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| The 2018 indie game of the year, "Azure", has so many stories hidden behind it! |
We've all had negative emotions, things we're tired of coping with in life, we're about to face self-challenges, and we've even had bad moods without warning. Sometimes it's a heavy cloud, and even when the sun is shining, the world loses its color. Sometimes it's an invisible hand that grabs your heart and keeps you from breathing. Sometimes it is like an impassable mountain standing in front of you, majestic and precipitous.
And at this point, all you can do is breathe.
"Breathe slowly and steadily, inhale, exhale"
In the process of overcoming myself, I gradually learned to listen to my inner voice, and those voices that once made me hesitate and retreat have now become my motivation to move forward; In the process of climbing the mountain, I learned to reconcile with myself, and even if the setbacks and failures fell on me mercilessly, they could not shake my determination to keep going. This is a mountaineering story about Madeleine, a depressed girl, a story of dialogue with frustration, a story of reconciliation with self, and the story of the indie game "Azure".
In 2018, the 2D pixel platformer Azure won the TGA Indie Game of the Year award that year, and even won the chance to compete with triple-A players such as God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 for Game of the Year.
It's hard to imagine that such a pure, hardcore, and even handicapped platforming game can still be so loved in 2018, not only for its high game quality, beautiful art and beautiful music, but also for its many positive effects on mental health issues.
Azure is rudimentary, jumping, sprinting, climbing, three buttons and eight directions, almost non-existent combat elements, primitive and hardcore. The blue is difficult, enough to make you with a crippled hand, and the urge to drop the keyboard keeps surging in your heart, but you keep coming back after dying again and again, heading towards the top of the mountain. Teal is more complex, it can use gentle emotions and direct to your fragile heart, after you have encountered setbacks again and again, continue to encourage you until the moment you succeed.
At the TGA awards, producer Matt Thorson, programmer Noel Berry and soundtrack artist Lena Raine took the stage. Producer Thorson was a little emotionally moved in his acceptance speech, thanking his parents before reiterating to the audience that it would be great if "Teal" helped you improve your mental health.
The acceptance speech may seem cliché, but everything he mentioned in his speech, his parents, and mental health issues, were the most important parts of his life.
Just two years after "Azure" won the award, Thorson changed from "he" to "she", from Matt Thorson, to Maddy Thorson. For Thorson, Azure is not just a game, but also a journey of redemption to gain self-identity and get out of the spiritual haze.
PART 1
The start of the dream
In the spring of 1988, Thorson was born in an ordinary family in Canada, when he was very young, he suffered from anxiety, but fortunately, his parents bought him a NES, a variety of games made little Thorson's condition alleviate a lot, at the same time, it also made him more and more interested in video games, and came up with the idea of making his own games.
When he was 14 years old, his parents introduced him to GameMaker, and Thorson immersed himself in Pandora's box, spending his days in his parents' basement making games and creating his own game studio, Helix Games. He also loves making games, and he has also made many friends in the GameMaker community, including Chevy Ray Johnston, a rebellious kid from British Columbia next door, who became Thorson's best friend, and they often discussed how to make games, learning and improving together.
IN 2004, HE MADE HIS FIRST PLATFORMING GAME WITH A HIGH LEVEL OF COMPLETION, JAMPER. I have to say, my first reaction when I saw this game was: isn't this Super Meat Boy! But then I think about it, Super Meat Boy is a 2012 game, and its predecessor, Meat Boy, was only made in 2008. 2004's "JAMPER" was much earlier than E Fat's work, and later the protagonist of "JAMPER" Ogham actually became one of the optional characters in "Super Carnivore Boy". In fact, after looking up the relevant information, I have not been able to confirm whether there is a reference, maybe it is really pure coincidence.
Between 2004 and 2007, he collaborated with friends in the community on five games, including a tower defense shooter called HoldOffRed and a more complex Metroidvania-like game, An Untitled Story, in addition to his best platforming game and the sequel to Jamper.
《An Untitled Story》
In the same year, Thorson, who did not excel in his studies, was admitted to Alberta's Prairie Regional College to major in computer software, and his life plan at that time was very simple, which was to find a job for a local game company after graduation.
But what he didn't expect was that during his years in college, his game production level improved year by year, and even Adult Swim Games, a game publisher from North American radio stations, took the initiative to cooperate with him to publish some small indie games. And Thorson also earned the first pot of gold in his life, which was still more than enough after paying tuition and living expenses. It even made him feel that he didn't have to work for others, but instead found his friends to do indie games to support himself.
Prairie Regional College
In 2012, although Thorson, who graduated from college, is a rookie in the workplace, he is already an out-and-out master of indie game production in the eyes of the GameMaker community developers.
