SCHiM Interview: Ewoud van der Werf Discusses the Growth of his Indie Game
Everyone is inspired by something, be it the people around them or pieces of media they grew up enjoying. For indie developers those inspirations are often quite obvious, from the glut of SNES-style titles taking cues from series like The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy to a title like Wander Stars that wears 90s anime influences on its sleeve. While SCHiM has a number of influences it can point to, lead developer Ewoud van der Werf hopes his game connects to peoples' memories of real-world childhood play.
Game Rant spoke to van der Werf about SCHiM's development history, changes with growing popularity, and underlying focus on an artsy design with attention to colorblind accessibility. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Lake's Interview Sequence Makes a Point About Player Choice, Says Creative Lead Jos Bouman
Q: Tell me a little about yourself.
A: I'm Ewoud van der Werf, the main developer of SCHiM. I'm mostly developing the game solo, but also working with Extra Nice, which helps with level design, game design, technical stuff, and so on.
Q: I understandSCHiM started as a school project. What you were studying, and how did it get to this point?
A: I was studying game design, which was basically two areas of study at Friesland College in Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands. You had the development side and the artist side. I was always very interested in programming and art, and for the first year of the course you could do both — but then later you had to pick one. I went for development.
I was able to do it fast-tracked, finishing school pretty quickly. SCHiM was made for an exam, but before that I had an internship at Extra Nice. The goal of the exam was to create a game for Extra Nice, and they gave me complete
Read more on gamerant.com
