Children of the Sun, a third-person shooter puzzle game, will strum players' emotions and tactical thinking when it releases on PC soon. The story follows The Girl, who escapes from a nefarious cult and wages a one-woman war to avenge those whom she’s lost because of them; and she does it all with just one bullet.
Children of the Sunsolo developer René Rother recently spoke with Game Rant, where he described how everything came together. A lot of it wasn’t pre-planned; he had prior experience with atmospheric games that involved very “minimal” interaction. One day, he had a prototype forChildren of the Sunand decided to pitch it to the small studio he was working at. That led him to today, where he’s crafted the story of a nameless main character but takes action with the one thing she has left. Rother detailed how visuals can carry a game, why open interpretation is good, and how, in the real world, violent revenge should never be the answer.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself andChildren of the Sun?
Rother:My name’s René. I’ve been making games for more than 10 years. And it’s mostly just been small projects I just did for fun. I studied graphic design and I didn’t like it at all. I knew that I wanted to do something creative, and I thought doing graphic design allows me to be creative and make money. But then it turned out that none of those two things are true, actually. And then, I got very frustrated doing my studies, and somehow I figured out how to make games. So, and that’s how I started taking part in Game Jam and these kind of things. And it was just lots of random projects, mostly like more atmospheric, smaller types of walking simulators, more or less, like very minimal interaction.
And I wouldn’t really call them games. It was more just small experiments. At some point, I got a job as a 3D artist at a small studio here in Berlin, and it was just one of these Saturday mornings where I woke up and was like, “ah, what do I do with my life? I need to figure something out.” And by the timeI had a prototype for this gameforChildren of the Sun, and I just prepared a small email, made a small video and sent a bit over, and then I got a response from them. And then they were saying they didn’t like the pitch, but the game looks cool, and then we continued talking , and then now I’m sitting here.
Q: It seems like the world ofChildren of the Sunleaves players in a melancholic environment. How does the color palette of that game represent emotions that are felt in wartime?
Rother:I was mentioning before that I did more of these atmospheric small experiments and the atmosphere of a game is just always very interesting to me and important to me. I really like to work in 3D because it allows me to create a space you can experience on just a much different level. And music is just incredibly important to me. I think one of the main inspirations for the game is music. This whole melancholic kind of feeling that you’re describing, that’s like, it’s a feeling that I’m for some reason seeking.
I like melancholic music a lot, something which is a little bit more harsh, a little bit more noisy maybe, but it needs to have an atmosphere and the whole colors, the whole visual direction. I didn’t really plan to do it the way it is. It’s just like the natural residue of what I enjoy. It’s just a residue of my skills and what I’m interested in. I didn’t have a mood board in the beginning and was like, “okay, I want it to be like this, like this, like this.” I just put things together that I like. And this is like, just the result of it.
[And] war is a very big topic at the moment, right? It has been for a long time, but back then, when I started working on this game, it was not like this whole invasion of Ukraine. It was not a thing. I started this game, I think four years ago or five, and war was not really something I had in my mind, actually.
I do enjoy revenge stories. There’s something very satisfying about them. It’s like the arc, the story is actually kind of simple, but there’s something very satisfying about a person who is just repressed in some way and just trying to get out of it. I didn’t think so much about war, although the content, I guess, can be transferred to it very easily. But it was personal feeling of repression, of being oppressed and being uncomfortable and breaking out of it, breaking out of the cycle of abuse in a way. But it is kind of a war. I never considered it like that, to be honest. That’s why I was kind of struggling to understand what you’re saying, , to me it was more of an emotional war.
Q: With The Girl, the main character, how does the art design match with how she’s personally feeling and her own personal vendetta?
Rother:I try to keep her design rather minimal and ambiguous. [The fact that] it’s a girl that happened a bit later, to be honest. It was not planned like that. I just wanted to make a character, which more through animation, kind of conveys a feeling. And it’s not just the design itself; I think a lot of it comes from the animation and that it’s a girl. I originally wanted to keep it more open if it’s a girl or not. And then, at some point, I got people playing the game and lots of people referred to it as a girl. And then I just embraced it and went for it. And then, in the beginning, when the story started to take shape, it just felt like it completely made sense. I didn’t want to make her like two females, kind of a bit heterogeneous [and] just not to be too much on the face most of the game. I feel like I’m trying to not be too direct. I’m trying to keep things pretty vague. The same thing about who is this girl even is and what kind of person she is.
Q: What influenced your decision to keepChildren of the Sunand The Girl vague and open?
Rother:[For] the whole game overall, I think I’m not a good storyteller. That’s not necessarily my strength. Writing for a game is in theory, easy. you’re able to just put one line in there and you mess everything up. Pretty early on, I knew that I’m not gonna have any dialogue in the game. To me, it makes it harder than it needs to be… To me, it’s more about emotions and feelings and atmosphere, and these things can be very easily conveyed through non-dialogue—the pose of the girl about these,these cut scenes which make you feel uncomfortable. And that’s like the discomfort of the girl in her situation.
I just knew very early on that I wanted to keep things more open for interpretation. Just because I don’t think I’m necessarily good at writing and being super direct about it, but I also think it’s more interesting. And the other thing is people who are not interested, they can more easily look over it, which is not necessarily something I intended, but that’s just one of the things that happens because of it. If people are not interested in it, they can just skip this whole thing and not think about it and just play the game. But people who are interested in it, they can just really look at what is happening, what is happening in the cutscenes, what is happening in the whole environmental storytelling and try to come to conclusions through it. And which I think is just a more interesting approach, a more interactive approach.
