I don't quite know what to say about Gravity Bone, but mostly feel that it's best to not say anything. I'd rather let you discover it for yourself. It's a small download, available for free here, and it will run on pretty much any computer. It'll take you maybe fifteen minutes before you're ready to come back and read my interview with its creator, Brendon Chung. Because you're not quite going to get what's going on until you've experienced Gravity Bone yourself.

Read the interview after the jump. But not until you've played it yourself.

Brendon Chung works as a level designer for Pandemic Studios. He's worked on Full Spectrum Warrior and the upcoming Lord of the Rings: Conquest. So if your first reaction after playing Gravity Bone was, 'Why isn't this guy working for a major developer?', then rest assured he is indeed working for a major developer.

Tom Chick: Can you tell me what your background is, how you came to be able to do what you've done in Gravity Bone and the other games you've made.

Brendon Chung: I started making games at a young age. I started with Doom, the original Doom 1. Id Software released their map editing tools that allowed people to make new maps for the game, and make new monsters and new weapons, and from that the whole mod scene opened up.

TC: Do you mind if I ask how old you are?

BC: I am 27-years-old.

TC: I've noticed from the web page for Blendo Games [the site for Chung's mods and independently created games] that you've worked with a lot of engines. You've even done some stuff with more advanced engines. I think there's even something for Doom 3 on there, whereas Gravity Bone is the old Quake 2 engine. What preferences do you have for what engines you work with?

BC: Well, this is going to sound like a cop-out, but they're all fun to play with. The newer ones are little bit easier to work with, and the older ones are a little bit, uh, trickier.

TC: I would have expected it to be the other way around.

BC: The new ones are a little more powerful and flexible, a little more user-friendly. The older ones, you have to kind of wrangle them into doing what you want them to do.

TC: Then why is Gravity Bone made with the Quake 2 engine and not something newer?

BC: Because Quake 2 was released open source, so you can redistribute it for free.

TC: How long did it take you to make Gravity Bone? When did you start working on it?

BC: It was probably about a year ago, or so. But it doesn't really take that long really. Gravity Bone started out very different from what it was and that ended up getting scrapped and then I kind of reiterated off that, and that version also got scrapped, and so on and so forth until this version came out. There were maybe about four different revisions done.

TC: What was the original iteration? When you first sat down to make it, how would that Gravity Bone have looked different?

BC: It was based on a series of Quake 2 maps I did ten years ago called "Citizen Abel". They were more traditional first-person shooter games where you ran around with a gun, shot monsters, you know. It was a bit more conventional. But that didn't really feel satisfying, so I kept adding bits and bits of more and more unconventional first-person shooter elements until this final version came out.

TC: This version doesn't even have any shooting. At what point did that fall away?

BC: Maybe around the third revision or so, I kind of got stuck on this idea of the hero never fires a gun, but he just has a bunch of tools on his belt, like a power drill or a can of pressurized Freon, a screwdriver. I thought that was kind of funny and interesting.

TC: I've seen some comments to the effective of 'This is great, I can't wait for the rest of it' or 'I look forward to the next episode'. Is this a one-off like some of your other projects? Is this the beginning of a series? Or do you even know?

BC: Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. But I've really been surprised by the amount of positive feedback it's gotten. I didn't really think it would catch on, since it's a little bit different from most first-person games. So from that, I would definitely be interested in continuing this.

TC: I'm a little surprised to hear Citizen Abel is a reference to maps you've made and not specifically the name of the main character. Is that correct? In Gravity Bone, do you play Citizen Abel, or is that just a reference to your old maps?

BC: That doesn't really play a part in the game. You never really see the character, the character never talks, it's just a label I had.

TC: I'm curious about the creative process for you. You mentioned it began as a more conventional shooter and it changed. What were some of the elements that have carried all the way through? For instance, there are some great images in Gravity Bone, such as the flashbacks, the moment where the girl takes the camera and shoots out the window while she's towering above you, the way you get the missions in the furnace rooms. What were the kernels throughout the creative process for you?

BC: Honestly, absolutely nothing really stayed the same. The first version was run around with a gun and shoot things and stuff explodes. Very high octane action game. Then it got dialed in a different direction. The second one you were more of a computer hacker and you're always hacking stuff all the time. In another one - what was it? - it moved in a more spy direction, trying to quietly take out enemies and not be seen. It kept on just changing and changing and changing until it got into a more story-oriented direction.

TC: As far as that story goes, I don't know how much you're willing or even can talk about interpretation, but a lot of people who play would be curious about things like who is the red-haired man, and who is that green-eyed girl, and why do you take pictures of birds. Do you know the answers to those things or is all that deliberately ambiguous even for you? What do you say when people ask you those questions?

