An Interview with Steve Gabry, creator of Sally Face
Interviewed by Mick R.
Steve Gabry is the creator of Sally Face, a widely regarded point-and-click adventure game that follows its titular hero Sal Fisher's exploration of a mystery in his apartment building. He is helped in his search for answers by his friends; the resourceful and analytical Todd Morisson, the shy but perceptive Ashley Campbell, and the good-natured, basement-dwelling metalhead Larry Johnson. It's a familiar premise: a gaggle of precocious teens takes it upon themselves to investigate strange goings-ons in their neighborhood and learn lessons about the true meaning of friendship and family along the way. However, Sally Face has a few twists to it that place it far afield from other Scoobie and the Gang-styled adventures. Not the least of which is the art style, which owes its inspiration more to classic Nicktoons and the exploits of Jabber Jaw and his band.
So what does set Sally Face apart? Well, for one, the mystery involves a gruesome murder, as well as other tragic disappearances and deaths around the fictional town of Nockfell. Secondly, Sal, the literal face of the game and its title character... is actually sans a face, having lost it along with his mother in a tragic accident as a child. The project's name is a reference to the prosthetic mask he has grown accustomed to wearing to hide his disfigurement. And then there is probably the crucial distinction between Sally Face and the Hanna-Barbara cartoons of your youth; in Sally Face, the monsters are real. Terrifyingly so.
Sally Face was released episodically in five installments between 2016 and 2019. With each installment somehow managing to up the stakes of your hero's investigations. From simple questioning of neighbors and gathering of clues, to conducting seances via hand-held game counsels, to confronting death cults of extra-terrestrial origin, and finally, taking vengeance from beyond the grave- it is incredible that such a compelling series of events could all be the work of a single, one-man studio. Sally Face saw its first counsel port to the Nintendo Switch earlier this year, and with it, a whole new audience was introduced to Steve Gabry's rich and imaginative world. With Halloween just around the corner, I took the opportunity to check in with the creator of one of my current favorite scary games, and talk with him about singular achievement of bringing Sally Face to life, as well as some of the life experiences, both para and normal, that inspired its creation.
Interview was conducted via Zoom on October 21, 2021. It has been edited slightly for the sake of clarity.
Mick R.: The first thing I want to ask is, because we have Halloween just around the corner: Do you have a favorite holiday, and why is it Halloween?
Steve Gabry: [Laughs] It's definitely Halloween for sure. You know, it's one of those weird questions—I've always been drawn to dark and weird things like horror movies and monsters. I started drawing at a young age, and I was inspired by all the different cartoons I used to watch, like Ghostbusters and Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons and that kind of thing. But I always was more interested in drawing like monsters and things like that. My mom would always be like, “Why don't you draw something nice and happy man?” And… I don’t know. That just wasn’t me. I just like the monsters. I don't know exactly where that comes from, but I've always gravitated towards the darker things.
MR: And you see your interest in and attraction to the strange, dark and unusual as reflected in the celebration of Halloween…
SG: Yeah, definitely. I like just watching a ton of horror movies this time of year. I love the creativity of those- even the old, cheesy ones from old 80s, with the practical effects and bad acting. I love all that.
MR: What have you been watching lately?
SG: Um, let's see. Well, we just watched the new Muppets’ Haunted Mansion…
MR: There's a new Muppets movie?
SG: Yeah, it's a special. It’s a little bit less than an hour and it's based on the Haunted Mansion ride from Disney. So it’s a spooky Muppets movie.
MR: Didn’t Disney already do a Haunted Mansion movie with like Eddie Murphy back in the ‘00s?
SG: I haven't watched that one. Surprisingly… I just watched Basket Case for the first time recently. I hadn’t seen that one.
MR: Ooooooh, that's good.
SG: Yeah, that was a good one. I also made my friends watch Society. It was very funny to see their reaction to it.
MR: That's another that's a classic in my opinion. I love the body horror in that film. Plus, the theme of society being secretly run by cannibal mutants strikes a certain chord with me. It feels very reflective of my lived experience. [Laughs]
SG: Yeah, that's super relevant to today's world and economy, and how the rich kind of view the rest of us. Looking down on the poor as just something to feed off of.
MR: Yeah, for sure. Talking about horror movies sets us up pretty good for transitioning into a discussion of your game. Sally Face definitely has a lot of horror elements that interlace with other themes and that's part of the fun of it. But it is also a teen drama in some ways as well. Why do you think horror is such a fertile ground for telling stories about young people or young people learning how to navigate the world?
