I love antagonistic entities, be they human, monster, or concept; all that matters is that they are an “other”. For me, the antagonist is the most important part of any story with conflict. It doesn’t matter whether they become a secondary protagonist later, or are merely a pseudo-antagonist of some flavor. What matters is that they are not me, the player/point-of-view character. I always feel a disconnect between myself and the character I play in a game, whether they’re a silent self-insert, or a fully realized being with stellar VA. It’s far more essential to me that the other, the being you are railing against, is worthy of your struggle.

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I also love an underdog story, and the satisfaction you get from finally overcoming something on your own—from refining gameplay down to a science, especially in action RPGs. FromSoftware as a studio embodies this notion. To them, you are nothing. You are always a “Wretch”, “Waste of Skin”, or dreg of some sort. The enemy is almost always bigger than you, faster than you in one respect or another, more knowledgeable than you in terms of lore. In a word: cool. And when you defeat them, you subsume them, distill their very essence, and it becomes a part of yourself. By sheer force of will, you have gained something tangible. You have worked, you have studied, you have persevered. That is why Vinny is so important to me.

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Meet Vinny. Vinny is the antagonist of my student game Vines. He (unnamed in-game) hunts you through his breached containment facility like an Alien on the Nostromo. He is blind, as he is the combined skeleton of a moose and a bear held together by sentient vines. He’s also huge, taller than you on his hind legs. In a straight line, he’s faster than you. If he touches you, you die. If you hear him chirping, his vines have found you, he knows where you are, and he’s coming. Every aspect of his behavior is a product of careful planning and resulted in—to my delight—screams of genuine horror from our playtesters.

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On completing the game loop in Vines, one feels a sense of success, but it is not unburdened by the knowledge that Vinny still exists somewhere deep below, in the darkness of the facility.

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I create games to instill memorable experiences and evoke these types of emotional responses in my players, and a remarkable antagonist is one of many ways to do so.

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Art by Micah Mahelona.