At 17 years old, I experienced one of the most vivid and terrifying nightmares of my life. In my dream, I found myself lying on an operating table as a surgeon made deep incisions in my arms, extracted the bones from my limbs, and replaced them with bionic ones. Upon waking the next day (still within the dream), something was controlling my movements, rendering me completely powerless to stop it.
The experience was so captivating that later that same day, I had already written a short story based on the idea—a tale where a prisoner must escape from a futuristic prison after undergoing the exact operation I dreamed of. I even crafted an ending that left readers deeply moved. My story went on to win several local and provincial literary competitions (this was before the internet was widespread), and I cherished the idea like a precious gem. Unfortunately, I lost the document many years ago due to a hard drive failure.
For years, I toyed with the idea of revisiting it and expanding it, setting it in a more extensive futuristic and dystopian world.
An Animated Short?
A few years passed, and my idea remained tucked away in the drawer of future projects. As the internet began to spread everywhere, I started downloading everything I could find about 2D and 3D animation. Passionate about the medium, I worked on my own animation projects for the web, using Flash, Autodesk Animator Pro, and 3D Studio. I downloaded materials from SIGGRAPH festivals, Imagina festivals, advertising festivals... until one day, I came across a summary of the Imagina 94 Festival.
At that festival, a short film premiered that completely captivated me: Shadow Puppets by Chuck Gamble. It depicted a world that reminded me of the futuristic and dystopian setting I had envisioned, but with a very unique animated style. I highly recommend watching that masterpiece, as it significantly influenced the artistic and narrative direction of The Wall.
*Shadow Puppets* by Chuck Gamble is an animated masterpiece that influenced our project.
The short film made me revisit my old story, as certain elements reminded me of my own. Reflecting on it reignited my desire to bring that project to life. And what better way to do so than with a short animation?
During the '90s, I participated in numerous computer graphics and animation contests. Webber secured 2nd place in the Demo competition at Euskal Party VII, a collaborative project in animation and programming that I worked on with several friends.
During that time, I frequently attended Demoscene parties (My nickname was Awesome/Wild Bits), where I competed in music, 2D and 3D graphics, and demo competitions—a kind of audiovisual computer-generated music video. I felt ready to take on an animation project using the leading animation software of the time: Macromedia Flash. I had also become an expert in Flash, having published a couple of books on the topic.
I began sketching ideas for a possible adaptation of the story, even creating a small animation prototype called Node 2. The name referred to the wing of the prison where a potential character was watching a TV. However, I quickly realized that I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to the project, as my job left me with very little free time. Gradually, I abandoned it.
Unfortunately, all that remains from that time are some concept designs I created while exploring styles for the animation. The small Flash prototype was lost to the sands of time, and I haven’t even been able to recover it through archive.org.
2021. Reviving the Dream
Life went on, and for many years, I thought about how I could revive that short film that had died before it even began. Then, I became a father, and as my son grew and his love for video games blossomed with every game we completed together, we started fantasizing about creating a video game together.
I wanted my son to become a programming guru, so I encouraged him to code from a very young age. He started with Scratch, and soon we moved on to Unreal Engine. Since he was still too young for that, we took a step back and he began practicing with a GameMaker course.
Then, in the summer of 2021, when my son Alex was 12 years old, we found out that Gamejolt was hosting a Game Jam to integrate games into the new Opera browser. Since my son had already started learning how to create things with GameMaker, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. In just a few days, we created a fun local multiplayer shoot-'em-up called WI-FI ATTACK .
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to rank well in the competition, as many professional developers participated. However, the experience was so enjoyable and brought us so close during those days that we decided to start thinking about a more serious game to create together.
But the seed had been planted. We began brainstorming games that could fit my son’s skill level with GameMaker and that I could realistically tackle given the limited free time I had. We considered making a small pixelated roguelike with tiny rooms or a 2D horror game set in a house where you had to escape from an old lady. At the time, my son was a huge fan of a game called Granny.
We spent some time sketching ideas, designing characters, and working on environments... but the idea didn’t really excite us.
Then, one day, while watching one of our favorite YouTubers, we stumbled upon a horror visual novel. It was manga-styled—a genre I hadn’t explored in years—and I realized how popular it was, particularly among fans of horror games. That’s when it hit me: My story could be perfectly adapted to this format. It would allow players to experience a narrative-driven game, could be created with just a few backgrounds and static characters, and there were dedicated engines that were simple to use. I got excited right away and told my son about it. Up to that point, he had never heard about my story! To my surprise, he loved the idea as soon as he heard what my short story was about!
