{"id":134454,"date":"2023-06-06T01:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=3exkgv43"},"modified":"2023-06-06T01:00:42","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:42","slug":"behind-the-design-afterplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2023\/06\/06\/behind-the-design-afterplace\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Afterplace"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

At first glance, Evan Kice\u2019s Afterplace<\/em> appears to have time-traveled from the late 1980s. It\u2019s a 2D top-down pixelated adventure game full of blocky characters, blippy music, and retro typefaces. If you were ever into the games of the era \u2014 and Kice very much was \u2014 it feels like a delightful visit from an old friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up on those games,\u201d says Kice. \u201cI was always carrying them around. And I was also the kind of kid who\u2019d look at a manhole cover and think, \u2018That is definitely the entrance to a dungeon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet for all its nostalgia, Afterplace<\/em> is a decidedly modern game too. It\u2019s fast, fluid, incredibly easy to pick up, and features a surprisingly huge map. Its characters look like 1989 but talk like 2023, especially the sarcastic vending machine that dispenses random jokes and the friendly rabbit that provides advice. (For instance: \u201cIf you think something\u2019s going to attack you, don\u2019t be there anymore. Like, move away.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"*Afterplace*<\/div>\n

It\u2019s especially impressive when you realize that Kice is the game\u2019s sole designer, developer, and artist. He began making video games at age 11, studied software engineering in college, and took a few game design courses. But mostly, he taught himself along the way. \u201cHonestly, I just watched a lot of tutorials,\u201d he says. \u201cYouTube is how I learned art, sound, music, and basically everything that wasn\u2019t programming or game design.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Evan<\/div>\n

The game is also brilliantly designed for mobile, with one-finger controls that make it easy to explore. Tap to interact with an object or slash your way out of trouble. Or tap and drag anywhere on the screen to move around. In fact, one of Kice\u2019s earliest design decisions was to lean on touch screen interaction paradigms instead of drawing controls on screen. \u201cI was never a fan of virtual buttons or d-pads,\u201d says Kice. \u201cI\u2019ve played a lot of those kinds of games, and often ended up going a direction I didn\u2019t want to go. And I personally enjoyed being able to play with one thumb while standing in line somewhere.\u201d <\/p>\n

That drive for simplicity also informed the interactions between hero and enemy. \u201cSome games have simple enemies but a complex you,\u201d he says. \u201cAfterplace<\/em> has a simple you but complex enemies. Whenever you walk up to something, you have to say, \u2018What is this guy gonna do? I gotta figure this out.\u2019 That\u2019s your whole job. You\u2019re not worried about doing double backflips because you\u2019re too busy trying not to get smashed in the face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Afterplace\u2019s<\/div>\n

Enemies lurk everywhere in Afterplace\u2019s<\/em> massive worlds. Levels stretch out in all directions; what looks like a humble library is secretly a multilevel maze. \u201cI always loved it when a game just kept going,\u201d says Kice. \u201cI was fascinated by the idea that a game could hold an entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I was never a fan of virtual buttons or d-pads. And I personally enjoyed being able to play with one thumb while standing in line somewhere.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Evan Kice, Afterplace<\/em> creator<\/p>\n

<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was also fascinated by vintage heroes and villains. \u201cAll the characters in Afterplace<\/em> are the same resolution as the characters in my favorite childhood games,\u201d he says. \u201cI really, really loved those characters. But they were just static images; they faced four directions and had a blank stare on them. As a kid, I would think, \u2018I would love it if they did anything more than stand in place and say one line of dialogue.\u201d Inspired, he challenged himself on Afterplace<\/em> to see how expressive that vintage resolution could be. \u201cTurns out they\u2019re pretty expressive!\u201d he laughs. <\/p>\n

\"Evan<\/div>\n

Afterplace\u2019s<\/em> expressiveness comes through in its clever dialogue, like the character who encourages players to be more strategic in their attacks by saying, \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t imagine how many dunderheads just keep swingin\u2019 away at a monster.\u201d The game\u2019s music \u2014 which Kice wrote and performed \u2014 starts in an 8-bit style but expands to become more orchestral later on, a trick he picked up from the game Undertale.<\/em> \u201cIf you start out the game with a retro sound, then later break out the string quartet or horror violins, it has a lot more impact,\u201d he says. \u201cThe rest of the game has maybe three melodies in it. I\u2019ll pretend that\u2019s because I\u2019m a cool designer using leitmotifs, but it\u2019s actually the maximum number of melodies I could think of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/div>\n

Never a fan of intro cutscenes, Kice designed Afterplace\u2019s<\/em> onboarding to get players right into the action. \u201cI love story in games, but I almost always skip those introductions. I\u2019m just not invested yet,” he says. <\/p>\n

Afterplace<\/em> also features a bevy of accessibility options that let players adjust text scaling, camera shake amount, contrast, and more. There\u2019s even an invincibility mode, if players are really having trouble with those monsters. It\u2019s all part of a strategy to appeal to anyone, regardless of their video game history \u2014 if they have one at all. <\/p>\n

\n

I love story in games, but I almost always skip those introductions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Evan Kice, Afterplace<\/em> creator<\/p>\n

<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAfterplace<\/em> is very niche,” he says. It\u2019s for people who maybe don\u2019t play games on mobile. But if it helps bring more people into gaming, I think that\u2019s great.\u201d <\/p>\n

Learn more about Afterplace<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Afterplace from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Explore more of the 2023 Behind the Design series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, Evan Kice\u2019s Afterplace appears to have time-traveled from the late 1980s. It\u2019s a 2D top-down pixelated adventure game full of blocky characters, blippy music, and retro typefaces. If you were ever into the games of the era \u2014 and Kice very much was \u2014 it feels like a delightful visit from an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}