A video game can be sold by merit of many factors: Its art style, unique mechanics, storied legacy, and more. These factors aren't mutually exclusive either, with plenty of titles out there that have strong narratives and a fun gameplay loop to match their striking appearances. Indie games have become increasingly prominant, with ones like Supergiant Games' Hades sweeping awards last year. Cris Tales caught many people's attentions for its style and traditional JRPG influences, and while it had issues upon release, it's clear a ton of passion was put into the project.

Game Rant spoke with Dreams Uncorporated CEO and SYCK co-founder Carlos Andres Rocha Silva, the creative director and lead designer on Cris Tales, about the game's development and deep Colombian roots. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Spoilers for major late-game events.

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Q: Probably a good place to start, the game is pronounced like "crystals," right?

A: It could also be pronounced "cristales," which is the Spanish translation for crystals. It works as a pun in both languages.

Q: There are two development teams attached to Cris Tales (Dreams Uncorporated and SYCK). How did the project start and grow?

A: I had a previous company called Below The Game and we were just finishing up a game called Haimrik. It's a pretty weird game, you literally walk on top of words. So if you get on top of the word "fire" you get burned, and then to put it out you get on top of the word "rain." I'm used to making weird games, and I love weird mechanics. As a designer I try to explore unique ways of interacting.

When we were finishing up that game, I was coming up with another idea I wanted to experiment with. I met with the talented Sebastian and Yaddir, who became art director and gameplay director. They were both very interested in forming a company with me, so we started an experiment called SYCK. It's called SYCK because Sebastian, Yaddir, Carlos, and Kamilo. Kamilo, the fourth member, is my brother. I dedicated this game to him, and one character is based off his personality.

We started working around this idea I had about seeing past, present, and future on the same screen. It was a really weird idea, and we were working on several concepts for Colombian culture. Yaddir came up with this idea of, "What would a Disney Princess look like if she was from Colombia?" That's how we created Crisbell, and her castle was imagined to be the Las Lajas Cathedral.

A lot of stuff we did is like that. Matias is based off the golden frog, one of the most poisonous frogs in the world. There's mountains of references to Colombia within the game; the salt mines are based on a mine here with a cathedral inside, Rainbow Lake is based on a real lake. I came up with a fantasy concept that encompasses it all, and we started playing with the idea of breaking things into a triangle so you can see past, present, and future.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

Eventually, I came up with the idea of making it into an RPG because it's a genre I love. I understood as a creator that it's great to be innovative, but sometimes I was way too innovative and the team had a hard time understanding what we were doing. I also had a hard time understanding what I was doing, so I just tried to encapsulate everything into the RPG genre. That way we could have innovation in the main mechanic, but also the advantages of working on something well-known.

We saw that the prototype had a lot of potential and some publishers were interested. So we bootstrapped the concept for Cris Tales and joined with Dreams Uncorporated, which became my new company. Since I had a lot of people working at Dreams, we had the muscle to develop a bigger game.

Q: That is a lot.

A: And I haven't even told you about how we had a hard time at the beginning. In 2017 we tried to show the prototype to a lot of interested partners, and some people thought it was interesting, but they didn't sign to it. Now a lot of people look at the idea and think it's great, but at the time it was an unproven idea, so folks were hesitant. Then, in 2018, we participated in Game Connection and won a lot of awards. Lots of publishers were interested, but Modus made an offer we thought was really good.

It was really interesting because that was the first year I had a talk at GDC. To be honest, that was a dream come true. I had been going for several years, so to be able to talk was incredible. I had never been to E3, but we went in 2019 to unveil the game. It was announced at the PC Gaming Show, and I was absolutely ecstatic to be there, present it to press and others who were interested. I was very happy.

Q: So to be clear on the timeline: You had the prototype in 2017, partnered with Modus in 2018, and debuted the game in 2019-

A: In 2019 we announced the game. We had already been working on it, and there was a demo.

Q: You said you'd been working on ideas for years before that. When did you really start on the prototype?

A: I would say I came up with the idea in 2016. It was a long time cooking.