2023. The Work Begins
In the summer of 2023, we started brainstorming ideas and discussing the tone of the story and the changes to my original tale. The prison setting now felt too small, and I thought it would be more interesting to expand the story to encompass an entire city. This allowed for more gameplay opportunities, more interaction with characters, and the chance to build a futuristic world. Thus, I began creating the narrative structure with its branches. The game would ultimately have multiple ways to achieve certain objectives and many different endings, but the main story is the centerpiece, the experience we want the player to fully live. The central branch must be experienced until the end to deliver the complete story.
One of the pixel art backgrounds I created during the visual identity exploration phase
It was incredibly exciting to revisit the story, expand it, and add twists, characters, and new layers to the adventure. My son, who has also won several local literary competitions, contributed countless ideas that enriched the world we were creating. Within a few months, we had a more or less solid structure that would undergo only minor changes from then on.
I spent a great deal of time searching for the right visual identity for the game. Initially, I experimented with mixing pixel art techniques, varying palette sizes, and adjusting pixel scales. I wanted something retro, and I loved how it looked at a smaller scale. However, when displayed on 4K monitors in full screen, it became almost unbearable to look at.
I also started considering various ways to include cinematic scenes or animations, inspired by '90s games like Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. While I wasn't entirely convinced by the idea, I realized I couldn't do much more on my own, and they could still turn out to be quite interesting. However, they would require an enormous amount of work, so I decided to limit them to very specific and pivotal moments.
To achieve this, I could use every technique I could think of—mixing video with After Effects editing, Photoshop touch-ups, and 3D animation. However, to achieve convincing results, I knew I would have to severely limit the cinematic sequences due to how labor-intensive they would be and because some aspects would be incredibly challenging to create realistically.
Then came the greatest technological leap in decades: AI. From the beginning, I recognized the potential of generative AI and started exploring it. The early versions were barely useful, and I only considered using them to generate a few backgrounds that I could later tweak and modify. But then came video-generative AI, and everything changed. Suddenly, I envisioned the game as a movie where the player takes on an active role—a movie, nonetheless. With real actors, but without the need for a multimillion-dollar budget.
Difference between a handcrafted scene and an AI-generated one, plus the final visual style applied.
Generating video content with AI is neither free nor simple. It is a labor-intensive process that requires endless trial and error. For each usable shot I find, I’ve had to generate anywhere from 40 to 200 different clips on average. Even so, the budget I need to manage is infinitely smaller than what would be required for a production with real actors.
On top of this, there was the challenge of defining the visual identity. After countless experiments with various 8-bit formats and resolutions, we initially worked for a few months with a format similar to GIFs, but editing the videos for that format proved to be extremely costly. Eventually, I discovered a way to give the game an illustration-like aesthetic that could simultaneously convey the oppression and claustrophobia of the world we are creating.
A LIFETIME PROJECT
So, where are we now? While I write these lines, we are at the very beginning of the project, but we’ve already made significant progress. We’ve established a dynamic and interconnected workflow, dividing tasks based on each of our strengths. I handle all the visual and audio aspects, editing videos, generating scenes, and tweaking everything necessary to bring my vision to life. Meanwhile, my son takes care of the foundational writing, programming, and dialogue synchronization. We frequently review each other’s work, providing feedback to improve the overall result.
Lines of Code: 25,000
Minigames: To be developed
Developed Scenes: 24/184
Soundtrack: 17 Original Songs
Right now, we have a unique graphical aesthetic, the game menus are fully developed, the introduction sequences are completed, and many of the key cinematics throughout the game are already well underway. What lies ahead is the massive task of developing around 70% of the story in depth, including the dialogues, static images, and cinematics, as well as incorporating music, sound effects, mini-games, and the various story branches. It’s an immense amount of work, but I can also say that I have never enjoyed bringing a project to life as much as I am right now. I feel like a film director, with the ability to bring a world I’ve imagined to life in ways that were once only possible with multimillion-dollar budgets or by risking your entire life savings.
Video editing for one of the multiple pursuit sequences in the game
I don’t want to risk my family’s savings or a lifetime’s worth of resources. But I have a story to tell, and I’d love for others to experience it. A story that has been in my head for exactly 30 years.
We just hope that when the game is finished, you can enjoy even a small fraction of what we’ve experienced while creating it.
