How A Team of 5 Malaysians Created an Indie Horror-Survival Game About Smoking

Eristarisis
7 min readJul 15, 2021

Videogames are a billion-dollar industry, (valued at USD138.4 Billion in 2021), with well-known companies such as Electronic Arts, Blizzard, and CD Projekt Red taking center stage.

Compared to them, the Malaysian-made RoundTable Games studio does not even register as a blip on the radar. But this plucky studio consisting of 5 stalwarts has launched their first game: Dying Flame.

The Official Trailer for Dying Flame on Steam!

I happened to find their game on Steam and played it for a few hours. This is a game that builds an atmosphere of tension, suspense and horror that left me scared enough to keep a light on when I sleep.

Not bad for 2D 8-bit graphics. I reached out to see if they wanted to talk a little about their game.

The “faces” of RoundTable Games Studio.

All of them studied at KDU (now University of Wollongong Australia), and were loosely acquainted. Between the five of them, they had content creators, programmers, the fundamentals of marketing and social media, some human resources management, project management, and some financial savvy. So, RoundTable Games Studio was born.

Dying Flame is now available on Steam for only RM22.50.

What can you tell us about Dying Flame?

Dying Flame’s story centers around James, a heavy smoker trying to get over his addiction. James is trying to rehabilitate his addiction because the secondary smoke has caused his wife, Mary, to contract lung cancer. Your actions in the story dictate whether he succeeds or fails.

What’s the concept behind Dying Flame?

Exploration with limited light
Solve puzzles with the light of a Dying Flame

The game started with the concept of a lighter in the dark. In many horror games, the more frequently you could see the monster, the less scary it became. What if your main source of light could only activate for brief flashes, showing the monster for a tiny fraction of a second?

And, well, if you have a lighter, nine times out of ten, a cigarette is involved. And when cigarettes are involved, there is the pull of addiction.

As the player, you need to light a cigarette and smoke it in order to save your game. So the more scared a player feels, the more they will save, mimicking the fear, stress, and agony of being addicted to nicotine.

By tying the cigarettes to a saving mechanic in a horror game that can kill you at any moment, you really feel that you need to seek out more cigarettes, to save whenever you get the chance.

And then, you can begin to understand what an obsession feels like. How it gnaws at the back of your mind, tempting you even though you know you’re headed down for the bad ending if you do.

So, Dying Flame uses smoking as a way to save your game progress. How does this lead to addiction and grief?

A handful of cigarettes, means a handful of saves… how often will you smoke?

We drew on the personal experiences of the team. One of our team was a child asthmatic who has lost family to cigarettes and smoking-related stroke and cancer.

Another of our team is an ex-smoker who is at war with his nicotine addiction on a daily basis.

This made the topic something that we could draw on personal experiences to make as real and visceral and relatable. We believe that we have successfully given our players the ability to empathize with what craving a cigarette is like.

We designed the puzzles and the levels to reflect upon the character’s state of mind, but honestly, you probably won’t see it if you’re not looking out for it.

For us, making games is about giving our players an immersive experience, with characters involved in a story, set in a world that will keep them gaming all night long.

Our first game Dying Flame is a small-scale project that achieves all of this: A thematically driven story of pain, and grief that makes addiction both real and relatable to our players.

For us, the right player is anyone over the age of 18 as we deal with some very serious subject matters in our game, such as addiction and grief. Of course, we hope that the whole world will play the game but ultimately, we’d be happy to share the experience with anyone who wants to experience horror and puzzle out the story, and the message of Dying Flame.

How much budget did it take to make Dying Flame?

Like all indie game developers, we also face a very common problem: Budget. Making games is a very expensive affair, and when you don’t have the financial support of the industry giants like EA, Activision, or investors like Tencent, it really limits what you can do.

For us, we were fortunate enough to get funding from a private investor. He has fronted the development cost of the entire project. Of course, the lion’s share of the game’s commercial success will also go back to the said investor. But the success of Dying Flame will allow us to move on to the next slightly bigger game.

It is safe to say that we do have a roadmap and plan for the future, and we aim to improve our games, and game-making skills as we release new titles, building up to what we hope will be our flagship release in a few years: — A Malaysian made AAA game franchise.

How are you marketing your game?

We’ve been working with a lot of streamers to help promote the game, such as YouTube Gaming Content Creator “MAMJ Let’s Play” who playtested the game, EagleGarrett, and TrishaHershberger on Twitch, and to the many Malaysian Facebook streamers: Chel.C, Celestia, Jojohime, Micho, Yuki, and Firbbb.

In fact, MAMJ is currently playing his way through the mansion and its puzzles, which you can check out over here.

We’re also looking to get our game into other digital storefronts like Epic Games Store, GOG, and eventually into Humble Bundle.

How’s the indie game dev scene in Malaysia?

The Malaysian scene is pretty well-developed. We have a number of small game companies that have produced some great games over the past few years including award-winning games such as Simulacra by Kaigan Games, and Post Knight by Kurechi.

Malaysia is home to a number of fantastically talented game developers, but we still don’t have that Malaysian gaming franchise or intellectual property that has the Triple-A global recognition like Black Desert Online, Assassin’s Creed, or Mobile Legends.

For now, a thriving game development industry with numerous small studios and some government support through MDEC is a great start. We’re moving slowly, but surely in the direction of getting that Triple-A Franchise, and we will get there.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that there are at least a dozen games being released every day of the year, and in such a crowded marketplace, getting visibility is the hardest thing to do. The easiest part of the development was getting the game distributed to our players!

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to join game development as a career?

Like all career paths, it’s more about personal fit and most people think it’s a great choice when in reality it’s not. Under game development, “Game Developer” is a misnomer because it’s not an actual job title.

The hours are long and tough, there is limited job security — the majority of indie game studios/developers go bust within the first 2 years, and rare are the ones that make it past the 5-year mark.

Being in game development means that you must love the process of making a game, and not just the final shipped game. Simply put: If you want to make a game just to make a ton of money, you’re looking at the WRONG industry.

The process of making a game is a lot like software development. The day-to-day work is almost the same as software development, probably pays a lot better, and is a lot more stable over the long term. Making a game means loving the iterative, almost evolutionary process of making something, and making it better until you are happy enough to let other people play it or see it.

All of us at RoundTable Games love what we do, but we honestly would not recommend this career track in good conscience unless you really go in with your eyes open.

Any expansion plans? What’s next for RoundTable Games?

We’re planning to stay small and lean, we’re open to new projects and new ideas, and as we turn those into games, we’ll add people as necessary. We can tell you with 90% certainty… that our next project will most likely be a game of some sort. Stay tuned to find out more!

“Dying Flame” by RoundTable Games Studio is now available on Steam.

Visit Steam & get your copy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1507950/Dying_Flame/

--

--

Eristarisis
0 Followers

I hide from people in real life. Game Designer by day, writer by night, & Gamer in-between, I’m 3 exhausted cats in a trenchcoat pretending to be 1 human.