1,000 little Post-It notes: an interview with the developer of He Came From Beyond

gamedeveloper.com:

There's an immense charm to games with hand-drawn illustrations; 2021's Mundaun, for example, was well received for adopting a pencil sketch visual style, which imbued the game with a visceral texture that seemed to reinforce the rough-hewn edges of its dark religious folk horror. Like Mundaun, He Came From Beyond is drawn by hand, but with an added challenge: all of its assets were first scribbled on a Post-It note. This Doom mod is coming together as over one thousand scraps of tiny yellow paper, the culmination of the whims of a first-time developer who one day got an unusual idea. Polish designer Michał Puczyński tells us how the greater Doom mod community has helped him bring his vision to fruition. 

Game Developer: Is this your first game? Do you have any education or background as a game developer? Or are you a traditional artist?

Puczyński: I don't have any art education, and at the time of starting this project, I didn't know anything about game development. I happened to like Doom, and at one point, I downloaded its modding tools and simply started playing with them.

At first, I started making a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi shooter called Heavy Metal Armageddon, where you're an angel sent to wipe out a civilization that became corrupted and evil. 

But since it was my first project, it wasn't very good. Also, I relied on existing Doom assets, stock imagery etc., so I didn't feel it was truly my game. I wanted to make something that would be 100% my own. I decided to start anew with an idea that I had. I had these sticky Post-It notes and I realized they kinda look like a blank Doom texture. I like doodling, so what if I doodled something on a Post-It and scanned it into the Doom engine?

That's how He Came From Beyond