In my quest to get under the hoods of indie horror games I love and inside the heads of their developers, my next stop was a mysterious golf course that had already closed. Yep, this time the interviewee is @yatoimtop, and we're talking about his game Greener Grass Awaits! It's tense, it's surreal, it's even darkly comedic at a few points, and you will probably have no idea what's going on - but one thing is for sure, you must golf!

Just like the Mike Klubnika one, this will eventually be made into a YouTube video. (I haven't forgotten about the former, I just kept getting distracted and not working on the script. :o) )

Spoilers ahead for Greener Grass Awaits! (Go play the game first! It's free, only about an hour long, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.)

Inspirations/Process

I see you make games, music, and animations. What got you into each of these creative media?

I got into video when I was 10 because I wanted to make animations, and started with stop motion stuff before I eventually found blender. For music, I'd always wanted to make some, but I only started during COVID. COVID was also when I also started really getting into game development with pearl grabber. I did dabble with gamedev in high school, making some point and clicks!

Where’d you get the idea for a golf horror game in general?

How hard was it to get the golf physics to work like you wanted them to? How about the enemy behavior? Was the staring response something you came up with from the beginning, or was it something you added to keep the player from becoming too powerful?

This has a half cynical answer- I knew I wanted to make a horror game because they were popular on itchio/YouTube but I wasn't quite sure what my angle would be. The golf inspiration came from my addiction to the mobile game Desert Golf, which I had discovered from reading Tevis Thompson's website.

On a whim I had decided to make a prototype in Godot of a golf setup based on Desert Golf, and found it surprisingly easy to make? At some point I started thinking about how I could make it a game when I remembered my goal of making a horror game. So I began thinking about how it'd work, planning out a bunch of holes and writing out the game mechanics and what would happen hole to hole. I got far more wrapped up in it then I had planned!

Initially, the game was going to be all on one map and have enemies that patrolled the course. You'd see them in the distance and have to hide. When I found that I couldn't make the game all on one map and I also didn't want to figure out how to make the NPCs work like I had wanted, I pivoted. I programmed the NPCs to do the only move when you look away thing and liked how it worked with putting. I eventually found it goofy how you could stare forever and they would just stand there without moving so the stare timer was added. I ended up liking what I had built far more than what I had initially imagined- it's more confrontational and ties in with the golf mechanics more directly.

My process is basically bumbling into something that works.

Greener Grass Awaits has a really distinctive style for its visuals and music. Some people call the graphics “PS1-style”, but I think there’s more to it than that. I really like the posterization with different color palettes. What influenced you in designing the look of the game?

I also wouldn't describe my game as PS1- I think of it as sort of lo-fi and fuzzy. Some of the reason I went with the posterized look was it sort of covered up the eh graphics, but also it helped scenes remain legible when it was dark. Keeping the game dark was one of my main priorities. I also just like the reduced color look! I'm pretty bad with picking visual inspirations, I just go for what looks right to me at the time.

The soundtrack is probably one of the game’s biggest strengths, it absolutely carries the atmosphere and the buildup of tension throughout. How did you come up with the music? (Also, what programs/plugins do you use :O )

Soundtracking things is something I love doing- it helps me pick a musical direction with much more clarity than my other music projects. I wanted to match the fuzzy visuals so I went with sounds that were dark and distorted. I had a lot of Aphex Twin and especially Boards of Canada in my mind.

I did a lot of slowing things down, lots of brushing random things against the mic, and a lot of shimmer delay. I also did a lot of singing and chanting for any forest bit.

My most used plugins for this project were Sketchcassette 2, Valhalla Delay and Valhalla VintageVerb, and Arturia Pigments. I also used an old Casio keyboard someone was giving away for free for the boss theme and some percussion on the Greener Grass Awaits song!

What about your art/music/animations in general, independent of the game?

If you're asking about software I use Godot, Blender, FL Studio, and Procreate. If you mean my process for coming up with things, usually I'm just randomly struck with some idea that captures my mind.

You did a very good job of making the antagonists feel like a part of the world, and making their presence feel justified by the story and environment instead of being solely there to make it a horror game. How did you come up with your antagonists and flesh them out? What made you choose to make the game’s main threat some kind of murder cult masquerading as a lawn care company?

I came up with most of the big ideas of the game in a day or two where all I could think about was how I'd make this golf horror game make sense. I'm not sure where the evil landscaper idea really came from, or where most of the ideas came from for that matter. My guess is that I asked myself "Why is a cult at this golf course and why do they only move when not looked at" and then started answering that question.

My overall goal was to know exactly what was happening and why, even if the player didn't.

Success

What was your initial reaction to seeing people and YouTubers start to pick up your game? How have you felt about it since?

It's fun but extremely nervewracking for me to watch people on YouTube play it. It's fun to see reactions but it's also a bummer to see problems I hadn't noticed in the game. I had a couple friends playtest the game, but seeing some playthoughs, I think I should've playtested more!

Based on the things some people who played it struggled with, is there anything you’d make differently about the game knowing what you know now?

I'd tone down the forest level a bit and add more signposting. I knew it had problems before I put it out, but the friends I saw play it didn't have that much trouble with it? So I let it be.

Can we get a sneak peek at any other projects that may be up your sleeve for the future?

I've been posting some pictures on my bluesky of a game I've been working on- the title right now is "apple seller supreme" but that might change.

I know you’ve got a lot of other projects. Here’s your chance to shill your other stuff. If you had to pick one to a few other works of yours that you really want people reading this interview to go check out, what would those be?

I put out a music video named LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND recently. Or the VIDEOPALOOZA series! (Editor's note: All of VIDEOPALOOZA can be found on his NG movies page, or YouTube!)

Misc/Silly Questions

How did you write the song for the Greener Grass advertisement? What does “dry and crispy like the thing in my head” even mean? Why does it sound like they’re using grass as a metaphor for a sense of purpose in life? (Is it because the people who lack that sense of purpose are most vulnerable to cult recruitment?)

I bumbled into the right thing while making the Greener Grass Awaits song. I was basing vibe/concept the song after another cult song I discovered off of a Redlettermedia video, SOS. I remember it being very catchy and upbeat while talking about how dissatisfied you were with life. It stuck out as a bizarre ideological Trojan horse, and a good fit for the game. I think I started with the synth riff and bass and just built it out from there.

There's an original version of the theme available on the soundtrack album- I canned it because it wasn't catchy enough and the distorted ending feels wrong for how the song is supposed to be used, in universe.

The dry and crispy line is referring to an unhappy brain!

Are you yourself any good at golf?

I had only ever played mini golf before making this game! But near GGA's completion, I went with some friends to a driving range where I nearly hit the person next to me in the head with a stray golf ball (twice)

What does your username mean, exactly/how’d you come up with it? What is yatoimtop?

I was in to making nonsense words when I was in middle school and that's what I happened to name my first instagram account. I've stuck with it since! Unfortunate -_-

So there you have it! This was a fun conversation and I enjoyed getting to hear Yatoimtop's thought processes!

Please go check out Greener Grass Awaits and Yatoimtop's other content on various platforms. It's all worth a look!

(I've been listening to this song in particular a bunch lately. It's very catchy and I can relate to the lyrics.)

Have a good night, everyone!

-Theta