Lucas Pope is an American independent game developer who has experienced all facets of the gaming industry. He began his career creating mods for Quake with his friends, an endeavor which became a commercial product and led to the founding of their own independent game studio Ratloop. He would later go on to become a tools programmer at Naughty Dog, before leaving after the completion of Uncharted 2. He now is a fully independent game developer, participating in Game Jams and working on commercial projects. He has gone on record to say that he prefers working on small, experimental games.
“Lots of indies just work on something forever, but I don’t want to do that because I lose interest and wanna start working on some others things”
Republia Times:
Republia Times is a game where you work as an editor for a state run newspaper. Here, you are tasked with choosing articles to place in the paper, choices which affect the population’s loyalty to the government and the readership of the paper. Though the game is somewhat overshadowed by its “successor”, Paper’s Please, the game established the narrative/gameplay tropes in its sequel.
“What I found making this game is that this communist setting or this dystopian, fascist setting works nicely for game mechanics because you can tell the player, ‘you have to do this’. There’s not a whole lot of questioning of, ‘why?’. ‘You have to do it because that’s how we fucking run things here, we tell you how to do it and you do it’.”
Papers Please:
By far Pope’s most popular game, you act as a border control guard of the nation of Arstotzka. Your tasked with ensuring that only eligible citizens are allowed to pass into the country, whilst balancing moral quandaries and maintaining your family’s well being. During my time with the game, I was surprised by the complexity of the document analysis system, while at the same time appreciating the visceral and real feeling it gave to your actions. The very tactile nature of the interface and the pacing also made some scenarios surprisingly uncomfortable.
“I’ve already worked on it for a year and four months, so it’s already to me like, I’m kind of sick to death of Papers, Please.”
The Return of the Obra Dinn:
Pope’s latest game, only available in incomplete demo form. In this game, you are tasked with investigating the Obra Dinn, an indian trade vessel that was lost at sea. Unlike other games, Pope started with the visual with aspects of the game rather than the gameplay design. The game only has 2 colors in it’s palate, black and white, a trait which limited the environments and scenarios that he is able to do. I spent a good chunk of the demo not really understanding what was happening, but with a bit of experimentation, the intrigues developed on their own.
***Spoilers: The gameplay is that you peek into past events and try to piece together the fate of the crew of the Obra Dinn***
“On projects, I swing one way or the other, and I swung far in design for Papers, Please so I want to swing back the other way for visuals on Obra Dinn.”