The endless hours that have gone into constructing Neyyah as a solo developer have created a beautiful timeline too, capturing the events in my own life that transpired during development. There's a wide range of influences which have helped shape the game in a myriad of different ways. It feels like I'm actually in Neyyah when exploring these places! And then other games which have shaped Neyyah include Dragon Lore II: The Heart of the Dragon Man (with its beautiful FMV transitions), RHEM, Alida, Dark Fall, Might & Magic, Tomb Raider. Other inspirations come from the places around me, such as the old Napoleonic structures found at Landguard Fort in Felixstowe, England, close to where I live, and Martello towers dotted around the local English coastline. The love and passion for seeing this world develop comes first, and the small milestones along the way help keep me grounded and sane! Even though I'm a solo developer, the overwhelming aspects of taking on such an ambitious projectВ barely ever comes to mind. What they achieved back then has definitely encouraged and inspired me to pursue a massive project like Neyyah. everything about the rendering reminded me of the realism captured in Riven, a beautiful game that, while being released in 1997, still stands up graphically to this day.

When I started learning Blender just before I started Neyyah, I saw the power of the Cycles rendering engine, and the fidelity, clarity, tone. Riven particularly is a huge inspiration behind Neyyah. I am very engaged when I design anything for Neyyah, especially the worlds. It encompassed all sorts of creativity, and enabled me to push myself further in the areas I was familiar with and learn new ones. While I enjoyed writing songs, performing, recording / producing music and other people's music too, and eventually teaching guitar / singing, I realised that game design was much more fulfilling for me, making use of not only other areas of my brain, but my heart and soul, too. Game design combined everything, and my love for creating music came about in my teens as well. Feist's work and Lord of the Rings, etc.). I'd always loved art - anything from drawing, painting, clay modelling - from a very young age, and I loved storytelling too, having written a 264-page fantasy novel at age 11 (inspired by Raymond E. Game design was a brand-new outlet to express my creativity, imagination. When I discovered how these games had been designed, using pre-rendered images and a 2D screen-to-screen interface, I was hooked. Later on in my teens, I finished them (with a walkthrough) but for me, I was also looking at the games from an artistic lens, as I do with most games I play these days (when I get time to). I used to play these games with my dad and brother back as a kid, and we never finished them, but they evoked curiosity, intrigue, and sometimes fear and mystery - a whole load of emotions. The inspirations for Neyyah originate from my fascination with Myst, and most particularly Riven. Then, very quickly, it took on a whole life of its own, and I just ran with it. The inspiration from Myst seems apparent as we mentioned in our previous coverage, can you tell us your thoughts behind creating Neyyah?ДЇunnily enough, Neyyah was originally going to be an introduction level to a much bigger project.

The lost city tomb puzzle