#1 - Welcome to Alienhead!

My first idea for this game came from a memory. It was a summer festival in a Midwestern town at a church in the mid-90s, as I walked around looking at the people, the rides, the games and their prizes- something glowed. A poster of a hyper-stylized extraterrestrial- just the head, with huge black eyes and glow-in-the-dark radioactive skin. It drew me in and implanted itself in my brain. This feeling has stuck with me for like 30 years.

I never got that poster. I couldn’t even bring myself to stand in front of the basketball game too long or dare to try to win it. I think it scared me for some reason. Not in the way that kids are afraid of monsters under the bed really, but in a different way. It was existential, though I didn't have the language for it then.

I only allowed my eyes to take in its glory in quick laps around the festival. It’s hard to remember exactly why, but I my guess is:  I felt unworthy of it. My identity was in its earliest form, and I couldn’t begin to imagine myself as person who represented the feeling that this poster conveyed.

This video game is my dumb attempt to reclaim that feeling, a vindication of it.

I have learned that when you start a painting you need be able to sustain the mystery of it for as long as you are working on it. Like- if you pick something that you already know and understand intimately to make art about- there's only so much time you can root around in there without getting bored or losing motivation. I find that it's better to chase after a mystery. Like a TV show that continuously leaves you hanging, for me, the mystery of that Alien poster is something that I can spend years on. As it turns out - years is exactly how long it takes to make a fuckin video game. lol.

Anyways, here are some images that I collected for visual inspiration when I first started making this game in January of 2024.

Player Concept art.

I had fun imagining that old classic 90-style alien as an adventurer, able to go on epic quests.