Snakes is near to a finished music album. I’m happy to call it an album, not a game, which is where I hoped to be by studiously avoiding making a music album. Following the rules of theme parks stopped me from obscenities like ‘sides’, ‘tracks’ and linear listening. But now I can point out moments when listening is part of the experience.

I have to talk about AI which has helped me concentrate on the things that matter. Example – I want to have a particular object in a room. Past: I spend hours on the object. Now: I spend hours on where it is in the room.

My River Caves once featured a room that was roughly a tiki bar, with statues, tiki lamps, a Polynesian hut. That lasted about a week, then became a dark Halloween area with animated figures wearing vintage brightly coloured Halloween masks. That was then trashed to become a weird hybrid of Tiki mugs with interiors similar to the old Mighty Max toys from the 90’s. These were really good – but you couldn’t see them properly from the moving boat.

So the Mighty Mugs moved to another level called Freak Show where you can walk around and take your time to see all the details. The space in the River Caves was refilled with those horrible kitsch ceramic animals that were popular in the 1970’s. This finally landed the right sights in the right place – far more spooky than any of the previous builds!

And the best thing was that the Mighty Mugs become sound sources so that you have music set out in a specific place. This is parallel to the clockwork birds in the Airport level.

All of this movement added up to just over 3 weeks work. If I had hand made each of the items I think it would be more like 3 months. Players will look at the object for maybe 10 seconds on their travels. 3D modelling is intense – making a error is a grave issue. With the machine crafting my stupid ideas I can operate more like a director than a carpenter.

The hand written notes are getting less about errors (although there are always many) and more about higher level issues. Should something be difficult? Should there be gaming elements?

And the music … I’ve been recording different takes and ideas. On a sad day I think it’s not very good. Too many albums over too many years, not enough inspiration … it’s not easy to break old habits (verse chorus anus) but here and there something new and worthy is taking place.