Like I said, I love to play with weird concepts. Some of them make it into games, some of them don't, but I really love that part of game creation: Experimenting, creating something unique. It motivates me as a creator, and fortunately it's also good from a business standpoint because as indies we aren't going to compete with the best graphics or most robust technology. Making something unique is a good selling point.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

Q: It certainly caught my eye. Full disclosure, I started playing Cris Tales when it came out, but haven't finished it because of work constraints.

A: I actually wanted to ask you, because I've seen a lot of the articles on Game Rant. I can tell you that some of the feedback I've seen on the site has made it into the game.

We try to listen, and we're still actively improving the game. For example, there was something about the expensive tent price, and we reduced it. It has actually been helpful to us as developers.

Q: As far as the spoiler gate goes, I'm at the part where Willhelm sacrifices himself to fight the Time Empress.

A: Wonderful! So I won't spoil anything, but I can say I was excited to be writing the game. That part about Willhelm is part of how I tried to create the characters, which is a little uncommon.

To me, characters are not only about what they want and need, I also try to make them based on their mechanics. I really liked the idea of having this mage trapped in a spell. In video games you always have a "doom" spell that puts a number on top of you and kills you after a few turns. So I thought what if you could stop the count, but it also stops your growth. That's how Willhelm came to be; I wanted that concept of the child trapped in time to survive a spell.

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Q: The characters are designed having responsibility while being childlike. Crisbell is out of an orphanage, Christopher tries to get a date while saving the world. How did you balance these traits with the time themes?

A: I got a lot of help from amazing people like Mark Nelson, who worked on Fallout and Oblivion, to shape the characters. The really important part was Crisbell is a cliched character, and we knew it. That was a homage we wanted to pay to the games of old; starting off in an orphanage, getting a sword, becoming a superheroine. At the same time, we wanted to give you a sense of surprise.

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At the beginning, it's like she doesn't know how to wrap her head around everything and she loses control of her powers, so we wanted to give her guidance for her powers and life itself. The main mechanic, "Learn from the past, act in the present, create your future," is like an analogy for what we want all the characters to be going through.

It's especially true for those that are younger. They have to go through these traumatic events. At the beginning it sounds super fun and adventurous, Christopher is like a Shonen protagonist, "I can deal with anything, just leave them to me." But eventually he comes to the realization that things get harder and he has to rely on others.

We wanted players to experience that sense of growth the characters had. The balance between them was also accomplished by their interactions.

Crisbell represents the time mechanic: Past, present, future. Every other character represents a relationship to that central mechanic. Christopher represents the volatility of different elements and how they change over time. Willhelm represents the incredible growth of nature that takes very long, but becomes a huge thing. For JKR, the idea we had is he's unaffected by time, being such an old character who has lived and will live through so much. That's why he can move between different parts of time without being affected.

Zas is randomness. We were imagining a character like Setzer in Final Fantasy 6 who played with lottery elements, like a gambler. We thought what would be more important for a gambler than saying, "Try again." Having the opportunity to rewind time and make it better.

All these characters interacting with this central pillar allowed for natural interactions. They were already related mechanically, and their personalities were based on those mechanics. So we allowed them to be, in a way tried to give voice to the personality traits that defined them.

Maybe the hardest part was screen time. How do we give enough to everyone? We tried spacing it out to get to know everyone, and there are parts of the game where you only play with some of them. During those parts of the game, you get to really hear the voices of the characters you're with.

Q: Going off those interactions, in terms of battles what was it like balancing a system where all these elements have to be in play at the same time?

A: Definitely a lot there to balance, but that part was extremely fun. The central concept of each character is strong, so we felt it worked well. What we thought was more difficult was creating enough powers. Crisbell has outstanding mechanics, the art is wonderful, and the animations are incredible. But it takes a toll on how many animations we can make.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

The hardest part, a lot of the time, was finding ways to make those animations efficient. How many attacks can we make that communicate these ideas and don't put a huge burden on the art team? We have these ideas, but some can't be implemented because they would take too long or clash with how we're showing others.

