Developer Spotlight: Perfect Garbage’s Journey From Late Night Airport Call to E3 and Beyond

Some of the best ideas come to us at the strangest times. That was certainly the case for future Perfect Garbage studio director Son M., as they called soon-to-be narrative design director, Emmett Nahil, from an airport in the middle of the night with a burning question: “Want to make a game?”

So how do you go from a late night call in an airport, to a full studio with a funded game under your belt? According to Nahil, “a lot more calls, for one.” Both Nahil and M. come from academic backgrounds, and had no problem doing their research before jumping into their new project, making Perfect Garbage. 

“I looked into how to build a studio from the business perspective,” M. said. “Emmett and I planned a lot, and looked into the folks we wanted to reach out to to join us in this journey. Luckily, we really nailed a great team without a lot of trouble.” The studio itself is as queer as its games. Headed up by M. and Nahil, the team at Perfect Garbage was founded in 2019 and consists of a handful individuals from diverse backgrounds,” with nine members in total. 

GOOD MORNING GARBOS, RISE AND SHINE! pic.twitter.com/F5oVwf8g9I

— Perfect Garbage | LOVE SHORE (@perfectgarbo) August 4, 2021

With one of these team members, they figured out a name to affix to their newly minted venture. While trying to come up with a name, Nahil, M., and art design director Kabo were talking- “Someone said ‘all the games we’re gonna make are going to be self-indulgent garbage,'” M. remembered. “And someone followed up with ‘but they’ll be perfect,’ and the rest is history.”

Building a great team and coming up with the right name weren’t the only necessary items on their checklist, however. There was plenty they needed to learn to get a fledgling studio off the ground. M. had the difficult task of navigating more of the business side of things, which isn’t often openly discussed. “Learning about building an indie studio is difficult because it’s not often talked about,” M. said. “Such as funding, taxing, marketing and other bisdev related aspects outside of actually making the game. I was lucky to befriend a lot of fellow indie devs who were willing to share their wisdom with us when we started.”

M. and Nahil found a lot of value and support in the network of indie developers they were able to establish after entering the scene. “We have been pretty active through social media, and in doing that we have ended up forming a lot of fantastic friendships with folks who are also engaged in the indie community,” Nahil said. “The mutual support element is crucial, both online and in person.”

“We also bonded with other Arabs in the game industry who went through some of the trials we did. Their advice mattered to us and since starting, we’ve managed to keep such great company around us,” M. added. “I just love talking to each other about what all our studios are working on and what’s new! It’s so inspiring.”

Inspiration is key for this kind of creative work, and no one at Perfect Garbage is shy about their influences, which are largely firmly in the horror genre. “Well, pretty much everyone in the studio are huge horror movie buffs overall, so a lot of our influences are cinematic, to be honest,” Nahil said. “Body horror and questions of who (or what) you really are factor into a lot of what horror has made its way into our work so far, in Love Shore and in Hellbent.”

“More specifically, Hellraiser (and Clive Barker overall) is a huge influence on me personally, alongside The Thing and anything Cronenberg. Ready or Not, Evil Dead 2, Cabin in the Woods, and Scream are all massive influences when it comes to imbuing comedy into horror, for us!”

When it comes to games, the pair’s influences lean more into narrative games with interesting mechanics. They cited titles like Dishonored, Shadow of the Colossus, Devil May Cry, and Bioshock. “Lately, we’ve been backtracking together and playing a lot of classics where the gameplay and the narrative are closely intertwined,” M. said. “It’s what we want to execute in all of our own games- building really fun and interesting mechanics that fit into the story being played out.”

These influences were part of Perfect Garbage’s work from the start; Love Shore originally started out as a horror story that M. was writing before the studio was even an idea. “After talking with Emmett, it just became a beast of its own, completely fleshed out and reimagined from when we first chatted,” M. told us. This, combined with both writers’ interest in tackling the cyberpunk genre to put their own twist on it, made Love Shore their debut project by default.

Writing a game has had its own learning curves for both M. and Nahil. According to Nahil, “learning to write for games versus writing a novel solo is an entirely different endeavor. And the narrative design is even more different.” 

M. agreed, noting that writing for games is inherently more focused on understanding the big picture and implementation. “You are never writing in a vacuum and you have to be conscious of not just the words on screen, but the way they appear on screen, the art/asset and mood behind that moment. How does the combat fit the storytelling or how does the cutscene work? A writer isn’t inherently a narrative designer. And a narrative designer, personally, does a lot more than just write!”

This may be the studio’s first dip into the realm of game design, but audiences have responded well to it so far, pushing its Kickstarter campaign more than $12,000 over its original $50,000 goal. Perfect Garbage even made an E3 appearance this year, featuring in Glitch’s Future of Play Direct alongside other upcoming indies like Dome King Cabbage, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to show off a new Love Shore trailer and reveal their next game, skater demon beat ’em up Hellbent. M. even did some narrative design for the show, and said, “I really am excited for Future of Play Direct to become a household name. The approach to showing off indie titles felt like a breath of fresh air!”

It looks like Perfect Garbage’s future will remain bright, as they’re building upon the success they’ve already had. “We’ve been pretty quiet about it but I can proudly say we received prototype funding for our next project, which is going to be an absolute wild ride,” M. said. Though we don’t know what’s on the horizon for them quite yet, we can be certain that it will be garbage, and it will be perfect.