Instead of fulfilling his original idea of finding a company to work for, he went to British Columbia, where his friend Johnston lived, and the two rented an apartment in downtown Vancouver, and one day in May 2012, a middle-aged man named Alec Holowka came to Thorson's apartment. The temporary tenant Horoka is the producer of the well-known indie game "The Song of Angela".
Alec Holowka
PART 2
The soaring "tower"
IN JUNE 2012, FULL INDIE GAME JAM, A GATHERING OF INDIE GAME MAKERS IN VANCOUVER, CANADA, GATHERED A LARGE NUMBER OF INDIE GAME MAKERS WHO WOULD BRAINSTORM AND CREATE AN INDIE GAME IN 48 HOURS.
Naturally, the people at Indie House were not absent from the event, with Thorson designing the game, roommate Johnston taking care of the program, and the apartment's new guest, Alec Holoka, taking care of the game's music and sound effects.
They originally wanted to design a 2D pixel game based on The Legend of Zelda, and when they got the characters in the game to equip them with bows and arrows and shoot them at the target, they suddenly decided that this would be enough. So they added more characters and complex terrain to turn the game into a PVP game. This was the original prototype of Towerfall.
As a big brother in the industry for many years, Holoka saw the potential of "Tower Down" and directly and decisively proposed that Thorson and Hanston simply move to their house in the Vancouver countryside and complete the work with a group of game makers.
This rustic cottage is known to them as the Indie House, the House of Independence. It's their home, their office, and a place for them to discuss technology and incubate ideas, and they often invite friends from the GameMaker community to be their temporary tenants, discuss work together during the day, and sleep on the floor at night.
Thorson at Independence House
On top of that, as a multiplayer PVP game, Thorsen was able to test the game's performance with the tenants in the apartment, and the tenants were all addicted to the game. The game has also been polished more and more refined with the continuous improvement of countless professional testers. He even took the game to EVO 2013 as a post-match dessert for fighting game players, and the pvP-led Friendship Destroyer game was addicted to critical acclaim.
At the same time, Horoka provided quite a bit of advice for Thorson's Tower Down, including the overall design of the game, some of the pitfalls faced by newcomers, and most importantly, as a successful person and a newcomer, Horoka has the full experience of commercializing the game.
He first asked Thorsen to contact the game publishing platform, and Thorson, who was still very young at the time, was still a little unconfident, he just found a microcontroller called Ouya, which had just been launched by Android at that time, as a platform, and signed a one-year exclusivity agreement.
ouya
In June 2013, "Tower Falling" was officially released on OUA, and it received a very good response. At the end of the one-year exclusivity agreement, Tower Down sold more than 7,000 copies on OUA. Don't look at these 7,000 copies, it's a bit inconspicuous, but the Ouya controller has only been launched for two years, and it was discontinued due to various problems. And "Tower Down" sold 7,000 copies, and eventually became the best-selling game on OUA.
Here I have to mention once again this Alec Holoka, a veritable nobleman in Thorsen. In fact, Holoka actually played a very important role in the development of Tower Down, even more so than Thorson in the whole work, but he gave Thorson the top position of producer "Director" and made him the publisher of the game under the name of Matt Makes Games, and he just left his name in the soundtrack.
Personally, I admire Horoka's personality very much, and he can give all the credit to Thorson, because he is open-minded enough, and he is happy to see the rise of the rising waves as an old-timer.
Canada, a country that has to be mentioned when it comes to indie games, has been at the forefront of the world since the birth of the concept of indie games, from the earliest "FEZ", "Famine", to "Cuphead" and "Evil Inscription" in recent years, almost every year, we can see several works emerge here that are amazing in terms of quality and creativity, which is not only advanced in technology, but also the result of the selfless hard work of predecessors like Holoka.
After the initial completion of Towerfall, Holoka simply left Thorson and Johnston in his own house of independence for a long time, and then moved on to work on his new game, Night in the woods, to prepare for a new phase of his life.
Night in the woods
However, in August 2019, Horoka was accused of physical and mental abuse by his live-in girlfriend Zoe 7 years ago, and due to the mainstream public opinion at the time, the development team of "Night in the Woods" quickly removed Horoka from the team without being sure of the authenticity of the source, and postponed the release plan of the physical version of "Night in the Woods". Holoka couldn't accept the pressure of public opinion, so she chose to commit suicide after 4 days. His sister later clarified on social media that Horoka had spent her entire life "battling emotional and personality disorders" and had been taking psychotropic drugs for years. The accuser, Zoe, did not provide further clarification after Holoka's suicide, only deleting her social media account. In the game review of Night in the Woods, we were able to see that many players expressed regret for Alec Holoka's story.