We also had to make some difficult decisions. For instance, something we really wanted to make - and probably will for our next games - are combos for more than two characters. There are combos that always need Crisbell, but we wanted some to work without her intervening. It was a little hard to do because we designed everything around that central pillar. Mostly, think about production and how much we were able to put into the game to make it satisfying while not extending development time.

Q: Even outside of battle, the game's artwork is easily its biggest selling point. Was that the most limiting factor for everything?

A: It was definitely one of the most limiting factors. Some spells didn't communicate timing well, it's a tricky thing. We wanted [the art] to be very natural and organic, it's traditionally animated with some cut-out here or there. That look certainly limited us from creating more than we may have. Everything that's there looks amazing, but takes a long time, and there's some stuff we couldn't use because it doesn't communicate timing well enough.

Q: Where did the concept for the artwork come from? Did it start with that Colombian Disney Princess vibe you described?

A: Yes, there were definitely a lot of Disney influences, and of course Japanese influences from JRPGs, manga, and anime. Also a lot of old cartoons we grew up with. For Sebastian, it was all about Samurai Jack's color use, or Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Old Disney backgrounds were also sprinkled in there to give it a unique look.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

As much as we tried to create unique mechanics, creating a unique art style was also something we wanted to pursue. When I met Sebastian he hadn't done any games, and we wanted to use the background he gained doing animation to show something not usual in the JRPG genre.

And definitely a lot of the Colombian flavor that hadn't really been portrayed in any media. It's usually the same subjects or themes when they talk about Colombia, so we wanted to highlight a lot of the magic that we have here. We have a lot of things that make this country unique, and we're excited about things like Encanto coming from Disney to focus on those different aspects. We wanted to give our own take as to what Colombia can bring to the world.

Q: How did that influence the worldbuilding as far as Cris Tales' different races and societies?

A: I always had this idea of different races where, as you can see from something like the museum in Tulira or the goblin people in Cinder, they all came from the same primal animals that started evolving into more anthropomorphic races. It's also playing with the idea of time making creatures evolve into more rational, thinking societies.

But you are absolutely right, I named most of the people from Tulira based on actual birds in Colombia. Rysa's name comes from Chlorochrysa nitidissima, Rhallus comes from the Rallus semiplumbeus, and so forth with most of them (except for Gladys, that's the name of my grandma). That played a huge part in how we defined the characters, some look like different birds.

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The goblins were also an interesting part. That wasn't inspired by anything specific in Colombia, but it was the evolution of a concept we had. It was the Volcano Sisters; their design was so beloved by everyone that we had to give them a bigger spotlight and their own storyline. We're very proud of that, I think they ended up being as beloved as they could.

A lot of storylines are based on what happens here in Colombia. For instance, in St. Clarity you have these sewers that push you around with water. That actually happens in a lot of coastal places, the sewer systems don't work properly so when it rains the water rises, and it's super bizarre. We wanted to include that as part of the mechanics of the game.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

Tulira is based on a real place; for St. Clarity, there are cities in Colombia called Santa Marta, San Andres, and more that helped influence the design. For Cinder, there's a place here in Colombia called Guatape. When you first enter Cinder there's this huge rock Christopher talks about with a really weird shape. That's how the real inspiration looks - El Penon de Guatape. We saw that and thought it looked incredible, like a big egg. So what if it broke apart and a big dragon came out of there.

We were inspired by our travels and everyday life here. We wanted people to notice that part of how we saw the world was through these fantasy lenses. It's a little trip to Colombia in a romanticized and fantastic way.

Q: I'm willing to bet that informed a lot of the social messaging as well - in places like St. Clarity, with the revolution.

A: We had that storyline from the beginning, and this year there were a lot of protests and riots here in Colombia, similar to what happened in the US. They wanted to make a fiscal reform that would be negative for everyone, so there were revolutions showing the kind of inequality we wanted to highlight. That's also part of who we are, what we grew up with. I know it's not something people imagine, but some of the richest people in the world are from Colombia. The year Steve Jobs died, a Colombian businessman who also died (Julio Mario Santo Domingo) had almost the same fortune.

