We’ll be working on a review for Silt, so I got in touch with Spiral Circus to talk a bit about the game and its development. Come check it out!
PS4Blog: Good morning! Thank you for joining us. Could you please help us get started by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
Hello! Sure, we are Spiral circus. We are a surreal games company based in Bristol, focused on the weirder side of games. My name is Tom Mead, and I’m the Art Director and draw under the name Mr Mead, so that’s where the visual weirdness comes from!
PS4B: On that note, Silt is ready to go on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. What can you tell us about this project?
Silt came about because when I met co-founder Dom Clarke, I was drawing a bunch of underwater watercolor paintings that were based on my fears of the deep sea. I then showed one of these to Dom, and he liked it as a setting to explore as a game concept, and Silt was literally born as a test then and there -also, this particular painting was called Silt, and that’s how the name came about.
Neither of us had experience in the industry, but we both loved games and wanted to move into this area, myself as a fine artist and Dom as a research scientist. We never expected this small test project to balloon into what it is now, but we are glad it did!! Releasing this was a momentous feeling after the years of work we all put into it.
PS4B: How long did it take to work on Silt for its console release? Were there any challenges or obstacles you had to overcome during the process?
From start to finish, Silt took four years, with two of those unfunded and therefore part-time, and the other two were full-scale funded production with our now publisher Fireshine Games. Naturally, everything is a challenge in games, as most people would probably agree! For me, it was going from working alone to working with a team and adapting my art to fit that dynamic. As for the others, it was interpreting my ideas and then working out how to get a successful art pipeline so everything could be successfully implemented without too much hindrance on either side.
PS4B: With this being a puzzle adventure, how long will it take someone to play the game from start to finish?
As this is our debut, we wanted it to be short, so the game takes roughly three hours. Total time for some people may vary, but that’s the average. I imagine our next games will be longer as we have learned a lot during this process!
PS4B: Are you considering releasing a digital or physical art book to spotlight the game’s art style and design choices?
As the artist, I would never say no to this, and I am primed and ready for such a task If it’s on the table. For now, though, you will just have to wait and see…
PS4B: And that’s all the time we have for today. Is there something else you’d like to add before we go?
Just to say thank you to your readers for listening! If they’d like to, then they can follow us on Twitter, and they can also join our mailing list. Expect many more strange games in the future, and I hope everyone enjoys Silt!
