A Thug’s Ascension Is a Game Where Low-Poly Art Meets High-Octane Action and Drama; Let’s Meet the Indie Game Dev Behind the Title

Editor's Note: The following interview has been slightly edited for spelling and grammar to ensure clarity and flow while retaining semantics.

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A Thug’s Ascension is a recently launched indie video game from developers Adi Chandra and Diwangshu Kakoty under the Moonwalk Games banner. The game features a low-poly art style and was released on January 16, 2024.

Right before the Steam launch of A Thug's Ascension, we spoke with Adi to gain insights into the game's development process. The conversation included topics like the inspiration behind this “slow-paced crime drama”, his challenges while making the game, his overall journey into game development, and more. Let's check the complete conversation below.

Moulik Mathur: How did your journey into the world of gaming start, and what led you to the path of game development?

Adi Chandra: It feels as though it never started because games were always there for me. I am nineteen, born in ‘04 (2004), so I did not exactly grow up seeing gaming emerge as a new medium of entertainment. It was always there, like I said, which led to a lack of bias against video games as an art form, in contrast to films or novels.

I always considered games a unique medium for storytelling, having predominantly played narrative-heavy AAA titles like Red Dead Redemption, God of War, The Last Of Us, Uncharted, and Wolfenstein. It became a passion as I let myself get deeper and deeper into what goes behind these projects.

• Inclination towards design — I think the most exciting time of my life was when I was around twelve. I remember observing how celebrated these games were worldwide and how much love and commitment they were surrounded with, and I remember thinking that I needed to be a part of that. I had never been drawn to anything like I was drawn to this, and naturally, ideas for my very own project started coming to me. I used to fill up notebooks with game design and worldbuilding.
• The lightbulb moment — The lightbulb moment that led me to take action on these ideas came in the seventh class in school, after they started teaching the BASIC programming language in computer science class.

Moulik: What’s the inspiration behind A Thug's Ascension? Are there any particular games or media that served as your inspiration?

Adi: Since I started developing the game in-engine at age fourteen, the concept has evolved immensely, and we went through several, wildly varying iterations. However, the one thing that remained the same through all of those was that the game was trying to tell a story. So, ultimately, we just decided to go all in on that. As such, A Thug’s Ascension has had more cinematic and narrative influences than gameplay influences, reflecting the nature of the game itself.

• Source of inspiration — Western AAA story-driven games like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and Mafia were always my biggest inspirations for the game. In terms of my writing, my most notable influences were Steven DeKnight and Erik Oleson (Marvel’s Daredevil, the Netflix/Disney+ show) and Neil Druckmann (The Last Of Us).

Moulik: What drove you to make it, and what sets it apart?

Adi: A Thug’s Ascension is a passion project with a much stronger emphasis on storytelling over gameplay. It can be described as an “art game” against a big people-pleasing commercial title. It is rough, it is self-indulgent, it is uncorrupted, and it is extremely indie.

• Narrative — We wanted to craft one of the strongest narratives the indie games industry has ever seen and deliver through the powerful interactive medium. The game explores sensitive personal and political themes to deliver an emotional, dark, slow-paced, character-driven story, married with intense FPS gameplay, which offers everything from all-out gang wars to epic city-wide car chases. Our goal isn’t to get a million players on; we aim to sit our thousand players down and tell them a good story they will remember.

A Thug’s Ascension is set within a crippling economic divide. It displays empathy to either side of this divide, rather than labelling one the hero and the other the villain. Every beat, every action, every reaction, every supporting character, and every line of dialogue has the sole purpose of further sophisticating and developing these two sides.

• Chief and Dr Sarkar — One side is presented as Chief, a mercenary fighting the nightmares of loss in the past, and the other side is presented as Dr Sarkar, a wealthy industrialist battling with the heartache of loss in the present. Loss and the rage that comes with that loss take both characters on almost equal and opposite journeys. Both of them hurt people. Both of them make choices that they regret. I love both of them, and my writing judges neither of them. How could it? In a war of ideologies, there is never a loser; only the ones are silenced. Who will prevail?
• Rockstar story — There is no one day I can pinpoint as when A Thug’s Ascension was born. I was twelve years old and in seventh grade when I started conceptualising the game; I remember how it used to be all I thought about from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning to when I went to bed. (It is kind of still like that). I would spend hours every day learning game development from the internet, creating rough prototypes and working on learning projects. I had (and have) an unhealthy amount of love for the stories of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption games and Grand Theft Auto IV. Twelve-year-old me wanted a Rockstar story of his own to show to the world, which drove me to make my game!

Moulik: What are some of your biggest challenges while making this game, particularly as a solo dev? Is there any particular "ah-ha" moment of success during the development?

Adi: I am not a solo dev! I made this game with my friend Diwangshu Kakoty, who is a 3D artist. The biggest challenges in development came from the fact that I am, at my core, a filmmaker and not a tech person. All of my efforts throughout production were focused on the game’s narrative and action set-pieces, and I had regrettably maintained a distance from the technical aspects where I could.

• Frame rate and performance — This later had consequences as the game’s frame rate and general performance started to suffer. I had to spend months optimising the game at one point, which was easily the most significant difficulty I faced in the journey. Those months were difficult and unrewarding, and I am glad it is over. The process of actually making a big game over five years is generally not very exciting. It is extremely labour-some and requires enormous discipline, commitment, and emotional strength.

The only significant “a-ha” moment I can recall is when I realised that Unity is a mess.

Moulik: You’ve written a 47,000-word-long screenplay for your game; how did you deal with challenges such as writer’s block?

