In a shed behind his house, Tomas Sala is building an ocean. Oceans are his thing, of course, and he’s built them before. But the shed is new. Last time I saw Sala on a Zoom screen he was working on his debut game, The Falconeer, and working from an attic whose floors were strewn with toys discarded by Sala’s newborn baby. Today, he’s working on a follow-up, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles. Bulwark is set in the same watery world as The Falconeer but instead of being an airborne action game it’s something more city-builderish. Emphasis on the ish. Genre is a wonderful problem here. But anyway, that shed!
Bulwark: Falconeer ChroniclesPublisher: Wired ProductionsDeveloper: Tomas SalaPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Demo out now on PC
‘I’m living the Roald Dahl lifestyle,’ Sala tells me. ‘Working from my garden. Which is just smashing.’
The game Sala’s building isn’t just a very different genre to The Falconeer. It’s a very different way of putting a game out into the world. That’s very much on purpose. Rather than aiming for a distant release date, Sala’s already put Bulwark up on Steam in the form of what he calls an ‘Evolving demo’. It’s free to play. It changes over time. Sala adds and subtracts and can explore feedback.
My worry for Sala is that this takes the marathon of finishing a game and just extends it – a marathon that never ends, but also never changes pace. Turns out I’m absolutely wrong about that.
‘Honestly,’ Sala tells me, ‘The Falconeer was a hit and miss in some places, but we pulled through and made enough money that for the first time I have no direct money stresses, right?’ He thinks about that thought for a second and adjusts it. ‘I’ll have money stresses in two years, let’s put it like that.’
And that’s a great position to be in when you’re making something? ‘It’s like unlocking a part of your brain,’ Sala laughs. ‘It’s just opens up to do functional stuff, instead of worrying about money. Just less money stress! It’s just, holy shit! It’s like billionaires do one hit after the other? It’s because they have all this available brainspace. “Oh, let’s do this, oh, yeah.” That’s, that’s how it works. They have no stress!’