INTERVIEW - Nightmargin

Nightmargin

Composer/artist/writer for OneShot (RPGmaker game). Currently working on Margin of the Strange (An RPGmaker inspired gardening/exploration game). Member of the "loving weird RPGmaker games" community for 15 years and counting.

nightmargin.com

When did you first play OFF / how did you discover OFF?

Back in 2012 (I wanna say summer 2012?) I saw fanart of some OFF characters on Tumblr from time to time, but since I followed mostly artists from the original character community, for a long time I just assumed those were people's OCs from a webcomic concept or something (they just had that vibe!) Turns out I wasn't that far "OFF" from the truth! I first played the game in January 2013 during college, back when it was probably at its peak popularity? The community was super active back then and it was so fun seeing everyone's art!

How has it influenced your own work?

The Geometry.

What is the answer to the 3rd phone puzzle?

It's been 4 years since I've last played the game and my memories of most of the puzzles in the game have been erased, just like when [spoilers] the Batter [spoilers] and [spoilers] in the [spoilers]

Who’s your favorite character?

The Judge! Come to think of it I think my decision to make a protagonist with huge cat eyes was probably partially due to me drawing The Judge so much back then... he's so cute! If the universe ever decide to grace me with a white cat of my own I will name him Pablo and teach him to talk.

What part of the game are you most excited for new people to play?

The Geometry.

What do you think fans of your own game would like about OFF?

The love of weird little RPGmaker adventure games is embedded within one's soul, isn't it? Through an unfathomably vast network of 16x16 pixel grids on the metaphysical plane we are connected and we are compelled to play as many as we could. It's a genre all in its own and I think OFF is one of my favorite examples of games like this, the worldbuilding and atmosphere just can't be beat....it's a classic for a reason! To be completely frank I think it's a huge honor for anyone to consider our game to even be in the same league, it feels like The Batter himself personally gave me a gold medal and a thumbs up while being completely deadpan about it. (the medal just says "Baseball)

Also OFF has cute cats and a funny guy pretending to be a cat and meows at you, there's probably some demographic overlap there.

What element are you?

(gently bonks my robotic skull with my fist and it makes a horrible clanging noise) Metal!

How did OFF influence your approach to game design?

This one is a bit of a sentimental story for me-- I met a good friend through the OFF community a decade ago who used to talk to me about game design just about everyday. His name was Felix (also known as Felixthejudge in the community) and he learned to make games through developing HOME, an OFF fangame where you can play as The Judge and have a full party with other cats. Because The Judge is my favorite character, HOME naturally caught my attention and I became friends with Felix shortly afterwards. We got into gamedev/RPGmaker dev around the same time and I was always impressed with what he was doing, be it music, puzzle design, mechanics design...you name it! We used to talk almost daily about these things, he was very supportive during my low points and I took a lot of his words and advice to heart--advice that helped me immensely during the development OneShot and for the years to come. I'm grateful that I got to meet him and I'm grateful that OFF allowed us to meet.

Thoughts about working on the soundtrack:

OFF's original soundtrack is maybe one of my favorite game soundtracks ever, so the thought of trying to live up to even a fraction that is extremely intimidating despite my limited role. I wouldn't dare to think of any of my songs as ever "replacing" the original songs, because they are so irreplaceable.

Felix also greatly loved the soundtrack for OFF, he studied it for years and wrote a ton of music inspired by it (most of of which were for his fangame HOME, but he also happily contributed to many other fangames made by the community). We did a music collab back in 2016, where he asked me to write a short piano sample for him, then he took that sample and made it all ambient-like and it turned out so awesome. He wanted to make more collabs like that, or even work together on a small game (a prospect I was really excited about, so much that I bought him a copy of RPGmaker XP for him that Christmas) but he passed away a few months afterwards. My contributions to the OFF soundtrack are based on that piano sample, as a tribute to Felix. I cried a lot while writing them but the process gave me some sense of closure. It's comforting to think of it as putting a nice memory of him into his favorite game, we all love him and miss him very much.