For someone in Colombia to have that amount of money, we actually have a definition of poverty here that's like saying misery. It's for people that make less than a dollar a day, and we've grown up seeing and understanding that. It's not okay, and we want people to see that a lot of people suffer. Then, be it through hazardous labor or diseases, they're not very well taken care of.

The health care system here in Colombia has some advantages, it covers a lot of people. But some die just waiting for an operation. We wanted to show that in a different light, and social commentary, as you put it, is throughout the game because it was important to me.

The hardest part was not to touch upon the usual things, and I didn't want to touch on poverty in the same way others do. We call it misery porn, and we didn't want that. We didn't want to feel exotic because of how poor we are.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

Colombia has also shown great art through the indigenous roots we have, like Embrace of the Serpent (2015) being nominated for an Oscar. But we are not only indigenous people - it's a part of who we are of course, but there's a lot more. There's more than just violent people here, a lot of us are just living our lives. The NPCs in Cris Tales are a big part of that, you can see their stories through the past, present, and future, and a lot of their perspectives are shared with Colombians. A lot of people who have money will still complain about a leak in their roof, or the young fight more traditional views of folks like their parents and grandparents.

It's harder to spot because this is more of a personal thing, but in Colombia we have a very strong patriarchal society. What's interesting is a lot of families have kids, and if they have girls they'll keep having babies until they have a boy to be an "heir." That was strange to us, so we wanted to flip that and have a lot of families where the matriarch decides who the next in line is - to the envy of boys seeing a preference for the girls. Mother Superiors are the heads of the Church of the Lady, a feminine goddess figure in Cris Tales.

All of those were also like a social commentary on how we view everything. What if it wasn't that way? What if we could see it in this other light? We wanted to be able to experiment with that idea in this world.

Q: What were the challenges of designing three of each NPC for the past, present, and future?

A: It was a really bad idea, I have to say. We put way too much love in the game, and that was not positive all the time. For each character we had to design the past and the future, decide what story we wanted to tell with that character. We were dumb enough to try and make all unique NPCs - no one does that! Why did we do it? We really enjoyed it, but it was probably overkill and would have saved us a lot of time.

The architecture was manageable. Although, as you've probably seen, depending on your choices there are different futures in each town. That was also a really bad idea because you don't spend a lot of time there after you complete each side quest. For us to make different versions of that future was super demanding not only from an art perspective, but also for assembling the game. Sometimes you'll see one future after you make a different decision, so it wasn't working properly. The programmers were going crazy. It was absolutely nuts to try and organize, way too much.

Q: I was going to ask about the programming, for instance I'd notice things like water effects in St. Clarity carry over as the past is flooding... I see you're shaking your head.

A: It was way too much! The programmers had way too much to do, they'd move right from one thing to the next. They had to wait for art to have everything ready, and then put it into the game before they could program things. The chain was very long, leading to long production cycles for some stuff.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

I still remember one character was animated over three weeks - it took a long time to animate that enemy. Then the programmers had to make it work so if he was in the past he would do one attack, but not if he was in the present or future. It was an absolute nightmare, and the QA team really had to double check on what behaviors were okay. It took a long time for the programmers to put everything in its place, and they'd suffer the most because QA is the last one on the chain and made things more demanding.

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Q: Cris Tales was delayed in 2020. I'm assuming that kind of production hitch was a result of all this?

A: Definitely, definitely. Also with COVID we started working from home, and we still are. I think we're going to stay that way for a while, and that adaptation took a toll on us and our development. Now we're pretty used to it and it's manageable, but at the time it absolutely took us by surprise.

On the plus side, the delay allowed us to put a little more that we wanted in. But there were a lot of challenges.

Q: Between the extended development and pouring so much of yourselves into the game, how did you stay motivated over the course of production?

A: Very hard question.

It's hard to stay motivated, but it's harder to keep the team motivated. Everyone put a lot of themselves into the game, and we're still working on it. In one way it helped, because I remember when we started working from home people were anxious and scared. With everything going on in the world, they didn't know what was going to happen - I didn't know. It was good that we had something to look forward to, something we'd been working toward.

