! The dream of any creative is to make something people engage with, and I feel like games are the ultimate interactive experience! Games can draw on techniques from many different story mediums and combine them in ways that novels, films or artworks in galleries cannot. You’re transporting the player into your world, captivating all of their senses. Aside from that, when we first started toying with the idea of making a game we really felt the gap in the market for goofy, outlandish stories with queer themes and characters – we knew we wanted to work in that space.
What previous games have you created/worked on?
Nate: Since we were super fresh to Game Dev when we started working on ShelfLife: Art School Detective, we ended up putting it on hiatus for a while (about a year into COVID) due to massive scope creep. Thomas started developing Small Town Emo, a GameBoy Walking Sim designed to be smaller in scope and free from all expectations, which ended up being our first “release”. Small Town Emo actually won 2 NZ Game Awards in 2023, which was pretty cool!
Thomas: We also collaborated with one of our other team members, Hessel Bouma, on his Bachelor in Game Arts portfolio project: OverNight: a short, cute narrative game. Other than that, we often participate in Global Game Jam and KiwiJam, either helping run the event locally or making silly little visual novel submissions.
What are the core concepts?
Thomas: The core concept of ShelfLife: Art School Detective is blending Adventure Game mechanics with Dating Sim elements. We knew we wanted to create a narrative-heavy, character-driven experience, for players who love explorative gameplay and weird, compelling characters.
Nate: In our game you play as Johana, a non-binary Art Student with psychic abilities. Johana is sort of semi-reluctant hero who has been strong-armed into investigating an Art Killer that is “murdering” art works at their school.
There are 3 main pillars to the game:
Building connections with 7 potential suspects over 14 in-game days.
Using psychic powers to enter artworks and uncover secrets from characters’ subconscious.
Collecting evidence to unmask the mysterious “Art Killer” (before it’s too late!)
What were your inspirations?
Nate: ShelfLife: Art School Detective was initially inspired by the weird and wonderful experiences we had as art school students! There’s definitely some inspiration pulled from Terry Zwigoff’s 2006 film Art School Confidential (based on a four-page comic by Daniel Clowes).
Thomas: In terms of games, there’s influence from Ace Attorney, Persona, Butterfly Soup, Hylics, Danganronpa and The World Ends With You, to name a few!
How long have you been working on this game?
Nate: We actually started concepting ShelfLife in late 2018! We were awarded research and development funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, so we started working on our first playable prototype veeery part time (on and off).
Thomas: After a bit of a lengthy hiatus and undertaking some writing and production mentorships, we started to tighten up our focus a bit – we applied for support from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (NZ CODE) and started development in a more full-time capacity (with a much clearer focus) from 2023.
What is it like to have the game showcased at events such as PAX Aus?
Nate: A little anxiety inducing, but… exciting! It’s weird to create something over such a long period of time and finally to share it with the world. Will people get it? Will they like it? We had an earlier version of the game at PAX Aus last year and it was so humbling having so many people resonate with what we were working on, even though it was a little rough around the edges. Now a year later we’re very proud to show off what we’ve worked on over the past year! We can’t wait to share how far the project has come!
What is it like being part of the New Zealand contingent of indie games showcased at PAX Aus?
Nate: AMAZING! We were sooo nervous last year, but CODE do such an amazing job at preparing the teams and showcasing what New Zealand devs have to offer! We feel so lucky to be part of just a talented group of devs, with a wide variety of games - anybody who comes to the booth will definitely find something that’s right up their alley.
What advice have you got for upcoming game developers?
Nate: Join your local game dev club, don’t wait until you feel “worthy”, just do it now! Our local CHCH Game Dev group (CGDA) regularly hold talks with industry people and host play-testing events where people can bring along their games to try them out on the public. Regardless of whether you’re able to study game dev or not, you’ll learn so much from these meet-ups and talks.
Thomas: Also it’s super important in game dev to be able to collaborate, so signing up for Game Jams is also really valuable. It’s rare to be a solo-dev in all aspects (programming, art, music, writing, game-play design) and game jams are a great way to practise collaboration and learn from your peers.
What advice have you received that you have held onto throughout your journey?
Nate: I think the advice that resonated with us the most is: when you’re considering what game you’re going to make, ask yourself: “Why me? Why now? Why this medium?”
The phrasing might differ, but essentially consider: why are YOU the right person to make this project? What do your skills or lived experiences bring to the table? Why are you making this now, and what about it necessitates the medium of a video game? Is the interactive element essential to the idea? Unpacking this can be really useful for finding pain points in your project.
Thomas: Find the best balance between what you CAN make, what you WANT to make and what there’s an audience for. Also figure out what your metric for success is for every project – there are different ways to find satisfaction when creating something.
Have you had any mentors in the gaming industry?
Nate: We wouldn’t be anywhere without the incredible mentors we’ve had! We’re probably going to forget someone, but that’s only because the New Zealand Game Developer community is so willing to help and share resources with emerging creatives.
We’ve had a lot of support from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence, The New Zealand Film Commission as well as Script to Screen and Te Puna Matarau – so many opportunities for us to develop our creative toolbox came from these organisations.
Thomas: In terms of ShelfLife: Art School Detective, in 2022 Samantha Cook and Elaine Gusella of Artifact 5 helped us completely mold the project into something far more interesting than it ever was at first prototype. When we were extremely fresh to the industry, Zoe Hobson and the team from Runaway Play gave us incredible mentoring across essentially every discipline, from QA, to Audio, to Art pipelines! On the writing side of things, Alexander Swords, Edwin McRae and Nick Jones have all provided us with excellent narrative resources that strengthened our processes, and our ability to self-analyse.
We especially have to thank Vee Pendergrast from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence, she has been one of our biggest advocates and pushed us to really up our game (hah) and start taking ourselves a lot more seriously as a studio.
How many PAX Aus events have you attended (as both a developer and as a regular attendee)?
Nate: This is our second ever PAX Aus and second time attending as devs! Hopefully this time we’ll get to have a more of a look around the event and try out some other indie games / see more of the cosplayers.
