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! Our latest episode is quite an exciting one, featuring a solo creator whose long journey through the realm of video game development is nothing short of fascinating. His monumental project, Reliefs The Time of the Lemures, launched in 2023 after almost a decade in development, inviting players into a world of Roman ruins inspired by the Calanques region of France.
Below is our interview with Sylvain Abrial of Calepin Studio, detailing his experiences working on Reliefs, including the numerous important lessons he’s learned over the years. We hope you enjoy reading about his journey and the many valuable insights he was kind enough to share with us!
First things first: could you please introduce yourself for our readers?
My name is Sylvain Abrial, I am French and I am 34 years old. I founded the independent video game development company CALEPIN STUDIO in September 2016 in France and since then I have developed three video games on my own: CARTON, AIR and RELIEFS THE TIME OF THE LEMURES. I am self-taught. I started at the age of 11 with my first computer on Windows 98, developing video games with Blender3D software and mods for existing games such as Age of Empires I, II and III, Anno 1602, The ElderScrolls III Morrowind, and many others.
It was a tough learning curve. I didn't have internet access, and the only way I could learn was through physical magazines with a few tutorials on various software programs, but above all through perseverance,motivation and clicking on the all buttons in the software to understand what they were for. That's how I learned how to do 3D modeling, animating, texturing, and started coding with Blender3D's Logic Brick! These mods were intended for my sister and myself on games we liked, and I tried to recreate the games I couldn't afford to buy. At that time, I had to make a new game every week without necessarily finishingthe previous one...
Then, as soon as we got internet in 2008, I worked cooperatively for many years on a huge mod for The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, the Angamandon Toli mod, which never ended up being released because Skyrim came out first. Unfortunately, I was unable to enroll in a video game development school to learn this profession because the annual costs were far too high and impossible for my parents and me to pay. But I didn't get discouraged,and I continued to teach myself this exciting profession.
As you explain on the game's Steam page, Reliefs The Time of the Lemures was in development for almost 10 years. How did the game evolve during that time, and what are some of the biggest changes you made to it over the years?
There were so many of them! And I think many other developers would have abandoned this project because it was far too big, with numerous changes to the game engine! The original project was a survival game where you could create your own little home on a huge open-world island with lots of puzzles to solve, climbing Roman temples, crafting tools, and building.
The survival game aspect was quickly scrapped, as it was ultimately unnecessary. Climbing on temples and cliffs was improved with the addition of ropes, and the crafting aspect remained for a while so that playerscould make torches, arrows and ropes and solve puzzles.This version of the game was in early access beta and was released on the Blender Game Engine (BGE) on Steam for Windows, Linux, and Mac. A lot of player feedback was negative despite the four years of development thathad already gone into the project. This negative feedback was mainly due to issues with the choice of engine. Either the game would not launch, elements would appear without textures, or the game would crash at times.The BGE engine was never really optimized or updated by Blender 3D. And in the end, in 2018, the engine was abandoned by Blender 3D. My game had just been released in early access and it was impossible for me to solveproblems related to the game engine.
Fortunately, after some research, I learned that enthusiasts like me who were passionate about the BGE engine had been updating it in parallel for several years and that their version was more sophisticated and graphicallyadvanced than the basic engine. So I decided to resume development of the game on this new engine: Uchronia Project Blender Game Engine or UPBGE. After a year of development to make the BGE version compatible with the UPBGE version of my game, and after numerous tests, unfortunately some of the crashes and problems mentioned above were still present. As the engine was developed by volunteers, updates were slow in coming, and I didn't want towork for years for nothing…
So I decided to switch to more professional engines such as Godot, Unity or Unreal. I spent a month learning each one in order to choose the best game engine for Reliefs. I chose Unity game engine, with weekly updates, a large community, and compatibility with both small PCs and large computers running Windows, Linux, and Mac. And the demo of Book of the Dead in Unity 2018 sealed the deal for me.
