During the recent Indie Arena Booth Online event, I got a little hands-on time with the Point and Click game Rosewater from Grundislav Games. One thing that caught my eye while searching through all the games was the art style of the game. As someone who grew up with quite a few Point and Click games, I really wanted to see a take on the genre from this indie team. On top of this, I was watching the stream on its Steam page.
The more I watched the more I wanted to know about Rosewater. One game that came to mind that I grew up with during the 90’s was An American Tail: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends, which based itself on the first two movies and was on DOS. Later in the game, of course, you’ll be at the wild west, but a new Point and Click game based fully on the wild west caught my eye and its design choices. I got the chance to chat with Francisco at Grundislav Games about the game during a call and learned quite a bit.
Grundislav Games Interview:
Marooners’ Rock: For our readers, please could you introduce yourself and what you do at Grundislav Games.
Francisco: Hi, I’m Francisco Gonzalez, an indie developer focusing on point and click adventure games. I’ve been making games using Adventure Game Studio since 2001, but started doing it commercially in 2014. Since then I’ve released 3 games: A Golden Wake, Shardlight, and Lamplight City. I do a little bit of everything: art, animation, design, writing, programming. Basically everything except music.
Marooners’ Rock: During Indie Arena Booth during Gamescom, your game Rosewater caught my eye. While I do like a good point and click such as Timbleweed Park, The Secret of Monkey Island and many more. What is the game Rosewater about? Should those new to the game once it is released at a later date need to go back to past work such as your title Lamplight City?
Francisco: Rosewater is a wild west adventure set in the same alternate 19th century as Lamplight City, but is more of a spinoff than a direct sequel. In Rosewater, you play as Harley Leger, a former pugilist turned freelance writer who’s trying to escape her rough past and start fresh. During the course of the game, Harley will team up with a posse of 5 companions to search for a missing man’s fortune. While there are some references to places and concepts introduced in Lamplight City, you don’t need to have played that game to understand what’s happening in Rosewater (although playing Lamplight City is certainly encouraged and appreciated!)
Marooners’ Rock: How long has the game Rosewater been worked on? From looking at your past work, you’ve done some great quality work on point and click style games.
Francisco: Rosewater has been in development since January of 2019. I would say the most challenging thing I’ve worked on (that you can see in the demo) is keeping track of the logic regarding what order you meet characters in. Very early on, a specific event occurs in which you encounter a character who sustains a serious injury, and are given the choice to help him by either fetching the sheriff or doctor, or just ignoring him completely. You can meet the sheriff or the doctor before this happens, or not. So keeping track of what they say based on if you’ve already met them at that point or not, and what they say in the aftermath turned out to be a lot more complex than I originally anticipated!
Marooners’ Rock: With many point and click games, most can take quite a few hours to complete. What do you hopefully expect it’ll take someone to beat the game that is playing the full build once it’s time?
Francisco: My hope is that Rosewater will be as long as Lamplight City. Most players took an average of 10 hours to finish that game, which is about what I expect Rosewater will take as well.
Marooners’ Rock: What has been the most creative thing you’ve done in-game. Have you tried anything you haven’t done in past games in Rosewater to give it a new take on the Point and Click genre?
Francisco: The thing I’m trying in Rosewater to both push myself and hopefully give it a more cinematic feel is the use of full screen animated cutscenes to emphasize certain actions (You can see 3 of them in the demo) I rotoscope all my animations, which means I film myself or someone else performing the action and then trace over it frame by frame to achieve a smoother, more lifelike style of animation. It’s been really interesting, especially with some of the more action-oriented animations.
Marooners’ Rock: One thing that caught my when I was first exploring the games on Steam, as well as Indie Arena Booth, was the scenes. From your stream on the Steam page for Rosewater I learned quite a bit of what you did to create some of it. Out of all the artwork in-game, what did you enjoy most creating?
Francisco: So far I think my favorite section to draw so far has been the area just outside Rosewater, starting with the scene you see just as the demo ends. It’s a desert area outside of town at dawn, so I got to draw some nice skies for it.
Marooners’ Rock: Where could our readers find you on social media? We’d like to thank you here at Marooners’ Rock for taking the time to inform our readers more about your upcoming game Rosewater.
Francisco: I’m on Twitter: @GrundislavGames and I also have a weekly Twitch stream at twitch.tv/Grundislav. You can subscribe for free to my newsletter on https://tinyletter.com/Grundislav. Thanks for the interview!
I’ll be looking forward to checking out the game once more details are revealed at a later date. For time being, head over to the steam page here and put this game on your wishlist. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more information and news of the game as it gets closer to the release in 2021.