SG: It's funny because I definitely see a lot of people putting Sally Face in the horror category but it was never my intention to make a horror game. It was just the game I wanted to make. I am interested in doing games, but a horror game for me would be much darker. If you can imagine that. But there are definitely horror elements, but I didn't set out to make a horror game. But to answer your question, I think it’s because you have a lot more fears when you're younger. You're entering this new world and discovering things, and there's a lot you don’t know. So, there is the fear of the unknown, and of growing up, and of being alone and on your own for the first time—dating or getting along with people or classmates or doing good in school… There's a lot of fears and anxieties that I think that horror does a great job of exploring. I think that's a big element of it. And I think younger people can be drawn to horror because it allows a way of exploring those fears in a safe way. A lot of people feel connected to it in that way.
MR: Do you feel like it has anything to do with how young people tend to feel alienated from the world? Teen alienation is so common it almost feels superfluous to comment on it, but I think there might be something about how they experience the world as well that makes horror relevant to them.
SG: Yeah, for sure. Like you said, most, if not all, kids have that feeling at some point—that they don't belong, or that nobody understands them, or they don't really fit in or whatever. And, yeah, I think horror is a good reflection of that. And for me, at least from my perspective, it was kind of like, “Oh, somebody gets me. They like all these weird dark things too. Their mind also goes to dark places. So, there are other people like me out there.” I think there's some comfort in it in a weird way.
MR: So when it comes to the world that you’ve constructed for Sally Face, where did your inspirations come from? There is a lot of really dramatic stuff going on: aliens, ghosts, other dimensions, secret societies running world affairs, etc… where are you pulling from to construct this narrative?
SG: Well, when I started writing Sally Face, I just had this character and a location—an apartment building and a lot of weird tenants. And I just wanted to incorporate into that story stuff that I liked, not worry about making something that kind of fits a typeface, or even to break a mold or anything. I didn't want to worry about anything like that. Like you know how big Hollywood movies like to tell these cookie cutter stories and you can kind of predict what's going to happen next? Well, I didn’t want to have worry about that structure. I just put in the things I like and the things that I wanted the characters to go though. I just wanted it to mean something to me. And where the inspiration for that comes from was just my life. Some of it’s from the media I consume. Like I said, I watch a lot of horror movies and liked ‘90s Nick-Toons. Those were a big inspiration. Mainly on the art style, but also on the whole friends group kind of dynamic, with a lot of odd characters and oddly drawn things. And then just personal experiences—from high school and growing up. I actually lived in a haunted house for a little while when I was younger. So that was a big inspiration for me. Weird paranormal stuff happened to me quite a bit. But there is no specific inspiration. I was just pulling from everything in my life.
MR: Oh ok, so you’re mostly just taking things out of the milieu of your life and putting them into the game. That’s cool… you lived in a haunted house?
SG: Yeah, it was crazy.
MR: Is it something you’re comfortable talking about?
SG: Yeah, I mean, I was young. I was like eight years old and we lived there for two years, two or three years. I honestly didn't have too many experiences there until towards the end. Before we moved I saw some pretty weird stuff. Stuff that still impacts me to this day. I’m not a huge believer in… I don't know… I’m open-minded. I don't have any like strong beliefs either way, but weird things did happen to me there. I'm not gonna say they were definitely ghosts or spirits, but they’re things that I can't explain. Like I saw things moving on their own and that type of thing. And then when I was older my parents told me, “Yeah, that house was haunted.” I had an aunt who was afraid to stay there and they all told me the stuff they had seen happen in that house. But of course, when I was a kid, they didn't really tell me any of that stuff.
MR: Did anyone ever try to rationalize or explain it to you?
SG: The house was the second oldest house in the town we were living in… I forget the exact history, but it used to be a tavern, and then it was a place for war widows. I don't know if anyone specifically died in that house or not though.
MR: But it just had a lot of weird energy.
SG: Oh yeah. It was weird.
MR: Have you experienced hauntings elsewhere, or just in that house?
SG: I have, yeah.
MR: Oh really?
SG: Yeah, so the next house that I lived in—which is the house I pretty much grew up in—I was there for 11 years—there were some weird occurrences there as well. When I was kid, I never really told anyone about it, but there was this one thing that would happen when I was in my room at night. If it was like late and I had the window open, I would start hearing a really like a… [makes eerie rapping sound]. It was just a really loud banging. And it would scare me so much… and we were out in the sticks, there wasn't anyone by us. There were woods in front of us, woods behind us. Our neighbors were quite a ways away from us. And this was late at night, there was nobody outside… and this would happen a lot and I would get scared. And when it would happen, I wouldn't turn the lights off or anything. I would just jump in my bed and just try to sleep.
MR: So you would hear a knocking from outside, or on your bedroom door? Where was the sound coming from?
