Stuff that you see plenty of in animation, like on Adult Swim. What I mean by that, and not to knock on the amazing adventure games out there, is that not a lot of them push the humour into these crazy places. When I got serious about making Paradigm I really wanted to make something that would kind of push the boundary in adventure gaming in terms of animation. But that being said, I’ve been doing it for a while now and I’ve got a whole process worked out. In the end it makes Paradigm look and feel pretty unique, but yeah, it’s time consuming. That was probably one of the more stupid decisions that I made, but also one of the better ones. Jacob Janerka: The animation is all done in Photoshop and I paint each individual frame. How then do you approach the animation side of things? IGN: That makes sense as the game has a great hand drawn art style. And that applies to everything from the characters to the backgrounds too. Sometimes I’ll just write random words, pick things out, try and connect them, switch them up. It’s a long process and it usually takes hours.
What I do is get a bunch of A3 pieces of paper and then just write and write and write, until I find an interesting idea or just something that makes me laugh. Jacob Janerka: Well the biggest thing for me has always been creating and sketching out ideas with pen and paper. IGN: So without a programming background, what then would have been a typical day working on Paradigm in those early design stages? Everything is laid out for you in Visionaire and all you have to do is just use your own logic to make it unique for the game you’re creating. It struck me as incredible that something like that could be made with a product that’s so easy to use. So with Visionaire I saw one of the games that the creators had made called Deponia, and it looked so professional. I mean, I love technology, but I’m not particularly good at maths.
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That was a very big plus for me, mainly because I can’t do any of that stuff. Jacob Janerka: For one thing it’s really easy to use, and doesn’t require any programming ability. IGN: What was it about Visionaire as a game engine that convinced you to start making Paradigm? So after playing with that for a while it all just kind of clicked, and I knew Paradigm was something that I had to make. I don’t have a programming background so after looking into it online, just to see if it was possible, I found this program called Visionaire.
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I absolutely love the genre, but had no idea how to go about making one. Eventually as I was working with the ideas and art that I had, I thought it would be really cool if it became an adventure game. But all the work being done at that stage was just for fun, trying to create something unique and at the same time something really weird. The initial idea was for it to be this 2D sidescroller. Jacob Janerka: The game began as a fun idea I had at university, which was simply to create a game. IGN: What were some of your initial goals when you set out to make Paradigm? What follows is a chat with Jacob about the game, his process, and his thoughts on everything from comedy, to music, the adventure genre itself, and taking the project to Kickstarter. Any game that features a toupee-wearing sloth as the antagonist, who for canonical reasons regurgitates candy bars, is definitely worth checking out.
It’s funny, endearing, off-putting, and weird enough to become a cult hit. ( You can play the demo here.) It features art design with a style and sensibility rarely seen in adventure games. It’s also a game born from a love of the adventure genre and an affinity for the sort of surreal comedy one might find late at night watching Adult Swim or The Mighty Boosh.ĭescribed as a surreal comic adventure, even in these early stages Paradigm lives up to this promise. As a dapper young fellow who’s not afraid to sport a turtle neck and moustache for promotional purposes, Paradigm is his first game and one where he’s basically doing all the work himself everything from art and animation, to the writing. This is only a small part of the world of Paradigm, a new adventure game from Perth developer Jacob Janerka. He lives inside an abandoned power station, his only friend is a computer who’s obsessed with online dating, and right outside his doorstep lives a sentient eggplant that beatboxes so well you can understand why he’s got a sign offering up fresh beats for $5 a pop. He loves electronic music, making beats, and dreams of one day of becoming an electronic music superstar. The protagonist you control goes by the unlikely name of Paradigm he’s the product of failed genetic engineering, and not what you would call a looker.