Baptiste Miny - Creator of The Blind Prophet

Game-News got the chance to speak with the creator/lead designer of The Blind Prophet, Baptiste Miny, about their game, how it came to be and the journey taken to make it a reality.

1. What inspired the creation The Blind Prophet?

As a small indie creator, I tried to stay in my capacity of production, and wanted to focus on my best skill, which was obviously drawing. I knew I could create pleasing visuals and atmospheres, cool comics-oriented narration and dialogues, and I tried from here to develop a story and gameplay that would exploit this particular skills. As for the thematics, I love dark, demonic stuff and the fight against these evil forces, so I naturally integrated it.

2. How long did it take to settle and develop the visual style?

It was quite fast because it was my natural style of drawing. I'm more into environment drawing initially, so I would say that the most significant work was to focus on drawing expressive characters, faces and postures. I kept improving this part until the very end, and now it goes way faster, and I'm more efficient than before (which is normal, after thousands of hours focusing on giving life to characters! ).

3. What made you choose the point and click style gameplay for The Blind Prophet?

As I said, I had to favour something that fit with my skills. I love to write stories and dialogues, and I liked the Point'n'Click genre a lot. I remembered how Bladerunner was such a great game, with only basic P'n'C mechanics, gorgeous visuals and immobile cameras, and I felt like it perfectly fits into the story that I had in mind.

4. Was there anything you sadly had to remove / change for the final product?

Of course! Some things were removed quite early because it would have made the scope (the game's size) too large, some other had to be deleted later, because it broke the rhythm of the game, or wasn't clear enough, not pertinent. Some things sound good, but it just doesn't work in the end, it's normal. The hardest thing is to be mature enough to say "OK, I worked on that for a long time, but it must go to the bin.". I love to learn what was cancelled in a game I played, so I might talk about it later after the game release.


5. How was the experience of developing The Bling Prophet as an indie studio

Stressful. Intense. Exalting. Exhausting. I did my best and learned a lot, and I regret nothing. Also, I had no revenue for a long time now, so that was a very difficult decision. Every wannabee game-dev must know one thing: it sounds cool to develop a game, but you have to be a workaholic and don't count the hours. Now I'm hot as hell for the next game!