Welcome back to another edition of IndieXP, our series of indie developer interviews where we try to spotlight as many creative minds and interesting projects as we can! Today's episode will introduce you to a small, two-person indie studio creating unique and artistic experiences, whether that's collecting and raising insects in a terrarium, or defeating enemies in a deckbuilding action-roguelike. We sat down to have a cozy chat with Monstigri.
We hope you enjoy the insights they had to offer!
First things first: could you please introduce yourself for our readers?
We are a couple who decided to work together to create video games. Céline is the visual artist and Benoît is the developer and musician of our small team of two. We started our journey around 2 years ago with a small project in mind but we were both new to the world of game development so it took us at least 6 months to figure things out and realise that our small project was growing bigger than expected! Animation, vfx, sfx, game engine’s specificities, level design, narrative design… were all learning journeys we had to take.
You recently launched The Night Crawler, a cozy casual title about collecting insects and managing a terrarium. What was the main inspiration behind the game's premise, and how much research did it require?
The Night Crawler was originally designed for a 15 days GameJam. The theme was «You shouldn’t have seen it» so the idea was to make a game that would not be what it seems to be, knowing that the judges would actually look for something. After the GameJam we had some good feedback and it encouraged us to push the development a bit further and release it as a tiny cozy game (with a twist!).
The challenge was then to make the game work for people not necessarily aware of the theme so we had to introduce small additional mechanics. The main research was about the nocturnal insects, we got inspired by the nature around us.
As a game developer, what does creative freedom mean to you, and how much importance do you place on it during the overall development process?
For us the creative freedom in game development is the ability to explore our own ideas without pressure imposed by potential players or investors, create our own little world with its own rules and have fun in the process. It is important to keep this freedom as a guideline but also to be aware of the player’s needs and deliver games that they will enjoy playing.
Did you ever have to abandon a certain idea (or ideas) during development because it either didn’t fit into the schedule, the budget, or you realized it wasn’t beneficial to the game for some other reason?
We had so many ideas that we had to abandon! For example, we wanted to animate the insects or we had thought about making the terrarium a realistic eco-system where you had to be careful about predators, reproduction, atmospheric conditions, … but it wasn’t going to happen in the timeframe we had set up to deliver the prototype, and then the final project.
As a follow-up to the above, is there something you’re proud to have kept?
We are happy we kept the narrative loop because it is really the original idea of the game. We wanted to keep it tiny and simple. It would have been easy to go overboard and create an entirely different game based but It would have taken more time and we would have lost the spirit of The Night Crawler. Also we have a bigger project to get back to!
Tell us a bit about AMENTIA, your deckbuilding action-RPG. What are the main artistic challenges of creating a game like this?
Amentia is our first original game idea and it’s still a work in progress. In Amentia, you will find yourself in a world filled with magic and strange creatures. Using a deck of magical cards, your goal will be to survive and defeat 3 of the powerful mages responsible for the chaos that surrounds you. You’ll have to choose your cards wisely to enhance your character’s skills and gain more power but also be aware of the cost that comes with it ! Managing usage limits, bonuses and penalties will be an essential part of the game experience.
The main artistic challenge for Amentia is that everything is hand drawn and animated frame by frame in isometric 2D the old school way. We want the game to have its own artistic identity and still be coherent with what the players are going to expect from a game in this genre (satisfying vfx and sfx, lots of enemies on screen, real deckbuilding experience, rewarding fights). Another challenge for us is to keep the game simple and intuitive with complex mechanics.
Have you ever found yourself pressured or influenced by gamers’ expectations in terms of what a game should be like/what elements it should have, etc.? How do you balance your own vision and ideas with these expectations?
We don’t think that we are pressured by what the game should be as we have a clear vision from the start of what we want for the game but we are open to make significant game design adjustments based on playtester’s feedback as long as it matches the core vision of the game. It’s not always easy but sometimes it pushes us to go further and find better solutions than before. Accessibility reviews are especially useful to assess if your game is intuitive enough and know what options to add so everybody can enjoy the gameplay with their own capacities.
A fun theoretical question: if you had access to unlimited resources, what would you do differently from a creative/artistic standpoint?
We wouldn’t necessarily change our process but time is really a challenging factor when you do everything yourself. So it would be helpful to know we can take all the time in the world to focus on every little detail of the game. Also we wouldn’t mind adding one or two people to the team to bounce back ideas and learn from each other.
Finally, could you tell our readers where they can follow you and your work if they’d like to stay up to date with any future developments?
Amentia playtest will be shortly available on Steam but in the meantime you are welcome to join us on Discord, Bluesky (@monstigri.bsky.social) and YouTube (@Monstigristudio) to follow our journey!
