Fans of slow-paced video games about farming may keep in mind after we featured Where the Goats Are on the itch.io weblog. The sport was a good looking slow-burn a couple of lady residing with the titular goats whereas making an attempt to make ends meet. Today we’re glad to report that the sport has acquired a totally featured follow-up referred to as The Stillness of the Wind. I received to speak to the developer, Coyan Cardenas, on the eve of the sport’s launch. We spoke about what’s happening inside this new journey:

Ok, let’s begin with the fundamentals: Who are you and what precisely is the Stillness of the Wind?

My identify is Coyan Cardenas aka Memory of God and I’m a solo developer and director of Lambic Studios. The Stillness Of The Wind is a slow-paced, melancholy sport about life and loss, the place you play as Talma, an aged goat farmer as she tends to her remoted homestead whereas nostalgic tidings from your loved ones within the metropolis flip ever darker.

Stillness of the Wind is a observe as much as your earlier sport Where the Goats Are. Why did you resolve to develop on Goats quite than make a brand new collection?

Where the Goats Are was initially supposed to be a month lengthy mission achieved for observe in my spare time. It ended up taking round 3 months however that’s nonetheless a really quick time for a sport dev cycle, and it additionally meant that for two/3rds of the event time I used to be “late” and dashing to launch as quickly as doable. The scope was minimised in an effort to match the timeframe, and though I feel the restricted scope is among the sport’s essential strengths and was the #1 cause I completed the sport in any respect, there was nonetheless so much that I needed I may have explored however didn’t have the time. So though the sport was completed I didn’t really feel “finished” with the concept, therefore The Stillness of the Wind.

What have you ever added to the sport that may shock gamers of Where the Goats Are?

Hopefully so much! Without eager to break something, I feel Goats gamers might be pleasantly shocked by the truth that the digicam really strikes this time round which permits for a extra intimate view into Talma’s dwelling and work and permits for exploration of the realm surrounding Talma’s homestead. There is a bunch of recent mechanics like goat breeding (sure, child goats), gardening, foraging, gentle customisation of the homestead, the story is all-new and many others. And there’s a good few easter eggs for gamers of Goats to choose up on in the event that they’re paying consideration.

Goats was, and Stillness is shaping as much as be, a very somber expertise. What attracts you to inform these sorts of tales?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve simply at all times been drawn to darker, extra melancholy tales, so when it got here to creating my very own I naturally gravitated in the direction of that. A couple of of the primary inspirations for the themes of nostalgia and loss had been movies from two of my favorite movie makers, “Nostalghia” by Andrei Tarkovsky and “The Turin Horse” by Bela Tarr, and the e book “100 years of solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, which all have fairly bitter ends. For me, there may be nothing higher than a very good, tragic story :).

Stillness is a sport that takes a very intimate have a look at rural life. Why did you go together with this setting, and the way does it tie in to the story you wish to inform?

The seed for the unique sport was impressed by the truth that my girlfriend and I had been getting bored with life within the metropolis (we had been each residing in London and dealing in Architecture practices on the time) and we’d fantasize about leaving London and our jobs to stay out within the nation someplace on a bit homestead and lift goats. So the unique concept was to just do that, make a sport the place you simply elevate goats on a farmstead. It was solely after I’d began engaged on that sport that the story because it’s advised emerged, and for me probably the most attention-grabbing a part of it was not the story itself, however the truth that the occasions are occurring elsewhere, and you’re solely studying about these occasions via the phrases of different folks. So that feeling of isolation you get from being away from “civilization” is intricately tied to the construction of the narrative and the construction of the sport itself. If the sport befell within the metropolis for instance the sport could be fully totally different, so the agricultural context is crucial.

In a means, it was a aware effort to place the sport because the antithesis to a number of the mainstream developments I observed in videogames: You don’t journey the world on an epic journey, you don’t develop extra highly effective as you overcome harder and harder obstacles, you don’t management a younger, athletic protagonist, you don’t kill something, you don’t save the world. Instead, you play as an aged lady residing out her quiet, last moments on an remoted homestead.

The Stillness of the Wind is on the market now.