SG: It was coming from outside. There was this like little concrete walkway in front of her house and it eventually started getting these like little chips in it like as if someone had been hitting it with a hammer, to the point where my stepdad was like “Who the hell is breaking our sidewalk up?” And nobody was. Of course nobody's sitting out there with a hammer hitting our sidewalk. But I never really told anyone about that because I just figured nobody would believe me. Anyway, when I grew up and left for college, one of my sisters moved into that room and at some point she told me that she would hear this weird knocking outside the window, and I was like “Oh my god I've heard that when I was a kid too!” It was very strange.
MR: When you said that you would hear a knocking from outside while you were in your room I was curious if it was coming from the roof. That’s an old archetype for ghost stories. Revenants and other spirits walking around on the roof of the family home.
SG: Yeah, it was definitely coming from outside but not like from the house at all.
MR: That’s really interesting. And you would find evidence on the sidewalk later?
SG: Yeah, it was physically breaking up the sidewalk. We’d joke like, “Oh, there's probably a dead body, buried there, or something.”
MR: Or treasure! There might literally have been a box of treasury bonds buried under there.
SG: Yeah. [Laughs]
MR: Something that I really loved about Sally Face were the characters. I played through the game with my partner, very recently on the Switch, and we both just fell in love with the characters you had written. And I was wondering if you have, like this specific approach for writing characters and dialog, because they’re all really interconnected, and their relationships feel very rich.
SG: Well, the characters have the inspiration that the games does. Like, I pull from a lot of different things. So for the main four characters, I kind of drew a lot from myself, especially with Sal and Larry. I kind of have a lot of me in both of them. But then I kind of wanted Sal to be like, that cool kid that everyone kind of want to be friends with, who's just really nice. And then Larry is a little bit of an outsider metal head type. And they're pieces of me and pieces of people I've known, and then me filling in the gaps and making them into characters of their own. And I wanted each one of them to have their own personality, so they didn't feel flat. Like Todd as a character is very blunt and straight to the point and he's a little bit socially awkward in that way.
MR: And Ash?
SG: I wrote her to be a little bit awkward in their teen years, but then showing her growing out of that naive view of the world and then becoming a badass towards the end.
MR: I definitely noticed a shift in her character between episodes. Like, at one point she shows up on a motorcycle and it’s very clear that she grew out of her awkward teen phase. [Laughs]
SG: Yeah, I wanted to show how the things that she had gone through impacting her and her growing as a character… Of course, you know, as a solo developer, there are a lot of corners I had to cut and small things I would have liked to put into the game that I eventually cut out. There are definitely pieces of these characters I would have liked to explore a bit more.
MR: Do you have specific voices for each of these characters? Like, in your head? My partner and I came up with voices while we were playing the game on our own, but I was curious what your character’s voices sounded like to you.
SG: Yeah, I have voices for each of them in my head. Like I picture Todd as having more of a monotone and just very blunt with no filter on anything. Sal I picture as having a bit of a deeper voice, to kind of juxtaposed his physical appearance. And then he's a bit more upbeat with his delivery as well. And then Larry, I picture him not as having like a stereotypical stoner vibe to him, but towards leaning towards that direction.
MR: Okay, sort of surfer or a skater type inflection.
SG: Yeah, he has like a bit of that quality to his speech. But he's not like full on. If that makes sense. And then Ash… I always kind of picture her talking kind of like, like Buffy.
MR: Oh, I can see that. Was it hard writing believable characters and set in such fantastic situations? I feel like with so much going on in the background that would be easy to get caught up in the plot and forget about the characters.
SG: It is definitely something I had to keep reminding myself of. I had to think, “Well, how would these characters react in this situation?” And then also taking into account that, “Okay, now these characters have seen a lot of things? Are these new things? Are these things that surprising to them?” That type of thing. Like they're kind of getting used to the weirdness of it all now, so how do they react when something else happens. And you know, the different timelines add a little bit of difficulty to it as well, because they'll react differently, depending on how old they are and how much they've gone through. So yeah, that was definitely a challenge.
MR: Yeah, you definitely sorted that out. They all do feel like real people, even if situations they’re in are very surreal.
SG: Cool, thanks. It's always humbling to hear that because I've never written anything of this scope before. It’s really my first time writing like a big story like this.
MR: How did you approach writing mature content in a way that didn't feel like you're trivializing it? A lot of bad stuff happens in this game, but it didn't necessarily feel sensationalized. It all feels true to the situations and the characters, even when it is just brutal… just brutal to witness.
SG: Yeah, a lot of that is me working through my own shit, honestly. Like, when I was writing the game, I was going through a pretty big depression. And for example, this is a bit of a spoiler here, but when Larry kills himself… like, that was something that I had gone through with someone I loved. They ended up being alright, but they made an attempt. And that hurt. And I drew a lot of inspiration from that hurt. And that's kind of my way of like working through those feelings. So I think that's why… Like, I’ve had people connect with that part of the game for some odd reason. And they tell me that it’s helped them in their depression, which is weird, because the game is really depressing. But if it helps people, that's great.
