Earlier this year I spoke to Tomas Sala, the developer of The Falconeer and his new game, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles. I was particularly eager to chat while development on Bulwark was wrapping up, since, as a pretty-much solo developer, Sala’s process has always seemed so explorative.
In the case of Bulwark, this explorative process has resulted in a truly fascinating game: an adventure that tasks you with building a civilisation in the middle of the ocean. Partly shaped by The Falconeer’s universe – and partly shaped by an “evolving demo” – it’s another Sala-made game that’s impossible to pin down. So how does it feel to emerge from such an intuitive development?
How are things?
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. This is the non-fun part of development: “Oh, the lines in Japanese are overflowing on this screen.” It’s a hassle!