This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 19, released in December 2007

Bit-Blot, comprising of indie developers Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, is the force responsible for the IGF Grand Prize winning game, Aquaria, which was released on 7 December 2007. We chat them up and ask them about their exploits and their future prospects. You can visit their developer website at http://www.bit-blot.com

I'm Alec! I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada which explains why I have terribly low self-esteem. My dad was the guy who first got me into making games (he thought it would be more creative/productive than just playing games all day!) with a book called BASIC Fun when I was eight years old. Ever since then I've been writing music, making games and taking names.

I'm Derek. I was born in California, in the United States of America. Needless to say I always carry at least a dozen guns on me at any given time. Hey, it's a dangerous world out there!

Sometimes it can get confusing, but overall it's worked out pretty well. We've also worked together in person a number of times, so we now have a better understanding of where the other person is coming from.

There was definitely some difficulty in the beginning... for the most part Alec and I have similar ideas about how to do things, but for times when we don't, it's much easier to communicate over the phone or in person. I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you trust who you're working with completely!

That said, it does work out pretty well for us.

The cool thing about Aquaria's story is that its layered; there's a surface story that is engaging the player, but there is also a deeper story - and beyond that there are fundamental themes about relationships and creation. I'm hoping that players will be able to fully immerse themselves in the story and the exploration and just get lost in the world we've created!

We worked really hard to make sure that Aquaria was a "complete" experience. That is, every part of the game - graphics, sound, level design, controls - works together to ensure that the player is always engaged. The mouse-only control scheme came from that line of thinking... as did our choice to go with voice acting instead of text-based dialogue. I think one of the unique things about this game is how it marries these various concepts together. We wanted everything to be very elegant.

But the short answer is that Aquaria is a massive underwater fantasy world. As the player you get to explore it and uncover its secrets.

I was doing some music for Derek's game I'm OK, and we just started talking about games and game ideas, and realized that it would be fun to make a game together!

Yeah, it was pretty serendipitous, I must say!

I do programming and music. We work on the design of the game together.

I do the graphics and most of the level building!

Since I first showed my ancient prototype of the idea to Derek it's been just over two years.