Nominee | Excellence in Narrative

Created by Kinmoku.

Each year at GDC, MFA students from the NYU Game Center interview the Independent Games Festival nominees, asking them three questions about their development process. In addition to this interview, you can read all the insightful interviews from 2017 here. These conversations, and much more, will happen when the Game Center returns to GDC in 2018. Learn more about the Game Center at GDC 2017.

Burgess Voshell: What was the main concept, image, or question that began this project?

Lucy Blundell: It was originally made for a game jam, so I was thinking of ideas and one morning I was on the way into town and I saw this guy who sat opposite me and he just looked really hungover and my mind started racing. What’s this guy been up to? And I though maybe, maybe he’s had a one night stand. Maybe he just got really drunk, but it made me think that’s not a topic I’ve really seen in games and it feels very relatable and quite personal. So I just kind of went with it.

Burgess Voshell: Cool, so just a chance encounter and projecting what may have been…

Lucy Blundell: Yeah, I could have just spoken to the guy, but I was just thinking and obviously because the game jam was coming up, I thought well actually yeah, that could work as a game. It’s quite a small idea. You know it’s just one morning.

Burgess Voshell: Can you describe a specific experience with another game or media that influenced you as you were creating One Night Stand?

Lucy Blundell: Definitely Hotel Dusk, mainly for the art style. Obviously it’s a very different game. If you look at both games they’re both rotoscope animation and it’s a visual novel as well and I felt like this is a really unique art style and it’s a shame I’ve not really seen it in many other games. So I really wanted to do something like that. I guess Gone Home was an inspiration as well for kind of looking around the room and telling a story through that.

Burgess Voshell: Is there a specific tool or methodology that you used that shaped a unique characteristic of the game?

Lucy Blundell: It was a very kind of creative project. I’m quite scatterbrained so I don’t know, it was just made. Yeah, it’s my first game as well so maybe there could have been a bit more structure to it, but yeah, ultimately it was very natural process.

Burgess Voshell is an artist, designer, and MFA student at the NYU Game Center.