Ben Chandler aims to make us feel Gilt

• Interviews by Jack Allin
• Published:

You may not immediately recognize the name Ben Chandler, but any adventure game fan is surely familiar with his wonderful work as an artist on games such as Old Skies, Unavowed, Shardlight, and The Blackwell Epiphany. Most of them have come in collaboration with Dave Gilbert’s Wadjet Eye Games, and the two are now ready to join forces once again on a brand new sci-fi fantasy adventure called Gilt – only this time, Ben isn’t just providing the art, he’s writing and designing the whole game himself. 

This isn’t the first time Ben has taken the lead chair on a project, with charming freeware titles like Featherweight and Spaceman in Space already in his portfolio, but Gilt marks the Australian’s first solo foray into large-scale commercial adventure game development. 

Its namesake is the planet of Gilt, a once-prosperous polytheistic world that used to be “the most important economic power in the galaxy” but is now a shadow of its former self, with many having left it behind for better opportunities elsewhere. Among those who remain, a devout young man named Demas is a “loyal cleric of the Temple of Lumen” who has dutifully followed every instruction and “excelled in every task set before him,” achieving a level of greatness not seen in the last two hundred years. 

And yet, unbeknownst to Demas, it’s all been in vain as it turns out that Lumen’s words have been “twisted by those claiming to represent Her.” When Lumen Herself appears to Demas, She is “furious and desperate” and nearing the end of Her life, Her power “diminished greatly in [Her followers’] deviation from Her path.” 

Demas is devastated by the news that everything he’d so diligently, obediently worked for his whole life has been for naught. But there remains one chance at redemption. Demas must set aside his shattered beliefs and take up the true mantle of Lumen’s calling. With Her blessing, he must now wield Her power as his own and “re-evaluate all of his ideals in preparation for a divine confrontation that will change everything.”

Demas’s adventure will take players to various locations across Gilt, and the “derelict remains” of an alien world give Ben free rein to indulge his abundant imagination and artistic skills. Rarely has such a fallen world looked so gorgeous, from rainy purple skies and giant animal skeletons to impossible rock formations to colourful fungal caverns, each meticulously designed in eye-popping pixel art. 

The task for players on this journey is to “gather supporters both mortal and divine to your cause,” in the process restoring “a disillusioned priest's faith, a dying God's power, and the waning hope of a people who have forgotten how to believe.” 

In making this happen, Ben is committed to gameplay that’s “slightly outside of the current standards of ‘Inventory + dialog + closeup puzzles,’” so pursuing your objectives will mean not only using your wits to solve puzzles, but also some newfound abilities bestowed on Demas by Lumen. As you wield these “long forgotten divine powers” to interact with the environment, these abilities will increase in strength – and you’re going to need them at maximum effectiveness if you’re to deal with "the coming of an old enemy."

Despite the fantastical setting, it’s an almost uncomfortably relatable story – a cautionary tale, really, about the abuse of religion and the corruption of power. And yet Gilt promises to tackle its troubling themes with a light touch and humour at times, its tragedies always buoyed by an undercurrent of hope. 

Written and designed by Ben as the “most heartfelt thing [he] could make right now,” this game represents “over a decade of built up dreams, hypotheses, [and] little philosophies all rolled into a huge ball.” But he does have some crucial help in bringing his vision to life, with acclaimed composer Thomas Regin providing music, and Wadjet Eye handling voice acting and other publishing support. 

The game’s initial reveal left me eager to know more, and Ben Chandler was gracious enough to answer some of my many questions, so read on to dig deeper into this stunning new science-fantasy adventure. 

What more can you tell us about the state of Gilt when the game opens? We know that the will of Lumen has been badly twisted, but how has that distortion manifested worldwide?

Ben Chandler: The people left on Gilt are stragglers. Gilt had been a source of great prosperity due to the presence of a rare and exceptionally valuable mineral that was used as a source of power. When technology shifted and a new resource superseded this power source, the people of Gilt slowly left, looking for work and new opportunities. It has been roughly a century since this shift, and much of the infrastructure that had been built in the boom years is malfunctioning, overgrown by nature, or has been abandoned by those who understood how to use and maintain it.

Who is Lumen, the deity worshipped by Demas?

Ben: Lumen is a God of electricity – specifically the obsolete source of electricity that once made Gilt prosperous. She can interface with devices in the world that are powered by it, but She needs the 'processing power' of believers who devote a portion of their thoughts to Her in order to help perform the massive calculations involved in the task of moving unfathomable quantities of electrons around. It's helpful to think of Her as a kind of Bluetooth with opinions.

What She wants is that which She has lost: power. She understands that She must work with people in order to make this happen. This means that She has an interest in the well-being of Her believers, even if it is a rather selfish, distant interest.

As Demas, what exactly is the player’s role in the game?