BC: Yeah, this is going to sound a bit like a cop-out also, but I generally leave it open to interpretation. I just wanted to create a universe where stuff like this is normal, where stuff like this isn't strange like we think it is. "Oh, sure, I'm on a mission to take a picture of a bird and they're willing to pay me top dollar for that." It's perfectly normal espionage work for the people in this world.

TC: Out of curiosity, and I think I know the answer to this since you mention it began as a shooter, but why isn't this machinima? There seems like a very thin line between what people do with machinima and what you have done with Gravity Bone and Grotto King and I suspect your other creations. Is having the player directly involved a crucial element for you?

BC: Yeah, that's the beauty of videogames. I do love machinima also. I've done some stuff in that. I'm probably going to post it eventually. But, yeah, the whole element of videogames is that you make visuals and light and sound and narrative and then the player interacts with that. It's what brings it to the next level.

TC: On the blog Rock Paper Shotgun, an English writer named Kieron Gillen suggested that part of what makes Gravity Bone so memorable is that it's a fake-out, where it leads you to believe it's going to be a longer term game, and then it ends suddenly. Was that an intentional part of what you were going for?

BC: I wanted the player to think the level was going to end, and then it ends up kind of twisting, and then the player thinks he's dead, but he's not really and then he thinks the level's over, but it's not really over and there's a whole bunch more. So, yeah, there's an element of toying around with the player's expectations.

TC: Is that something you've done in your other games?

BC: I like giving the player something they haven't seen before, or else see rarely. That's something I find interesting when I watch a movie or play a videogame.

TC: What was behind the choice of the song "Brazil" as background music for the chase scene?

BC: The music itself, I got from an Asian filmmaker named Wong Kar Wai, and he uses a lot of South American music, and it's from that I got this great music. He makes these really beautiful films and I've always wanted to use the same music in a videogame.

TC: Are you a big movie guy?

BC: Yeah, I am a big movie nerd.

TC: Are there any movies that you might cite as influencing what you did with Gravity Bone?

BC: Like I mentioned before, the movies of Wong Kar Wai were a big influence on the game.

TC: I thought of the chase scene in Raising Arizona when you fall into the dining room with all the men. It felt like how a Coen brothers chase scene might drop you into a completely unexpected spot.

BC: Funny that you mentioned that. Raising Arizona is one of my favorite movies of all time.

TC: If you were to pick a favorite Coen brothers movie, would it be Raising Arizona?

BC: Oh, yeah. Huge.

TC: I maintain that says a lot about a person, what they pick as their favorite Coen brothers movie.

BC: [laughs]

TC: I'm curious about the voices for the missions and the wa-wa sounds for the people at the party. Is that you?

BC: I think that's an actual clip from a Charlie Brown cartoon.

TC: That's awesome. But certainly not the mission briefings.

BC: The background noise from those recordings is from something called the numbers station. I don't quite know how to describe it. The numbers stations are some mysterious radio stations around the world that people don't really have any idea what the purpose is, but they just play numbers all the time. But the voice itself for the briefings is one of those text-to-speech programs.

TC: Wait, the numbers station is something that really exists? Radio stations that just broadcast numbers?

BC: Yeah, that's actually real life. That's not a game thing.

TC: Wow. Okay. [At this point, I am briefly flummoxed, imagining that this is where my life becomes an HP Lovecraft story as I investigate these numbers stations and eventually go insane when they lead me to an encounter with the Old Ones or some such thing. I'll keep you posted on that.] So I'm curious about some other stuff. Looking at the directory of names for the 70th floor, some of those names have to be references to real things. Is that the case?

BC: Yeah, it's a bunch of pop culture references from TV shows, and movies, and cartoons.

TC: Is the name of the building anything relevant. Arrol Hofert Tower. It's got to be an anagram, right?

BC: Uh, no.

TC: Can you say anything, just because it's so mysterious, about the final image of a woman wearing the number 99 winning a foot race?

BC: [laughs] Uh. [laughs again] Umm, yeah. That was...Well, that was... [laughs] No I can't really say anything about that. It'll just have to be a mystery.

TC: Fair enough. What are you working on now?

BC: I'm working on a small game for XNA community games for Xbox Live. It's called Atom Zombie Smasher. I'm finishing up right now and hopefully I should be done with it in a couple of weeks or so.

TC: Well, Brendon, thank you very much for talking to me. I look forward to seeing what you do for XNA. And kudos for Gravity Bone. It was really a strangely moving experience. I was delighted to discover it.

BC: Thank you. Thank you very much.