In the lead-up to the 2009 IGF, GameCareerGuide has been speaking to student developers who have submitted games to the festival's Student Competition, including the 15-person team that created The Ghastleybriar Zoo Incident at The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University.

Brent Ellison, the associate lead producer on the game (who is now a gameplay designer, at Funcom Oslo AS) spoke with us at length about the game's artistic and thematic inspiration.

Game title: The Ghastlybriar Zoo Incident

School: The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University

Description: The Ghastleybriar Zoo Incident is a cartoonish, Edward Gorey-inspired platformer with a unique visual style that mimics the look of a silent film. Armed with his trusty animal sack, keeper Edward Mump scours the zoo for bizarre critters to recapture. The player swings his bag at cowardly Oddbobs, mischevious Grummies, and furious Rumpuses throughout the park before coming to a climactic encounter with the terrifying Umbuggler.

GameCareerGuide: Tell us how The Ghastleybriar Zoo Incident came to be. Where does the game's title come from?

Brent Ellison: We wanted to make a game that would really stand out and get noticed, and since we knew our team was going to be pretty artist heavy, we decided to try to go for something with a very distinct and polished visual style. Edward Gorey was a great starting point for our style and mood, and the zoo setting allowed for some fun character design and naturally informed the gameplay.

The title is our take on Edward Gorey's playful naming schemes. In particular, it's a nod to one of his alphabet books, The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

GCG: What was your goal in developing the game?

BE: Of course, this was a school assignment, but I don't think anyone had grades in mind when working on the project. It was more about producing something buzz worthy that could give everyone some great portfolio and resume-building material. That led us to put a lot of focus on the presentation, since we figured first impressions, particularly from trailers and screenshots, would be key to getting people to install and play the game.

GCG: What do you think sets this game apart from others in the IGF?

BE: Personality. The art, sound, writing, music, and design were all developed with this in mind, which I think resulted in a much more consistent and amusing product. Our strong primary influences (Edward Gorey, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Psychonauts) helped give everyone a great frame of reference to work from in this regard.

Of course, the game's most striking aspect is probably its unique visuals. Although The Ghastleybriar Zoo Incident is a Half-Life 2 mod, we did everything we could to distance ourselves from Valve's game.

I think we got a huge leg up on this when we decided to apply a monochromatic color scheme and filters to make the game look like an old silent film. This technique even gave us a boost with player communication, since were able to make all the important game elements (pickups and enemies) stand out by breaking from the scheme.

GCG: You mentioned Edward Gorey's works as having an influence on the style of the game. One of characteristics of Gorey's artwork is that there is something profoundly mundane about them (for example, his human forms aren't usually cartoonish and out of proportion), but another layer of something that's complete macabre. Lemony Snicket does the same thing in his writing style. Can you talk about how that plays out in game, taking the very ordinary and giving it a dark undercurrent?

BE: In terms of art, we actually ended up moving pretty far away from Gorey's style during pre-production, when we realized the problems inherent in translating his flat pen and ink drawings into 3D: it would take longer to overcome than we had, particularly in an engine designed for realism.

Instead, we ended up with something that was more Looney Tunes or Tim Burton-esque. In that way we were able to make very expressive characters that would stand out in our largely colorless world.