Review Fix Exclusive: Q & A With ‘Nine Months In’ Creator Tzach Shabtay

Review Fix chats with “Nine Months In” creator Tzach Shabtay for his thoughts on current PC title.

“Nine Months In” tells the story of a pregnant woman trying to escape prison before her child is born. Featuring retro 2D gameplay and stellar pixel art, it’s a unique independent game from a young creator.

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for the game?

Tzach Shabtay: I was watching “Extra Credits,” it’s an awesome internet show on game development. There was an episode there mentioning how there are so few games that feature a well-rounded female character. Most females in games are very stereotypical, either your princess in distress, your blond snobbish prom queen, or in other cases, you have the Amazon queens and the tomb raider type females that are just like the men fighters, only with fewer clothes. Then it hit me that there were even fewer games which showed pregnant women, and I’m pretty confident that there are no other games that deal with a pregnant woman in prison.

Review Fix: What did you play as a kid? How did it influence this game?

Shabtay: There were three kinds of games that I mostly played as a kid: Civilization (the first), Football/Soccer games and other than that, adventure games. I’ve played a lot of the classic Lucas Arts & Sierra games, starting from the old King Quests & Leisure Suit Larrys which used a text parser and up until the golden era of adventure games in the ’90s, which featured some great games like Day of the Tentacle, and Gabriel Knight, two of my favorites. Obviously, “9 Months In” is a Point & Click game because I loved playing those old games so much.

Review Fix: How did the engine you use help and hinder the production process?

Shabtay: The game was made using AGS (Adventure Game Studio), which is a wonderful tool that enables you to create Point & Click games.
All of the design of this engine was specifically aimed at making adventure games creation an easy task. It has an easy-to-follow workflow, so that even people with almost no programming experience can get to grips with it. It has some flaws in it, obviously it can always be better, but not something that really slowed me down and if there happens to be a problem which I have no solution for, there’s a wonderful community surrounding AGS that loves to help out.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite part of the game?

Shabtay: It’s like asking someone to choose a favorite child [laugh]. Well, if you insist. There are two alternative endings in the game. There’s the “weird” ending, I call it weird because most players are left wondering “what just happened?” after they play it, and then come up with theories which may or may not be true. This is the ending that most players will get to on the first play, since it depends whether or not you missed some things in the game. If you do make an effort, though, and replay the game to get a better score, you might end up getting the more “complete” ending, in which I hope you’ll get an “Ahhhh” moment, which is something I love when it happens in games (and movies). Also, I really enjoy the ending song, created by my wonderful fiancée Noa.

Review Fix: What are your goals for this game? Do you think they’ll be accomplished?

Shabtay: My main goal for this game was to create a compelling atmosphere, which is something I think that my previous games lacked somewhat. I really wanted to hook the player to the game. Another goal was to give the player that “Ahhhh” moment that I mentioned earlier. It’s hard to tell whether I succeeded or not. I’m very proud of the game on one hand, on the other hand I do realize that the game has some flaws which I didn’t have time to fix/improve (I was on a very strict deadline). I don’t think those are flaws that will ruin the experience, though.

Review Fix: How do you want the game to be remembered?

Shabtay: A statue would be nice [wink]. Mostly I want people to remember it as an enjoyable (and hopefully unique) experience.

Review Fix: How would you sell this game to someone? What would you say to them to entice them to purchase it?

Shabtay: Compelling atmosphere, full voice acting, beautiful pixel artwork, a twisted story and the chance to play a pregnant woman in prison for the first time in a game ever (as far as I know).