At the Global Game Jam, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2011…

The GGJ is a great environment in which creators from all disciplines can get involved in the design process from scratch, from the concept phase. From my passion for the invention of game mechanics that influence music – and vice versa – the GGJ’s interdisciplinarity has been crucial.

From the moment the GGJ theme ‘extinction’ was announced, we had 48 hours to create a well-functioning game. I had a small idea: to somehow use glitches (errors) to portray a dying computer (I was listening to a lot of glitch music in 2011, such as Alva Noto and Ryoji Ikeda).

Soon, somebody – and I must apologize, I really don’t know who exactly to credit for this – came up with the idea of the game itself being subject to extinction. This got us excited!

As for game design, ‘Bad guys’ were completely ruled out. The only bad guy there was going to be was the game itself, particularly its graphical environment. We figured the protagonist had to be a kind of doctor bravely digging into the system to try to repair it, with the risk of succumbing to the glitches.