As Bulwark nears release, the developer looks back.
So how does it feel to emerge from such an intuitive development?
Tomas Sala:We’re supposed to do the PlayStation submission in an hour and a half.
They just messed up some spaces in the Japanese language.
I’ve been doing this for three weeks!
Every night I am doing the game dev thing.
It’s a hassle!
Is that where you are now?
Sala:I tweeted about this yesterday.
I was in the bath, and I have all my ranty moments in the bath.
I sit in the bath for like three hours trying to relax, and then rants come out.
For me, there’s two phases to creativity.
There’s the free phase where you’re just exploring and you’re self-motivating.
It’s “Look at this!”
And everything is exciting and new and you’re figuring out new stuff.
And that’s its own thing.
That’s the two distinct parts of creativity.
I’m already mentally bunkering up all my choices, rather than freely exploring.
I call it fear, because it’s very scary, because you’re going out into the world.
But it’s actually very vulnerable.
It’s when you go: okay, I’ve made this, and now it’s out there.
So I instantly have a question about that.
How do you protect bold ideas?
Sala:you might’t touch that creative place when you’re in that phase.
I think it might be a one-way street.
I don’t think you could go back to that state where you make bold decisions.
And that’s where professionalism and discipline starts coming in.
Because then it becomes an intellectual pursuit, one where you have to analyze what you’re doing.
You’re making intellectual choices based on the outcome you want.
Sometimes that means killing something.
It’s much more intellectual, and you become harder and more grounded in your choices.
I think that’s just the phases.
I know people that can intermingle that stuff.
But I cannot.
To flip it around, does anything creative ever come out of that analytical stage?
Sala:It does.
So it’s very uncompromising, that game.
It’s sort of gritty and raw.
It’s hard to digest as a viewer.
If you look at a Francis Bacon painting, and some of these grotesque, fleshy shapes?
Sometimes it’s too much.
If you only want to show fear and anger that works, or personal trauma.
But games are always aspirational; at some point you’ve got to want to get better at something.
This is what I want."
it’s possible for you to analyse yourself.
“Okay, this is apparently what this is supposed to be.
And now let’s shape it a little bit where it’s digestible for everybody.”
But you’re shaping it for more people than just me.
And it’s very id-like.
What was so exciting about talking to you about this game over the last few years?
It’s just you’re feeling towards it all the time.
You know, you’re like: “Oh, yeah, I’ve made this.”
you’re free to see the whole thing.
Sala:Yeah, but the scary thing about it is you could see its failures as well.
That’s why it’s the fear phase.
you could see it.
I always want to do more.
There’s never a moment where I go: stop.
So you always want to do more.
And at some point, you have to say, “Okay, let’s wrap it up.”
And it’s also the phase where I’m done with it for a little bit.
And 2023 was brutal for indie games.
I don’t think that gets talked about enough.
And they were exploring boundaries.
Because the market’s been really rough on indies.
There’s not an indie I talk to that’s not afraid.
But that’s also why I cut the demo off at some point.
It drives you to be more doubtful: you’re getting more worried about what people will think.
you could throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I can see that.
It’s doing quite a lot of things.
And then there’s, oh let’s make it more difficult, more challenging…
So at the end of a project I’m fighting myself: how much do I want to do?
So that’s why “fear” might be a good word for all this.
It’s very vulnerable.
It means you’re putting it out there.
And it’s very hard within that emotional buckshot you’re getting, to remain firm in your convictions.
Because I don’t do many gigs on the side or teaching.
Just because they can build stuff.
I want to keep that alive.
It’s a tightrope.
And sometimes you might enjoy it.
I did work-for-hire for 15 years, listening to clients all the time.
So maybe this was sort of a re-acknowledging that that’s not all bad.
You have to soften up at some point.
I think Bulwark’s still this idiosyncratic, weird thing.
And you might go to the other settlements.
Some resources run out, and then you oughta move and trade and so on.
But it’s still about you saying: Okay, I have this little fortress world.
Now I’m going to declare war and see what happens.
You know, Windows Central said: It’s a low-stakes strategy conquer-the-word game.
And I think: yeah, that’s sort of where I want it.
