M64 Focus | Claire Morwood (Game Developer) -

Claire Morwood: (Game Developer)

Name/Known Alias: Claire Morwood, also known as ShimmerGlitch.

Occupation: Game Developer.

Best Known for/Notable Works: Probably the game I worked on, Before I Forget, through my company 3-Fold Games.

And also, I wrote a tutorial for Bitsy, the game making tool, which I think people have seen.

Fun Fact: I have a degree in geology, just nothing to do with video games.

How did you make your break into the industry: I got into the industry quite like slowly and gradually. Through, from like hobbyist up to like full-time. So, I don’t know.

I guess probably, Before I Forget was like the biggest thing that I like worked on. That got me going in the industry, I think.

Favourite Projects to have Worked on: N/A

Hardest Projects to have Worked on: Anything that involves like networked multiplayer is really hard. Like anything that has to use servers is really difficult to program.

Currently Working on: Asterism.

Currently Playing: I’ve been on a Bethesda binge recently for some reason. I know everyone says New Vegas is the best Fallout game, but the stupid settlement building stuff in Fallout 4 has me hooked in.

Currently Watching: There’s a YouTube like games tournament called Mystery Tournament, where people do like blind speed runs of games. And I’m working through Mystery Tournament 17 right now. But Mystery Tournament 19 is going to start soon, which is very exciting.

And so people will just like play games that they’ve never seen, never played before. But try and like do them as fast as possible. And it goes on for a few weeks, I think.

Defining Career Moment: I had my game at Amaze Festival in Berlin earlier in the year. Which is a cool, very cool festival with like lots of weird and experimental games. So, it was really fun to showcase the game then. And I did a talk about the art of the game, which is very nice. It’s just like, it’s one of my favorite festivals. So, very nice to be a part of it.

Throughout your career, of the many things you have since learned, is there anything you wish you knew at the beginning: I’ll say before starting video game development. Yeah, uh, I don’t know.

I guess just that you don’t need to follow conventions of games that are already in existence. Maybe that’s what I would tell myself. I don’t know.

You can just like do your own thing and that’s fine. And the weirder the better.

If you had the opportunity to work with any IP, what would it be: It sounds quite stressful working with an IP. But, um, I’ve been re-watching Over the Garden Wall recently.

It’s not very long. There’s like 10 episodes that are like 10 minutes each or something. But it’s like a cool, like spooky cartoon about some kids that kind of get lost in a forest and meet some strange creatures and things.

But, um, I, that would be cool to work with. So that’s what I would choose.

Is there anyone you haven’t worked with yet, but would like to: I don’t know. Like, I’d like to work with, I’d like to do some like music collaborations, I think. Um, so that’d be fun because I’ve not done too much like music with other people, so I think that’d be a fun thing to do.

For fans of your work, who’d like to get in touch and stay up to date with all the latest news, what are the best places for them to reach you on: At the moment, um, I’m most active on Blue Sky, @ShimmerGlitch, and I have, uh, contact details and like a newsletter sign up on my website, which is shimmerwitch.space.