MR: How do you feel when people tell you things like that?
SG: It’s really that's crazy. I never really thought that my game, which when I started it, it was just kind of this side project that I was doing… Mostly for myself too, as like a creative outlet… I didn't really think it would do as well as it did and connect with as many people as it has. And even connecting with it in that way- like people telling me that it's helped them not commit suicide, or helped them with their relationship with somebody else, or got them out with depression, or helped them through depression… I've gotten a lot of letters like that and it's always humbling. I feel like it makes my work more meaningful, even though it's my artistic expression and a video game… but if it can help people in that kind of a way, then that's awesome.
MR: That is cool to hear. And I’m glad to hear that people telling you those things doesn't paralyze you or make you feel weighed down with responsibility now. Afraid to make a move.
SG: Yeah, there's probably a small piece of me inside that’s like, “Well, now the second game has to live up to everybody's standards, and has to be better than the first thing.” You know? I'm trying not to listen to that voice. I'm trying to just focus on making the thing I want to make and not worrying about like living up to some kind of standard I’ve build up in my head
MR: To what extent do you feel affected by the press and the response to the game? Has it changed your approach to making art, or your relationship to it?
SG: I think it has caused a small struggle in me… I guess there's this worry I now have that I've created something successful and it's what I've been trying to do for a long time.. and now I finally have it and I don't want to screw it up. I don't want to lose it, but I also don’t want to just make things that will be pandering to an audience and type of thing. I try to keep in mind that the thing I made, Sally Face, it was just for me, and people liked it. So, I can keep doing that and it will be okay, and if it's not, I'll figure it out.
MR: Right and doing something that may pander to people and attempt to meet their expectations maybe isn’t the most respectful way of approaching the property and addressing your audience. Because like I've described, your characters feel real, the environments and story are captivating, you’ve explained to me how people have said that it helped them, and that’s because it was all coming from a very personal place and a place that you put a lot of thought into…
SG: Yeah, I think that is why people have connected with it so much. Because it feels like a personal thing, and that’s because it is. I’ve put a lot of my feelings into it. And I think I think that comes through because I wasn't trying to manufacture something.
MR: I’d like to rewind a little bit and bring the conversation back to ghosts. When characters die in the game, they really don’t go away. When they die, they just continue in a new form. Why did you have characters like Larry continue to be playable characters in the game even after they die? And why do ghosts play such an important role in the game?
SG: I think it goes back to my fascination with the unknown or the paranormal. And I think something deep inside me, even though it's kind of a dark subject, it's also hopeful. Part of me does hope that there is something after this life. Like when we die that we can continue on in some way. So, I think it's that hope inside of it.
MR: Does it also have something to do with the fact that after somebody dies, they still kind of live on in the memory of the people who knew them in life? Was that something that factored in as well?
SG: For sure. And that is a theme too. Like, Sal dealing with the death of his mom. It's not touched on too much in the game, but you can tell it's something that impacts him. And even though you don't see her in ghost form, you can tell that he still keeps her memory.
MR: Switching gears a bit, I’d like to talk about the music in the game while I still have you. I really loved the score you wrote and performed. There were parts that are very grungy and then there were parts that are very strange and sort of experimental, and they all really add to the atmosphere of the game. Like, even when I had been listening to the score in the Addison Apartment, or other locations, for an hour or more, it would still feel effective at setting the mood for that space.
SG: Yeah, it's kind like the same thing with the writing where I never really wrote music before. I was in a couple metal bands in high school, but that's pretty much the extent of my music background. So writing… however many tracks… I think there's over 40, it was definitely new for me, and I just drew on things I liked. And the big thing I did was to just think about the area of the game where the music was going to be, and the feeling I wanted to convey. So, like, upstairs, on the fifth floor, has a bit more of an eerie, unsettling vibe to it. And then when you're exploring on the lower levels of Addison Apartments, it's like a little grungy, rockin’ kind of vibe, but like low-key. And then for like, the weirder parts… I’m not sure where I drew inspiration from for those… I think I was going for an Annihilation or Under the Skin vibe, those kind of odd, synthy, creepy scores. I think I drew some inspiration from that kind of stuff. So yeah, for me, it was mainly just trying to think of what feeling I wanted to convey or what the vibe was supposed to be in that part of the game, and just kind of playing to that.
MR: Well, like I said, it was very effective. I did not like going up on the fifth floor of the Addison Apartments. And it was specifically because of the score. It reminded me of when I would go to places that I knew I shouldn’t be as a kid, and just being terrified of what I would find there.
SG: That's great to hear because that's exactly what I was going for.