It certainly feels like an accomplishment in a way. This is the biggest game we've worked on, and the reception has been really amazing. I only wish we would have had events like PAX so we could see it personally, but we've seen so many articles in so many different languages. It helped us get excited and motivated seeing that this was something the world was expecting.

And the fans. There's a lot of people on the Discord for Cris Tales, but there's also a few fans who have always been there, been wonderful, and given us this incredible energy. That was also really beautiful, to see the fans give us so much love even before the game came out.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

We still get weird mails. Just today I got mail from someone asking if JKR-721 is inspired by Cyborg 009. It's a great question, and it's great someone wrote us - because that's it! That was the mail.

There's also a lot of personal, intimate stuff in the game, and fans were trying to figure it out. For instance, what I mentioned about my brother being an integral part of this. One fan was all over the mystery and figured out that people call JKR "K," and there's a K in SYCK. We hinted at that, but it's very subtle.

That helps you stay motivated as a creator, seeing people who are excited and trying to understand things beyond the obvious messages. Seeing what motivations we had creating those things. You need that, because game development is hard and takes a toll on you, your body, and your mental state. It helps when you have random strangers around the world getting excited about something you're creating.

Q: Not to make it a bummer, but I've also seen things like mixed reviews on Steam. It seems there's a fair amount of criticism out there, what have you seen and what's the team taking away from it?

A: There's a few things we've learned, and there are a lot of comments we're taking into account. It was definitely hard for us, we're just 23 people making a multiplatform release simultaneously - a huge challenge. We had help from other studios, friends from Costa Rica, from Mexico. But it was still hard to make everything work perfectly on all platforms.

There are a few things we could have made better, stuff we may not have realized. For example, people complain that Matias walks too slowly. That's a super easy fix, but it's something we never noticed could bother people. Then there's bugs here or there, and we're fixing those.

But I think there's an inevitable part of making a 30-hour game, trying to take everything into account that could happen, where you can't anticipate people playing in so many different ways. We tried to do as much as we could, but people encountered a lot of stuff we'd never seen. You always want the game to be perfect, you want everyone to think it's fantastic - and at the beginning we still had a lot of really good reviews, so it was motivating. In general the reviews have been positive, but the ones that are really harsh are hard to deal with.

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Some decisions we made could have gone the other way. Some, like being able to save anywhere, would have been easier if we designed it that way. We wanted to remind people about older ways of playing, and personally as a player I don't mind it very much, but I understand a lot of people might take that harshly. So there are a few lessons we learned. It's great we were inspired by older games, but there's a lot we're through with. We still want to inspire ourselves from great things in the past, but learn more from how decades of game development have gotten rid of a lot of that.

We've released a few patches already and still plan to release more. Hopefully when people see we're still working on improving the game, they'll be happier about it and have a better experience. It's game development, it's still your baby out there people are criticizing. But at least for even the harsher people out there, they'll say it's a good game with flaws. It should give us a chance with our next game as well.

Q: I also wanted to talk about menus and UI. How did you approach making a holistic feel to something like the menus, in this case the broken glass motif?

A: I have to say that a lot of the work Sebastian did on how everything looked like one harmonious product, he was obsessed with that. He wanted to make it all feel like it belonged to the same world. The whole art team worked hard on making it look that way, but he worked extra hard so people could feel like they were living in the game world.

But it was also a challenge because a lot of times things felt too plain or simple and we went overboard trying to make it all look just as good.

Q: Once you're done fixing up Cris Tales, what exactly is next? Will it be expanding upon this world?

A: We haven't decided yet. One thing I have to say is the team is a little tired, and after we finish improving the experience more we want to take some time off to explore and experiment. We're known, or we want to be known, for making unique experiences, games, mechanics, looks. We want to create new things. Everything we've learned we want to implement as well. If we stay in RPGs, we want to do it with even more new stuff.

dreams incorporated syck interview september 2021

We haven't decided, but that's something we want to see for ourselves. What are we capable of building next?

Q: Is there anything else you want to add?

A: I'm very happy we were able to launch such a huge game and show the world that here in Colombia we can make wonderful games with very unique takes on genres. We're very excited, and hopefully people will look forward to whatever we do next.

[END]

Cris Tales is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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