This Sudbury, Ont., programmer worked 4 years on a video game, and it's out now

Making a video game can take years.

Joel Boucher, a game designer from Sudbury, Ont., dedicated four years of work with an indie studio called Metamorphosis Games to release their first game – Gestalt: Steam and Cinder.

"You would expect you hit the button and it's like a massive celebration," he said, days after the game officially launched on the Steam platform on July 16.

"You're just partying like crazy. But I'm still in my office freaking out."

Because Metamorphosis is a new studio, the game's commercial success will determine if the team gets the opportunity to make a second one.

"Do I need to start, you know, applying to jobs in two months or do I get a salary increase? I don't know," Boucher said.

The game is a two-dimensional action platformer where players control a character named Aletheia. 

"People have described her as if she's Indiana Jones meets Carmen Sandiego," Boucher said.

Aletheia is a mercenary who gets wrapped up in the game's main story when she is sent to find a librarian's assistant who is inside a restricted vault.

The game's setting is a mix of a western and steampunk – a genre of science fiction in which modern machines are powered with steam – often with an industrial revolution aesthetic. 

As players unravel the game's mystery they are able to level up Aletheia's abilities as they defeat enemies and make their way through the game's world.

Boucher studied computer science at Laurentian University. From a young age, he says he always wanted to make video games, but was discouraged from doing so as a viable career path.

After graduation he worked as a software developer for a mining technology company, and later worked as a web developer for a creative agency.

But games were always at the back of his mind.

"While I was working full-time at another job, I was working on a side project that I want to actually eventually release," he said.

While in university, Boucher participated in a competition called the Northern Game Design Challenge, in which teams had 48 hours to make a functional video game from scratch.

Both years Boucher participated in the competition, his team won.

Mike Daoust, who organized the challenge, saw on Twitter that Metamorphosis Games was looking for a tile mapper – and sent the job posting to Boucher.

Boucher describes tile mapping as a set designer, adding textures made by artists to green tiles that make up the game's world.

"I did a test and I guess I did the best out of all the people who applied, " Boucher said.

"And I got a part-time position for that year working on the game."

There's no guides on how to make a steampunk western sci-fi Metroidvania successful.- Joel Boucher

That part-time position evolved to full-time work on the game as Boucher got promoted and took on more senior roles with the game's development.

"I was in every meeting for every financial decision and talking to the publisher," he said.

Because it was the studio's first game, Boucher said they made mistakes along the way, and learned a lot.

"There are no guides on how to make a steampunk western sci-fi Metroidvania successful," he said.

When he was in university he says his assignments were more straightforward. He would be given a task to complete, and his answer was either right or wrong.

But games are more subjective.

"You're always second-guessing yourself and questioning whether the thing you're working on is good enough, or if it's fun," he said. 

A week after release the game had 355 user reviews on Steam, with the consensus being "very positive."

On the website Metacritic, which aggregates reviews from critics, the game has a score of 73 per cent.

"We have a very specific person we were targeting," he said.  "And some people will like the cake and some won't like the cake."

If the game does well, Boucher says they want to eventually port it to the Nintendo Switch, and possibly other platforms like the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series consoles.

In its first week since launching, Boucher says they sold around 12,000 copies.