When a demo knocks our socks off so far they land in the hamper we typically feel compelled to say so. We never expect the devs to respond, likely because they are beyond busy working on said game. Sometimes they respond with a friendly “thank you”. But once in a blue moon, they take a half joking request for a chat and it turns into a full on interview over email. Guess what we’re doing today?

10 Dead Doves quickly became one of my most anticipated games after a phenomenal showing on the newest Haunted PS1 Demo Disc. It baffled and delighted me in equal measure, one feeling often feeding directly into the other. I had to know what was going on inside the creators’ heads so I asked Mark, Sean, and Daniel of Duonix Studios some questions and they very kindly answered.

MARK:

Before we get into the answers, I figure I should get into a rundown of the team:

I’m Mark. I handle programming, 2D art/concepts, additional animation work, etc. Sean is the other co-dev of the team, and he handles stuff like modelling, textures, rigging, and also does character animation.

Daniel is our composer — he scores and creates music for the cutscenes and soundtrack.

We all collaborate on the story side, and after hashing it out, we usually have something we all can agree on. It’s a very collaborative process, and every gear is necessary for the operation of the whole.

1. What are your creative backgrounds? Prior projects you’re proud of, favorite tools, preferred mediums, what have you.

MARK:

Oh man. I used to do a ton of YouTube videos, and that was sort of my creative training ground. I have absolutely zero higher education (blame the forces of capital) but have a lot of hands-on experience just jumping right into the ring when I feel drawn to an idea or experiment.

I worked on a 22-minute animated pilot called T-LOGS when I was like… 16-17. It’s very barebones but the scope was way above my paygrade at the time. I’ve done everything from short films to animation to sitcom parodies to Slender knock-offs to analog horror. I have a problem!

SEAN:

As of right now, my creative background extends to hobbies (and a school final I will never mention). My main tools are Blender, and Affinity Photo. Both of which have been great to use for this project!

DANIEL:

I’ve been a musician for many years now, but this is my first real scoring project outside of university. At that time I was already heavily involved in the making of 10 Dead Doves, so I was very fortunate to have a project that I was actively working on after graduation. 

2. It’s not often you see a game set in rural Appalachia. What drew you to the region as a setting?

MARK:

I used to do a tonne of backpacking when I was younger. I was in the general vicinity of the Appalachian Trail at a place called Clingman’s Dome while working on another project, The Rights to This Show Cost One Dollar. As the idea for 10 Dead Doves was gestating, I kept feeling myself drawn back to memories of the area.

It’s one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, and let’s be honest — the woods are creepy as hell anyway, let alone in a cosmic horror older than bones and the ocean sense.

The area has a ton of history — the Battle of Blair Mountain is a stand-out in my mind, but the book series Foxfire does a way better job of painting an accurate picture than I could.  I’ve already gotten a few comments about the setting. We’ll have to do it justice in the full release, somehow!

3. What led you to the featureless, grey, spindly look for The Wren and the [REDACTED] in the gas station section? 

MARK:

Ah, the ███████████. You’ll see a lot more about it (and the Wren) in the final release. 

When creating the Wren’s concept art, I remember pitching it as a mix between No-Face, the Majora’s Mask salesman, and the Spy from Spy Vs. Spy. Let’s be honest — tall skinny dudes are spooky as hell!

SEAN:

We grew up with large, thin characters (at least in horror Let’s Plays) like Slenderman. My modeling process, along with Mark’s design, was inspired by them.

4. It shouldn’t surprise you that I’m going to ask about the faces. What was the inspiration for the look and how did you pull it off?

SEAN:

The faces are pretty much just down scaled versions of pictures we took of our faces. The plan for the game was to use a lot of photo sourced textures so the faces are a result of that.

MARK:

Sean’s answer does not do him justice. We took about 50 different pictures of ourselves — 12 emotions each per main character, with 3 variants: open mouth, half open mouth, and closed. Sean was in the pits of true despair for a couple of weeks as he monotonously edited and put together about 72+ different faces for our main duo.

We originally were going for a more 2004 Half-Life 2 style but ended up in execution wayyy more with a Forbidden Siren look. Which honestly, in the end… might work out better anyway.

5. The tone of the demo flits back and forth between goofy banter and overt horror. How did you land on this tone, and what’s your writing process?

MARK:

The secret that nobody tells you is that horror and comedy are sides of the same coin. Both revolve heavily around setup, timing, and perfect execution — so if you can get one right, you can (usually) get them both right. It’s why Jordan Peele had a slick transition from sketch comedy to horror movies. It just works for some reason!

I’m a big fan of “discovery writing”. We had a good outline from the get-go, and as we went along, pieces of the story would fall into place like magic. I think we had at least 10 different scenarios where we plot-twisted or had a mind-blown moment on ourselves in the writing room when we realized the implications of ideas we had previously set up.

For example: During the beginning stages of pre-production, “Hamburger Dough” did not exist. Sean made a disturbing sketch on a notecard while ignoring Daniel and I’s intense debates about story beats — and while my first impression was to laugh it off and throw it away, the allure of this sketch had a grip on my psyche. So we rolled with it!

SEAN:

The goofy banter is just how we talk in real life. Putting the demo out has taught me that the way we talk is way goofier than I originally thought.

MARK:

No, please. My worst nightmare is people thinking the characters in the game reflect us in real life in any way. It’s like a Ship of Theseus thing.