Adi: I have had this project since I was twelve, which is a third of my life. I have been through a lot in this time, and this game has been there with me through all of that. Honestly, the most significant factor for me in dealing with production challenges has always been my love for the project and the desire to see it through completely. Sometimes, however, it becomes unhealthy and obsessive.

• COVID-19 — There have been months-long periods when I have worked on the game for sixteen hours a day, every day, which ended up damaging my health both emotionally and physically. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I had slipped into a slump likely caused by the lack of social interaction. Even though I was absolutely, completely spent, I kept trying to work on the screenplay during that time, kept failing, and felt worse and worse and worse. It became a destructive cycle, and I was miserable.
• Marvel's Daredevil helped with writer's block — I only broke out of it when I stopped writing, let off some steam, and watched the first season of Marvel’s Daredevil on the TV with my dad. The show profoundly affected me, and I immediately got back to writing, feeling fresh and inspired!
• Advice to break writer's block — My standard advice now would be to stop, take time off, relax, and start reading and watching films. This is how I handle difficulties with the screenplay currently, and I think I am pretty comfortable with the writing process now.

Moulik: What was the thought process behind the game's art style?

Adi: The low-poly style was more a result of our extremely limited resources than a choice, but it serves the dual purpose of artistic consistency and internal cinematic reality. The latter is fascinating, not just for conveying to the audiences that A Thug’s Ascension is an indie game, but if you’re familiar with the filmmaking space, you’d likely have heard Christopher Nolan discuss the notion of cinematic reality. If a cinematic world is grounded in itself rather than “literal” reality, then its characters, events, and stories will have the same weight and validity as the characters, events, and stories in our reality, if not more.

A Thug’s Ascension has, thus, instead of being limited by it, learnt to take advantage of the low-poly style by setting its story in a heightened version of our world. You don’t need to be giving heart attacks to tech enthusiasts at E3 by overjoying them with the sixteen times the detail in your graphics to be able to tell an impactful, emotional, and human story!

Moulik: The trailer reflects the gritty tone you wanted to add to the story, but given it is an indie title with low-poly art, do you feel that the game’s tone could narrow down its potential reach among gamers?

Adi: As I mentioned, I don’t really care about reach or sales, and my main objective with A Thug’s Ascension is purely artistic expression. What matters to me is that the game, both in tone and visuals, is consistent and takes itself seriously where it needs to.

I appreciate every player with whom the story I have created resonates, and if that turns out to be not a lot of people, that is okay, too! We are men with zero resources, zero budget, and zero encouragement who have put our hearts and souls into creating something out of passion and nothing more.

A Thug’s Ascension has already generated interest in players. It has been featured in-game festivals, expos, and conferences worldwide. With the game's full release, we are excited to share this experience with everyone interested.

Moulik: In the game, the gunplay looks exciting and fast. Was it challenging to balance the game’s “slow-paced crime drama” and the “intense shooting and driving gameplay”?

Adi: It certainly was challenging! We have tried to make the game's world serve the story by subtly changing the world alongside the evolving tone of the ongoing narrative. A dynamic world adds an interactive layer to the narrative. We do this through sound design, music, environmental storytelling, and changing mission types.

Pacing is always tricky and highly subjective, so instead, we try to worry more about how fun we can make all gameplay sequences in the game, and we have certainly tried that. As the lead developer who has played every single combat encounter in the game a thousand times, it is still fun to mow down all the bad guy ragdolls.

The environment is a significant weapon in the game, with everything from falling ceiling fans, flying gas cylinders, hittable gas pipes, exploding cars, jerry cans, and oil barrels! While A Thug’s Ascension is much more story than gameplay, and proudly so, we have tried our best to deliver a fresh FPS experience to go with the narrative as well.

Moulik: The game is out on January 16, so for anyone who’s about to try your game out, what would be your message?

Adi: First, thank you so much for your interest in A Thug’s Ascension! It is a heavy, slow-paced, and very indie story about the clash of two men brought up on opposite sides of a crippling economic divide. It is a story about loss, rage, family, community, and growth. It is flawed and rough, but it is exactly what I wanted it to be. I am extremely proud of it. If you're down for a four-hour-long dialogue-driven FPS adventure, I encourage you to head to Steam and buy the game now! Do also tell your friends/family about it who you think might be interested!

Moulik: Any message for aspiring game developers you want to share?

Adi: Yes, and quite a unique one. My message to aspiring masochists would be to always strive to find the strength and the discipline to see their dream projects through fully. It is one thing to know game development, design, filmmaking or coding, but it is an entirely different thing to finish something you want to make and share it with others. Everybody has a portfolio of demos, learning projects, and incomplete hack jobs. Nobody doubts that you will learn to code or land a great job, but will you also be able to bring your vision to life one day?

Moulik: Finally, is there any change or improvement you wish to see in the gaming, specifically game development space in India, in the coming years?

Adi: India has a vast and sprawling mobile games industry, and that is about it. In every other department, especially in PC and console gaming, there is a lot of work to be done. I don’t even think that is a problem of purchasing power in the market anymore. For instance, India has many more prosperous people than in the UK.

We need to find what is stopping people here from creating great console experiences that we'd be excited to share with the world. Money is not what it is. Resources, interest, or passion are not what it is. Perhaps it is ambition. Knowing that “good enough” will not cut it, that it needs to be something that could go to the top, is a very difficult mindset to achieve. Nevertheless, I am sure things will keep improving as they have been, and I am excited about the future of the industry in India.