Game design is a daring and dangerous task for Niklas Åkerblad, who creates under the name El Huervo. When describing the artistic process behind , a neon-stained platformer set in a demonic cosmic womb, is about fighting the sharp edges of introspection and sanity, drawing from wells of creativity buried deep in your psyche. It seems like he could have slipped and fallen into any of those wells at any time and never been seen again.
“He had a fairly rigorous discipline when creating the world of ULTROS“Åkerblad told Engadget. “It involves deep meditation while working and maintaining 100 percent concentration so you can know when harmony is achieved when working with such a dense flow of shapes and colors. It is almost impossible to analyze this process cerebrally, but rather it is something that must be felt, so any external disturbance can greatly impact the process. It may not be something I would recommend to others without adequate experience in creating visual art.”
At the same time, Åkerblad is extremely hands-on in the business of creating games. He has been on the indie scene for years and has enjoyed incredible success as a contributor who provided cover art and other resources for Hotline Miami and its sequel. You know the vibe: grizzled but radiant, with the threat of violence in every pixel. He also composed a handful of songs for those games, including “” and “”, and went on to develop a 3D adventure set in a digital city of hackers, artists and activists who implemented programming as a central mechanic. Otherwise Heart.Break() It came out in 2015 and was a finalist at that year's Independent Games Festival.
His latest project, ULTROS, is a 2D exploration of The Sarcophagus, a looped black hole world that takes players through environments overrun by alien plants and ferocious demons. Every scene in ULTROS It is packed with details and bright colors; The backgrounds are full of monsters and organic machines. Stripes of black outline the boundaries of paths, roofs and platforms, contrasting shifting rainbows of luminosity.
There are many things happening in ULTROS at any given moment, but the protagonist stands out with a bright green helmet, a vermillion cape, and an evolving arsenal of platforming gadgets. A lesson in otherwise distress() that Åkerblad fed ULTROS It was the idea that games can be a lot more fun with color palettes. ULTROS is deliberately full of visual interest.
“I felt that video games tend to No pushing the boundaries of colors far beyond 'green is good' and 'red is bad', and whatever metrics are used for loot levels,” he said. “I feel like there's a misunderstanding in design that less is more, and my gut tells me it's the opposite and I worked very hard on ULTROS to test my theory. There will undoubtedly be those who disagree with me, but I feel that it has more to do with personal or physical tastes and preferences than with academic truth, if there is such a thing.”
As a cyclical Metroidvania title, ULTROS is completely different from Åkerblad's previous projects, but it is also undeniably El Huervo. Actually, in this case, it's Hadoque: around 2017, Åkerblad and game director Mårten Bruggemann began building the prototype that would become ULTROSand finally hired composer Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius and faith designer Hugo Bille. Other artists joined over the years and ended up calling themselves Hadoque, an informal organization of creators who could come and go when a project called.
“We wanted our group to be associated with something of our own, so we decided on Hadoque,” said Åkerblad. “It's a cool name that seems a little strange and fits our vibe. “Plus, it allowed everyone to still have their own things and not be legally tied to anything if they wanted to look elsewhere.”
El Huervo AB remains Åkerblad's own corporate entity, useful for addressing the bureaucratic aspects of video game creation. Through El Huervo AB, Hadoque received support from the gaming fund in 2019 which has also supported titles such as Sifu, Rollerdrome, We are OFK, sea of stars, spiritual traveler and Bye.
“Huervo AB simply functions as a kind of bureaucratic condom, and Hadoque as a name to be used when a group of developers get together to make art in the form of games,” Åkerblad said. “Kind of like a band name. People come and go, but the vision remains.”
ULTROS is a game about life, rebirth, aliens, monsters, and peace, and it all takes place in a technicolor dreamscape of fierce creatures and beautiful foliage. This is the palette of surreal science fiction, for Åkerblad.
“The themes explored in ULTROS “They are existential and spiritual in nature, and I think surreal science fiction is a good genre to explore these themes, since it has a long tradition of doing so,” he said. “In this sense, Ursula K. Le Guin has been a great inspiration. Hopefully what we manage to evoke in the players is a sense of introspection and comfort.”
Despite the deep reflection he has done on the nature of art, science fiction and gaming, there is no singular message that Åkerblad is trying to convey with ULTROS. Instead, he and the rest of the developers at Hadoque encourage players to identify their own journey as they go through The Sarcophagus. As Åkerblad said:
“Please enjoy ULTROS as you want and don't try to search for a “true” interpretation, but rather find your own meaning. I think this applies to any art in general. Interpretation is purely subjective and I want to continue telling stories that invoke and allow this subjectivity to exist.”
ULTROS is Available now on PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and Epic Games Store, published by Kepler Interactive.