DANIEL:

It should be mentioned that we three are very goofy. During pre-production, we would have weekly meetings to discuss elements of the game, such as the story, the characters, their backgrounds, etc. So occasionally during these meetings, someone would make a joke or find a running gag that we all would get a kick out of. This was even more apparent during a few of the meetings that went on until 3 AM (so you can imagine the sleep-deprived, slapstick nonsense that went on there).

6. What are some of your media inspirations? Not necessarily specifically horror games though those could certainly be relevant, just in general. And to get more specific, what (if any) is your favorite David Lynch work?

MARK:

10 Dead Doves is a wretched amalgamation of nearly every stratosphere of the horror game world. It’s very much a love letter to the era of generic, disposable, consumable horror games that swamped and plagued YouTube in the 2010s, but spun as its exact opposite in execution.

I’ve yet to check out most of Lynch’s filmography, surprisingly. What can I say, I’m a productive slacker! I have a reading list of 107+ books and nearly all of the “Top 100 Films of All Time” have been unwatched by me. I’m a sucker for the real niche, indie, stupid stuff out there, and I need way more time. Some current film favorites: Stalker (1979), E Nachtlang Füürland (1981), Synecdoche, New York (2008), The Tree of Life (2011).

My favorite Lynch film that I’ve seen is probably Fire Walk With Me. Sheryl Lee’s performance as Laura Palmer is a once-in-a-generation affair. It’s such a harrowing, real film that still manages to reject nihilism and find the tiniest sliver of hope — even when shown the face of true, perfect evil.

I think a lot of creatives (myself included) have a bad habit of only taking surface-level ideas from their creative inspirations without really cutting into the core of why someone does what they do. Finding your own creative voice is all about tracing up trees of inspiration and getting to the root of what makes something work. Get inside their head!

SEAN:

Twin Peaks, Gravity Falls, Silent Hill.

DANIEL:

Cabin in the Woods!

MARK:

I love how the older Resident Evil games play like a spooky escape room. Add that to the list.

7. Do you have any favorite real world conspiracies, cryptids, and/or creepy crawlies?

MARK:

Don’t get me started. I love this stuff. I look like an actual kook with vintage UFO magazines and books on Project Blue Book I’ve picked up from thrift stores. I swear it’s a purely aesthetic, camp, guilty pleasure kind of thing — I don’t think aliens are actually real — although I did meet a guy once who said he was in a UFO cult. It was about 11 PM and this guy wearing an Illuminati necklace comes up to me and starts talking about being a background dancer. He tried to “read my mind”, gave it about 30 seconds of thought… and said “You look like you enjoy hanging out with your friends and people you know well”. Don’t we all?

SEAN:

Loveland Frog… though that one is more funny than spooky.

DANIEL:

Slenderman has also been a favorite of mine. I didn’t necessarily grow up playing Slender games, but the concept of a creepy, supernatural-esque character whose origins are completely unknown, has always been really intriguing to me.

SEAN:

Is Slenderman “real world”?

MARK:

Oh — and look up the weird black ops squadron patches the United States/C.I.A./D.O.D. have made. My personal favorites are “A Lifetime of Silence Behind the Green Door” and “No Country Too Sovereign”. These are real!

8. This is a Mark-specific one. Your Twitter handle is @ZapTF2 so I have to ask, what’s your go-to class and loadout?

MARK:

Have mercy! That’s a deep cut. I actually never properly mained a TF2 class. I had too much fun jumping around to whatever I wanted to play at the time. I probably played Scout the most, though. I spent years making videos in the TF2 universe but pretending like they were normal gameplay videos or commentaries until you clicked on them. I became acquainted with quite a few big creators in that community that way just because of how weird my stuff was — for example, a let’s play about ghosts that devolved into my character actually hunting ghosts in his cartoon apartment, or my YouTube character getting stuck in a TF2 Engineer themed time loop that he couldn’t break.

9. Game dev is hard. What inspired you to create 10 Dead Doves in the first place, and what motivates you as you work through development?

MARK:

Welcome to the Mark Byram II masterclass. Motivation is a scam! It’s all about discipline. Motivation is a fickle mistress when you can brute-force yourself through the toughest tribulation. I’m only half joking, but working on something you actually want to do in the first place helps. 10 Dead Doves is not the only game idea I have rattling around in my head. Doing it professionally would be the dream!

DANIEL:

Personally, I have very few problems staying motivated. I constantly keep the end goal in mind. I continue with production and development simply because I absolutely love composing music, especially film and video game music. After all, it is my passion and dream.

MARK:

That’s important to keep in mind. It’s a marathon, not a race. We break things down into extremely small, bite size chunks, and work through it as simply as possible. And hold each other accountable!

SEAN:

Coffee, lots of coffee. But in all seriousness, 10 Dead Doves was just something that popped into our minds while playing Minecraft. Before I knew it, I was making my 3rd iteration of the Sean character model.

MARK:

The conception of 10 Dead Doves began with a simple “wouldn’t it be cool if” scene we came up with… We can’t show you what scene that is yet. But it pushed us through the early stages of pre-production!

10. Why exactly 10 doves? Was 9 insufficient?

MARK:

9 Dead Doves? That’s not gonna cut it. 11 Dead Doves? That just sounds weird. 10 Dead Doves? Just right. Goldilocks. The title was a shower thought.

SEAN:

The 10 Dead Doves are like the 10 Commandments, but instead of a God-given law, it’s more like a health hazard.

MARK:

I think that’s the plot of Dekalog. Also — not true.

We would like to thank the folks at Duonix Studios for their time and insight. You can wishlist 10 Dead Doves on Steam and try the excellent demo over at Itch.io.