Ben: There will be conflicts with people of other faiths, and with people of Lumen's own temple who are unwilling to vary their stance. Lumen is only able to communicate with 'ordinary' people via a conduit, a means that had been sealed away for a long time. In that time, Her image has been used by leaders of Her temple to pursue their own ends. When Lumen speaks to Demas and he becomes Her prophet, he also becomes an exile from The Temple of Lumen for daring to claim that he speaks for Her. 

He must stage something of a holy rebellion, while also preparing for the coming of another God who aims to prevent Lumen's return. If he does not succeed, She will not have the necessary power to counter the coming threat.

What other divine beings exist on this world?

Ben: They are numerous and varied. Gilt plays with the idea of Gods quite loosely, and it might be said that anything which commands reverence or awe might be suspected of being a God here. Some of them are simply alien beings with abilities so strange that we can't understand them in any real context. Some of them are pieces of software running such complicated algorithms that they hold a vast quantity of power. Some of them are just parts of the universe that decided to wake up; some of them are just old folk tales that somebody carved an idol of.

What sorts of special powers does Lumen convey to Demas to help carry out Her will?

Ben: She can control much of the forgotten, decaying technology that litters the world of Gilt, and She imbues him with the power to manipulate these. But more than a simple remote control, She can sense hidden power, hold it in place, and move it from place to place. 

What can you tell us about the "old enemy" seeking to destroy Lumen?

Ben: Like many power-hungry beings, some Gods are fickle, desperate, and bear long grudges. In the prime of Lumen's power, She successfully overthrew another God that aimed to take Her throne. In that God's exile to another planet, He has grown in power. Now He returns to stop Her restoration and cement His own supremacy for good. But He is also keeping a secret that has bigger implications than Lumen's power and Gilt's divine hierarchy.

Will "growing in strength" happen organically as you achieve new goals, or is there some kind of RPG-styled leveling up going on?

Ben: As the player increases the power of belief in Lumen, they will be able to control more power. This is represented quantitatively in the game. They will also learn new abilities from other Gods that will allow them to perform other strange miracles, and use these to bypass obstacles and accomplish extraordinary things.

However, there will be no stat increasing like in an RPG. The player's strength will increase according to the events of the game, not choices made on a character sheet.

As you grow your following, will there be a choice of partners at times, à la Unavowed?

Ben: You will work with followers throughout much of the game, but this won't be a matter of choosing who to bring to each section. They have their own stories and are not waiting for us to ask them for assistance. Instead, much of the time it is us assisting them in their own issues. Through this we gain not only their aid in future events, but more power as represented by their willingness to believe in Lumen's cause.

For you personally, why now to make your own game?

Ben: I have always meant to get back to writing and designing, but have simply had too many other projects until now. I think there is a space in the genre where my ideas can give people an experience they won't find in other games, and I think the medium in general is a fascinating one to explore, design-wise. 

I love it when games do something unique with the controls – I think of how Loom had you inputting drafts as an ordered sequence and how the game plays with that to make unique gameplay, how Anachronox made the mouse cursor a physical item that you fly around the world, how else Heart.Break() teaches you a programming language that allows you to change which room a door sends you into, or make smoking your cigarette speed up time. I've longed to work on a game that does something unusual like that, and so I am trying to build one.

How are you collaborating with Wadjet Eye?

Ben: Dave [Gilbert] is an editor of sorts. A lot of the time I can get quite carried away with trying to do unusual things, and Dave is good at seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm also happy to be working with long-time Wadjet Eye musician Thomas Regin, who has already written some wonderful music for the game. I also have [Dave's wife] Janet available to help me with certain code things, because I hadn't written any code in a long time and my ideas take a little iterating in order to get working.

What inspired you to tell this particular story?

Ben: So many things, but the story really fell into place when I read Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. I had been vaguely thinking about this project for about a decade, but the elements always felt disparate and vague. Something about reading those books brought everything into syzygy. But players will find elements of many things I love in the game.

While I go look up what “syzygy” means, the game uses point-and-click controls?

Ben: Yes, in a sense this is the part I am the most interested in. I'm really curious to do fun and creative things with the idea of "point-and-click adventure" that will surprise players. Allowing myself to use Gods as an element gives me a lot of room to do unusual things there.

Surely a developer’s least favourite question, for good reason (but fans want to know!): Any target completion date in mind? 

Ben: No target yet. I have the first of five chapters built and playable, with plenty of editing needed, but my unusual ideas means it will probably take a lot of tweaking to get right. I want to make a creative game, not an annoying one, so I'm planning to give the project as long as it needs so that Dave and I both feel like the idea has been done justice.

So there you have it. Looks like Adventure Game Hotspot’s “Hotly Anticipated” list just found its new #1!

Gilt can now be wishlisted on Steam, and you can follow its progress through Ben Chandler’s blog. We may be waiting a while, but let’s hope Ben’s grandma keeps up the pressure by continuing to ask if he’s done yet, because we can’t wait to see more!