Turn up the volume

Mike Bithell isn’t the type of person to do the same thing twice. After his breakout hit Thomas Was Alone, memorable not only for its minimalist puzzle platforming but also its story, wonderfully narrated by the BAFTA-winning Danny Wallace, the independent game developer turned his attention to the Metal-Gear-inspired Volume, then took a sojourn into creating short text adventures on PC, and most recently announced a surprise collaboration with Hollywood film makers in the shape of John Wick Hex.

We’re sitting down with him to talk about how things have changed in the indie dev landscape after all these years, and the importance of developers diversifying their portfolios with new ideas.

OPM: Given the games you’ve done, a John Wick game is a real surprise. Do you ever feel pigeonholed as an indie dev?

I wouldn’t say ‘pigeonholed’, because back when we made Thomas Was Alone, that really was all we could make. I say ‘we’, it was me, a composer, and voice actor, so it wasn’t a big team. As we’ve grown and been able to bring