About Nixie
Me riding the carousel at Hersheypark.
Hi, I'm Brendan Bailey and I'm making a video game about robots.
2020 by all accounts was one of the worst years we’ll ever live through, but I can’t deny the fact that being cooped up inside for so long made me think about unique ways to spend my time. I began developing an idea for a robot video game I’ve had for years in the form of rough sketches, scattered notes, and unfinished music tracks. Slowly, things started making sense, sketches turned into drawings, and those music tracks started delighting like 3 or 4 people on twitter (plus my mom if we’re keeping score). After completing some Unity classes, I started to feel like, maybe it is possible to actually make a video game on my own, right in my bedroom. So here we are! I’m not really that far into the creation process of Nixie to be honest, but I’d rather share my progress from as close to the beginning as I could. There’s still an unfathomable amount of work and learning ahead, but I hope you’ll keep an eye on this passion project.
Q + A
Nixie is an indie video game project that I started during the covid-19 pandemic as a way for me to learn new creative/technical skills and focus my creativity on something I felt passionate about.
Nixie is a story-driven 2D exploration and action game (this is my sophisticated way of saying it’s a Metroidvania). I know there are many of these types of games out there with many more in development, but I don’t care – it’s my favorite genre and is the kind of game I want to make.
Nixie won’t be a genre-defining game with any revolutionary game mechanics or visual style. I just want it to be a fun, cool, charming, memorable, and perhaps even emotional experience.
There’s just no way of knowing at this point! Nixie will be a long project that is likely to take several years to complete. I have a long list of dream features I’d like this game to have and realistically that list will have to be cut down for it to be feasible to complete (that’s what DLC is for, right?)
Right now, it’s just me. I am very inspired by Thomas Happ, the solo creator of Axiom Verge and hope to make a game even half as good as that masterpiece. So, I’m attempting the solo-dev life and am creating the art, music, story, and code for this game alone. That said, it’s highly possible that as things progress, I may need production support to create all of the assets needed to make this project a reality (most likely in the pixel art/animation department).
PC, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch… hopefully!
- Unity is being used as the main game engine.
- Aseprite is being used for all pixel art and animation.
- Adobe Photoshop is used for all digital art.
- LDTK is being used for level design.
- Renoise is used to compose all the music.
- Audacity and Adobe Audition are used for voice recording and sound editing.
My previous game designs
(Spoiler: they were all pinball games)
Though Nixie is my first attempt at a video game, I used to design pinball games for the Future Pinball platform. Junkyard Cats in particular was an entirely original idea with characters, voices, art, music, and code all created in my bedroom.