After five years of development using BGE and then UPBGE, I started developing the game from scratch using Unity because this change of game engine opened up a new possibility: making the game as photorealistic as possible.But this had to be done at the expense of the open world. The environments will therefore be semi-open world, with short loading times between areas. Crafting was also abandoned because it slowed down the gameplay without being particularly useful. However, the platforming, ropes, graphics and puzzles took on greater importance, with the addition of a horse to move around the world more quickly. Although there are loading times between areas,these areas are huge.
Reliefs The Time of the Lemures 1.0 was released in 2023 on Unity 2020 for Windows, Linux and Mac, and I have had nothing but positive feedback since then. However, development took more than 10 years after 3 game enginechanges and 5 game development resets. But I managed to achieve what I wanted.
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?
The most important thing is not to have any limits or restrictions on what I want to do, even if it is not productive. I can go back and rework elements that I do not like.
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?
Yes, many elements changed during development!
- The open world had to be abandoned in favor of the game's graphics.
- Crafting added nothing to the gameplay except complexity.
- The ability to build your own house in a puzzle game that takes the player to new areas doesn't work.
- The survival aspect where you had to eat and drink, like crafting, added nothing to the gameplay.
- And above all, the game areas. In total, four game areas with their puzzles and stories were simply removed because I wouldn't have been able to release the game on time and they added nothing to the main story.
The game is long enough for players as it is. With four more areas, the play time would have been 50 to 60 hours for nothing more. Whereas now, you can finish the game in 15 to 25 hours, and that's enough.
As a follow-up to the above, is there something you’re proud to have kept?
Climbing, having to shoot ropes with your grappling hook to scale the front of a Roman temple or a cliff in order to solve puzzles, is so cool!I could have simply removed the climbing to make things quicker and easier for myself, but then it would have become just a puzzle game. I'm happy with the physics of the ropes, which were very difficult to get right.At the beginning of the project, the ropes were very simple and straight, but now they react to the environment and the player.
You're also working on two spinoff games based on the original Reliefs: Reliefs The Time of the Walks and Reliefs The Time of the Climbs. What are some important game development lessons you've learned from the original game that are now helping you create these new projects?
I know my limits in terms of what I can do, and above all, I know how to choose the right game engine right from the start of development. It may seem simple and logical, but it's complicated. Don't choose your engine basedon current trends or how easy it is to work with. Don't hesitate to learn about other game engines, even if it takes time, so you can compare them and choose the best one for your project. If I had weighed up the pros and consof game engines from the outset, I would have saved five years of development time on Reliefs.
I love Unity, and my two new projects are based on the assets from the original game, so I haven't changed engines, I've just switched to Unity 6. I think this game engine is flexible enough for my future projects. However,I remain open to new tools and keep myself informed about other engines so that I can make the best choice and change if necessary for the next project.
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?
Like all art forms, video games evolve with the times and influences. I take player feedback into account as much as possible. A real example: if a player tells me that the colors of the on-screen aids are not visible tothem because they are colorblind, then I immediately correct this problem. But if a player asks me to add a feature that radically changes my vision for the game, I won't do it. Another real example: if someone asks me toadd teleportation points or a map to my game, I won't do it. Not having a map adds to the forgotten aspect of the world, and the journeys are part of the game's story and gameplay.
A fun theoretical question: if you had access to unlimited resources, what would you do differently from a creative/artistic standpoint?
I created all the music in the game, but I am a non-professional musician and if I had had unlimited resources, I would have liked this part of the game's development to have been done by real musicians with real instrumentsfrom the Roman era.
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?
You can follow me on X (Twitter) for new images every week and Facebook for big news. You can also visit my website for big news and updates on my games. You can also find my game on Steam, Epic Games Store, and Itch.io.I recently started a Twitch channel where I stream every week about video game development, but also about games I like. And finally, on YouTube, where all my stream replays are available, as well as the latest videos ofthe games I've developed.