Okay, let's get back to the main storyline. In 2014, when the exclusivity agreement expired, Thorson remade Tower Down and released it on steam and PS4, changing the name to TowerFall Ascension, further expanding sales. Here's a little bit of an episode, George Brusad, the big guy in the game scene who developed Duke Doom 3D, wrote an email to Thorson, saying: "I hope you're ready to be a millionaire kid (laughs), you'll definitely be happy with the long-tail sales on steam and PS4 (laughs).
After reading it, Thorson's heart was unwavering, and he ignored this old oilman in the game circle who was full of copper smell, deleted the email with a look of contempt, and then returned to work.
In fact, "Tower Down" ended up making Thorson only half of a million, but this is already a rather staggering amount for the impoverished Thorson, but he doesn't seem to have any intuitive feeling for the rising numbers in his wallet, and his own life is still simple and low-key. He doesn't even want to spend money on a car, but still rides his bike back and forth between the city and his cottage.
For him, the money serves only one purpose, and that is to make a new game—a work that is both self-expressive and artistic.
PART 3
The mountain of the mind
Far away on Vancouver Island at the southwestern tip of Canada, there is a mountain peak with an altitude of 2,045 meters, which is covered with snow all year round and uninhabited, but because of the birth of a game, it has become a mecca for countless players, it is Celeste Mountain.
IN AUGUST 2015, THORSON AND HIS ROOMMATE AT INDEPENDENCE HOUSE, NOELLE BERRY, WENT TO A GAME JAM EVENT BASED ON THE NEW PIXEL GAME ENGINE PICO-8, IN WHICH THORSON PLANNED TO CREATE A PLATFORMING GAME THAT HE DID BEST, AFTER THE MOUNTAIN NEXT TO HIS HOMETOWN. After the event, Thorson returned to Independence House to discuss with his friends and finally decided to polish Teal into a monetized commercial game, just like Tower Down.
蔚蓝(PICO-8)
Unlike before, the overall design of "Azure" this time will be completely led by Thorson, after the honing of "Tower Down", Thorson now has all the abilities of a qualified producer, Noelle continues to serve as the main program, and Thorson also found the well-known game soundtrack artist Lina Wren as the soundtrack, Lina Wren previously served as the soundtrack of "Guild Wars 2", "Minecraft", and assisted Toby fox to complete the soundtrack of the second chapter of "Triangular Rune", an absolute heavyweight.
Lina Wren
As we mentioned at the beginning of the video, Thorson's childhood had a very severe anxiety disorder, at first he was able to temporarily get rid of mental illness through the game console given to him by his parents, but later under the pressure of high-intensity work, he was still affected by anxiety from time to time, and when making Azure, his own mental problems became more and more serious.
He used his favorite Miyazaki anime as inspiration to portray a little girl Madeleine, who is plagued by anxiety and depression, and who comes to Celeste alone to reconcile and redeem herself by conquering the mountain.
On this journey, there are the old grandmother who likes to laugh, Theo, an outgoing guy who loves to take selfies, Mr. "Oshiro", who is kind on the surface but has low self-esteem, and the "bad" Delin who is separated from Madeleine's heart because of the special abilities of Celeste.
These characters are either enthusiastic or warm and healing, some are optimistic and friendly, maintaining the hope in her heart, and some are pessimistic and lost, making her more vulnerable and hesitant.
But without exception, they all ended up being an integral part of helping Madeleine complete this mountaineering journey, a warm harbor at the foot of the majestic and precipitous mountain.
As players, we may not be able to empathize with the protagonist who suffers from psychological trauma, but the high difficulty of the game and the rising death count will still make us start to become irritable, as if walking on thin ice brought by anxiety and dark abyss brought by depression. But we can always see the author's words written at the beginning of the next level, and this line of simple words is telling us a very ordinary truth, all the difficulties and obstacles are actually nothing more than overcoming the self, and overcoming the self is not achieved overnight, but in the continuous attempts and failures, gradually sharpening the firm will and unyielding spirit.
At the end of 2018, "Azure" won the TGA Indie Game of the Year award without any suspense, and was also nominated for Game of the Year.
I have to admit that although the care for mental health issues in "Azure" is one of its strong pluses, if you remove the theme elements and look at the quality of the game itself, "Azure" is still impeccable.
In 2018, if a platforming game doesn't incorporate some exploration, combat, and stats, it's basically difficult to satisfy players, especially if the game is so difficult, once there are slight deviations in the design, it will produce extremely strong negative feedback, and then players will quickly lose interest.
