" A Look Back at Our Debut Game: Smells Good "

Ever since our debut game, “Smells Good” has been released last February, we haven’t say anything in terms of its story, either lore-wise or development-wise. Originally we want to stay silent regarding its meaning. But after thinking twice, we think more needs to be said about the game.

After our current game, “Cocoa” were put in INTI Festival, some project cleaning and refactoring has to be done due to INTI’s dirty and spontaneous codes. That’s why we don’t have much to show in terms of our new game, and we think that sometimes we have to look back.

Before Continuing…

A lot of this post’s content will be dedicated on telling Smells Good’s lore and development history.

We really recommend you to play the game by yourself if you haven’t before continuing any further. It’s 100% free and we promised that it’s worth your time!

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What did All of that Mean?

The game’s whole theme and meaning is about addiction, it’s as plain simple as that. The flowers that Norris took is a symbol for something addicting. Many will think of it as drugs. But really, there’s a reason why we choose flowers as a symbol than just plain old drugs. Because if you think about it, ANYTHING could be an addiction: food, social media, porn, drugs, smoking, and many more. The flower itself symbolizes beauty, but as the game progresses we all know that Norris is addicted to that beauty, until the flower changed to a more creepy and unsettling one which symbolizes its true nature.

When we start the game, Norris moves from left to right. Starting from him wandering in the middle of a meadow until he found a mysterious box of flowers on the right. After we consume one and being taken to a trippy dream, we tried to search for more. But as you all know the box mysteriously moved a bit further away from Norris’s “house”. As we transcend repeatedly to those dreams, the box got even further away until the game has become a literal walking simulator. This symbolizes that addicting things come to us first, but as we try to get more of them, the harder it is to get them or to have the same joy as the previous one.

But, most people probably knew this already. The thing that truly sets this game’s story apart is how vague everything is shown.

“What does the text flashes mean or at least try to say?”

“Why did we often hear background noises like arguments, tears, some kind of buzzing saw, and eventually a passing truck?”

“Why did Norris went to the hospital and made an apology to his parents, yet they’re not there?”

“Why did a flower grow after Norris fall into his death?”

“What does the good ending mean?”

We’re not going to answer all of them in detail. Since, we think the game’s mystery is what makes it appealing and worth talking.
BUT, let us tell you one thing that might change your perspective…

Everything that you’ve seen in the game, happened on Norris’s unconscious mind, and not in real life.

Ultimately, all of the things we saw in Norris’s unconscious mind reflects his stubbornness. That’s why, you see the text flashes being ridiculously quick, not readable. Because it shows Norris’s indifferences of the things that’ll end up killing him. That’s why, in the hospital scene, you were finally able to get a readable dialogue between Norris and his parents. Because at that point, he finally opens up and swallow his ego. Though as we all know, it’s too late. All of this contributes to the game’s final message screen of “Addiction is the only prison where the locks are on the inside, and the key is often lost in the shadows of despair” which quite literally reflects Norris’s state of mind: despair and indifferent.

By the way, if you ever wondered what the text flashes were…

Development

Development was rough. (Talking from the side of me, Nic – the game’s director and programmer)

It was the first time I worked seriously on my own team. For most of time, I don’t know what to do, what to expect, or even whether of not the game could be released. The concept of the game itself was constrained. Originally, we wanted to make a game about the dangers of online loans, a thing that is popular in Indonesia and have dreaded many people into a downward spiral. We wanted to tell a story of a person that spirals down into the cycle of selling items – buying loans – repeat. But after a lot of though, it seems that the game was too ambitious for a debut. We wanted to make a quick and easy way of getting something out as quickly as possible then learn and move on from that.

So we brainstorm and vote for ideas, choosing what idea is best for our scope, team, and vision. And as you all know, we’ve chosen addiction.

Fun fact, originally there was an idea in which Smells Good is being turned into a platformer game. The cycle loop of getting the flower, getting worse, until we got the ending is all the same, but in a platformer. But I think it’s not really a good idea because platformers can easily turn into a massive scope or it could be boring altogether if we aim for a small scope which means it has less feature and less mechanics. Besides, I’m kind of sick of platformers. Not to say that their bad or anything, but there’s too many of them nowadays and way too many beginners start with them, without knowing that most people are already tired of platformers.

The idea of turning it into a bullet hell game came from; since Norris enters a dream-like state, I’m thinking of him free-falling his way until he is awaken. What if we make an extremely simple and basic mechanic where like usual, we try to avoid obstacles. But since, he is free falling, there will be some gravity/physics stuff that’ll push him upwards when we’re not moving, so we can only move left, right, down, and not up.

To be honest, the idea of the story was kind of spontaneous and being made progressively as the game was being developed (which I regret by the way). We don’t really know how the story and mysteries will played out in the beginning other than “A man’s spiraling journey from addiction”. But what I wanted was the storytelling to be simple, yet as compact and vague as possible which hopefully leads to a lot of thoughts and theories.

From the technical side, there ain’t anything special, there’s no groundbreaking techniques, or code, or anything like that. We just made the game in Unity with C# and the art in Adobe Photoshop, ProCreate, and IbisPaintX. The art software may not be industry-standard, but eh- whatever. The important thing was that it is done and it is done without problems.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, we’re proud having Smells Good as a debut game. We’re glad that many of you enjoyed it and more over we’re proud that it inspired/moved some people.

For the game itself, there’s a LOT of mistakes we can learn from. Especially, I think when we’re working on a more serious and big project like our upcoming game, “Cocoa”, a more polished concept is needed. We need a polished concept to a point where development is just executing the ideas and only change 0 to 10% of the original concept. Besides that, when talking internally, I think I should’ve find a better way in creating better bonds with the teammates regarding their relationship with me, the team, and the game.

But overall, we’re happy with the results and looking forward for our upcoming game, “Cocoa”! Be sure to wishlist it so you don’t miss out when the demo and full version comes out.

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