Q: The cut scenes seem like they’re flashes of The Girl’s memories. Will those play a significance or be utilized at all during the game?
Rother:They are locations which are happening throughout the game and are like bringing [you] back. You sometimes revisit locations of your past. And a lot of the game storytelling is about explaining not so much what is happening, but what has been happening, right?It’s more explaining what is going on. It’s not about explaining something which is happening or about to happen. Characters appear again from the past scenes, locations appear again from the past scenes, but it’s more about telling people what is going on.
Q: You mentioned earlier that you like revenge stories. Acting on revenge isn’t always advised. What influenced your decision to createChildren of the Suninto a “twisted tale” of revenge?
Rother:That’s a tough question. I make lots of decisions just out of feeling , like my gut feeling, I just go with it. Like I didn’t have too much pre-production for the game. It was basically just like, I’m making a game, let’s do this and then let’s do this, let’s do this. I just put a lot of things in there that I enjoy and just put it in there and hope it works out, which kind of caused some problems a bit later on because things needed to suddenly get into shape and then suddenly, there are spreadsheets for things that needed to be done, which I just didn’t have. I didn’t have any game design documents and such. Lots of it is really putting things in that I like for whatever reason. I don’t even know why I like revenge stories so much. I don’t know. It’s maybe a question for my therapist.
Q: In the game, players are controlling this one single bullet, and it seems to act as a metaphor as the one thing that this main character can control. Was there anything that made you want to choose this gun or this bullet as her weapon, or did you also just throw it in there?
Rother:I think what you’re saying is right, this was also kind of my intention there, that this is just the one thing she has left. I know there’s these stories of teenage girls, like very old, mystic stories aboutteenage girls developing powerswhen they are getting into puberty or some stuff. It’s super weird stuff, but this was a big inspiration there that whatever kind of trouble kids or teenagers have, it manifests into something. This was a big point in making it, this bullet that she is manipulating basically. And it’s just a fun gameplay mechanic . There’s two ways to start [a game], right? You start with the story, or you start with the gameplay, and either way, you need to figure out how to put these things together.
Then, usually when I was working on games, it was the story or the atmosphere, like I had a scene in my mind that I wanted to put into a game. But here it was the mechanic came first, but it was not a bullet at this point. It was a bit later, not much later, but it just happened that the mechanic was there. And then I tried to figure out, “okay, how do I want to explain this? What is this even?” It’s basically like connecting the dots in three-dimensional space. It could be anything. You could shoot balloons with an arrow. It could be completely abstract. It could be a snake biting someone else’s butt or it could be anything. But this is what I landed on. I was reading a lot about cults and then whatever kind of mystical kind of things, which is related to more religious themes. It’s just a topic that I’m interested in. So this is just what I landed on. Again, just putting things in that I enjoy .
Q: In first-person shooter games, ammo scarcity is tough, but in this game, when you’re only supplied with one bullet, it could be even more difficult. How does this challenge players who are acting as a sniper?
Rother:I think it just creates a very interesting dynamic of thinking about what you even need to do. This is what makes it actually a puzzle game. I was experimenting a little bit with making multiple bullets that you’re able to have multiple shots, but that just made it suddenly into a completely different game. It just changed it a lot. It’s more of a gameplay decision than it is a story decision. It’s just much more interesting gameplay to me, and it also fits the theme very nicely thatyou are just this one person, you have this one bullet and this is all you have. There’s no big crate in the background where you can pick up more stuff and then there’s a popup which just boop, boop collected 10 ammo or something like this. I don’t wanna say all games with guns are boring, that’s not true at all. But for this game, I think it was an important decision to make it just one bullet.
Q: In the trailer it seems like The Girl can scan the glowing figures of the people she’s trying to take out. So does that say anything specific about her and her capabilities?
Rother:She has been taught very early on to hunt. We came back to this bullet. She is growing up as a hunter, so she just has this natural instinct of how to shoot animals, but then also it can be transferred to people in this case. During the game, what you can do, you can just mark enemies. It’s also like a very gamey thing to do. But I feel like it makes sense for THE GIRL that it’s like a representation of her ability.
Q: By positioning The Girl as the main protagonist and sole tactical sharpshooter, what do you think that players can take away from her character?
Rother:What can they take away from a character? She’s not really a role model. Revenge is usually not a good idea. Most of us who are here now and play games, make games, we are in a very privileged position. We don’t have these existential things to worry about [in a game]. I guess there are cases where safety defense would be a good idea, but in most cases it’s not. In our everyday life there’s usually no reason ever to go out with a gun and do anything. I don’t think there’s anything really, at least from face value, that people should take from it. What I do think is interesting though,it’s dealing with trauma.
If we take away going out with a gun and taking revenge, it’s more about taking your life into your own hands and doing something about it. And maybe talking about trauma’s maybe a bit too much, so talking more about like, how do you want to live your life? You always need to be a bit more active. You cannot just wait for things to happen. Even luck is one of those things which you need to be prepared for. It’s like luck is when preparation meets some case which just happens. You need to be prepared for things and that’s maybe something that people can take out of it to be active about living their life, but not with a gun. Please.
[END]
Children of the Sunis expected to be released on PC on June 01, 2025.
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