As we mentioned earlier, Thorson has been very good at designing difficult games with "masochistic tendencies" since the original JAMPER, and players often suffer from them, but he himself believes that these seemingly difficult games are just about improving the player's own strength, not numerical values.
The reason why "Azure" can still stand out in an era of increasingly demanding players is due to Thorson's more than ten years of experience in making platforming games and his attention to detail.
The premise of your ability to complete a complete set of smooth operations is the countless subtle action designs that you can't even notice. The reason why you can maintain the excitement of the levels and jumps despite the failure after failure is actually the pervasive positive feedback. In the end, with beautiful pixel art graphics and music that touches people all the time, it finally makes "Azure" shine.
At this point, I don't think I need to elaborate on the reasons for the compliments.
Just quote a quote from a Steam review:
I've seen things that mortals can't believe—
Ancient machinery creaks in the abandoned city.
I've walked through broken dreams, racing against reflections,
Tossing and turning in black fear.
I stepped up on the clouds, and marched in a fierce wind,
Light up the temple with dim lights.
I fell far away, meditating in the sparkling waves,
Chase the shadows with an unyielding will.
All these memories will never pass away,
Like snowflakes falling on the top of Celeste.
Beacause it is there.
Because the mountains are there.
From the official release of Teal in January 2018 to the beginning of 2019, Teal sold more than 500,000 copies across all platforms. As in Tower Down, Thorson doesn't have a special feeling for this splash of wealth, and he is still immersed in the game every day.
In September 2019, Azure added the free DLC "Farewell", which completely announced the end of the game.
In fact, Thorson invested so much emotion in Azure that he often brought himself into the game's main character, Madeleine. In the final part of the DLC, we learn that Madeleine is actually transgender, and at the same time as this announcement, Thorson really changed from "him" to "she".
On her homepage, she wrote: Her change in her gender perception was gradually formed in the process of creating "Azure", and finally after the production of "Farewell", she reached a unity of gender identity with herself.
At the beginning of 2020, she gave herself a new name: Maddie Thorson, and her own homepage and social account were also renamed from Matt Makes Games to Maddy Makes Games, and not long ago, in March 2024, Thorson traveled overseas to complete a sex reassignment operation, which made her mentally and physically agree.
In fact, Thorson isn't the only transgender member on their team, remember what we mentioned earlier, Rina Lane, the music producer of "Teal"? In fact, she is also a transgender person. At Indie House, Thorson actually had an American girlfriend, and even this girlfriend was very famous, she was a fairly well-known voice actor in the gaming industry, having served as Tiny Tiny in "Borderlands", Mel in "The Last of Us 2" and Aloy in "Horizon: Zero Dawn", she was Ashly Burch, and like Thorson, she also has a very severe anxiety disorder and is also a bisexual.
Ashley Burch
As of January 2020, "Azure" has sold more than 1 million copies across all platforms. At the same time, she set up a studio called Extremely OK Games to publish all the games that followed, because she always felt that the success of Azure was not her own work, so it was a bit inappropriate to publish it with Maddy Makes Games, and she wanted to use a team approach so that everyone who contributed to it could get something out of it.
After setting up EXOK, she and her friends moved out of Indie House and bought an apartment in Vancouver as an office. At the same time, EXOK also announced a new project codenamed "EXOK-1", in April 2021, after this project was iterated 4 times, it was officially renamed "Earthblade" (Earthblade), a pixel art Metroidvania-like game, developed by the original team of "Azure", tentatively scheduled to be released in 2024, but finally jumped to 2025.
Blade of the Earth
In the three years 2021-2024, in addition to Blade of the Earth, Thorson also produced Celeste Classic 2: Lani's Trek, a free-to-play game based on Pico-8 in January 2021 that pays homage to the original Celeste Classic 2: Lani's Trek. In January 2024, to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the release of Celeste, Thorson and his friends spent a week working on Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain.
Azure 64: Fragments of the Mountain
Now, the EXOK team is working hard from top to bottom for the official release of the new game "Blade of the Earth", and even recruited a new member: Kyle Pulver, who previously worked on "Super Carnivore Boy Forever" and is a colleague of Tommy Refens. Good guys, my independent universe world line is back in the air.
And so the story of Thorsen came to an end.
I think Thorson's life is happy, she does not have an extraordinary background, her talent is not outstanding, and she even has a serious psychological disorder, but she knows very clearly what she loves, what she wants to do, and on the way to growth, she met friends who went to the same end, as well as people who helped her at key nodes, and under the impetus of all this, coupled with her unremitting efforts, she finally achieved self-expression.