When I asked how he would describe his work, Zeekerss chose one word: “delight.” “For me, delight means surprise and a sense of wonder,” he says. “I was flattered when the YouTube channel Errant Signal called my creations ‘impish’ and likened them to playful practical jokes on the player — that description fits perfectly.”
Welcome To The Dark Place channels a particular strand of Zeekerss’s imagination. “When I was about ten, someone put Zork on the family computer and let me loose,” he remembers, referencing Infocom’s classic 1977 text adventure. “It felt impossibly real and mysterious to me.”
“Kentucky Route Zero also left a mark with its magical-realism passages that spiral into text-driven byways, and Stories Untold demonstrated how powerful short text segments can be. Those influences stuck with me.”
Building his text adventure turned into what he calls “audio design boot camp.” To illustrate scenes that are written rather than shown, Zeekerss layered and edited freely available sound effects, striving to blend them so they felt fresh rather than cliched. Family and friends also lent voices and music, giving the project a warm, personal touch.
Ironically, although text-based projects don’t require 3D models or complex art pipelines, that accessibility has its pitfalls.
“Because I can prototype ideas immediately, projects can quickly balloon,” he admits. “That made this one easy to overcommit to. The audio layer was especially demanding — I’d write long passages and then face the painstaking task of creating or mixing sounds for every beat.”
“Welcome To The Dark Place was also paused repeatedly while I finished other work, including Lethal Company,” he adds. “You must be careful not to become so attached to an enormous project that it strangles itself; that’s the fastest way to kill it.”
Source: gamesradar.com
