In the scheme of things, the Wii-U and 3DS are old consoles at this point - some might even call them retro. Nintendo has, overall, moved on from the systems, with both platform's versions of the eShop shutting in mere days from the time of this writing. With the closure announced in 2022, there was still a backlash from fans who either held onto their systems or had a few titles they'd hoped to grab, particularly via Virtual Console and the indie scene.
Yet there's one developer out there making each system's swansong a memorable one: Jerrel Dulay, the solo developer behind Australian game studio Sungrand and the video game series, Silver Falls. In a single year, racing to beat the 2023, March 27th shutdown date, Dulay has developed everything from 2D pixel platformers to one of the most experimental first-person survival horror experiences ever released. On the cusp of the platform's end, Dulay stands today as the last vanguard of the eShop. We sat down with him to learn what drove him to take on such an immense task, and what the future looks like for Silver Falls going forward.
Dulay credits growing up in the late 80s and early 90s for "fertilizing" his imagination. "We had the Atari 2600, Super Nintendo, the SEGA Genesis - and I feel like that was a generation fueled by the imagination, a sense of creativity in people," he begins. "So even when I didn't have access to tools for creating video games, I was making board games and card games as a kid. And I'd take those to school and play them with my friends."
Dulay knew from the start that the trek to becoming a full-fledged game developer would be considerable. After dabbling with mobile, he took an interest in the 3DS. "I jumped onto the Unity engine pretty early on," Dulay recalls, "and it's not a secret that I've had many development issues with it, especially on 3DS. It was never meant to create complex games on the 3DS, so I'm sort of shaking my fist at God by trying to create these massive scale games using Unity 3DS." He pauses, then adds with a mirthful grin. "It takes a lot of resilience to deal with an engine that doesn't want you to make a game in it."
Rather than be deterred by these issues, Dulay views the limitations as fostering creative solutions. "I think that's the difference," he says, "between someone who stagnates in their craft because they don't have any reason to push themselves, versus people who are using tools that maybe don't work great, but drive personal improvement and find creative solutions. Those are the skills that will stick with you."
Silver Falls wasn't always intended as a swansong for the 3DS, but an attempt to fill the void left by horror developers who'd long since moved on. Dulay is a huge survival horror fan, even buying several friends additional copies of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D so they could play together in multiplayer, only to find the system virtually abandoned by horror games. "And so I thought I'll try to do it myself, and see how it works out," Dulay explains. This would lead to the first official entry in the Silver Falls saga, 3 Down Stars, for the New Nintendo 3DS, in 2019.
3 Down Stars was an incredibly ambitious title, merging elements of Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and X-Files in a story involving mysterious forces and alien abductions. However, a critical hard drive failure close to launch meant that the initial public release was marred with bugs and glitches never intended to make it into the final build.
Working out of his own pocket, Dulay continued to support the game, despite the "brutal" reception. Having spent three years on the title, Dulay explains "I had to learn very quickly - how do I survive this situation with a positive attitude and keep moving forward professionally, when basically every single website that covered it, brutalized the game, and told people to not buy it? I basically earned no money from it within the first two years, which made it very difficult because I funded and developed it internally, all out of pocket."
The adversity helped Dulay develop a resolute attitude to games development. "You can't afford to fall in love with your own product," he begins. "You can't let your product become an echo chamber of itself, especially if it's going to be a brand and a series with many products. You have to be steadfast, and you just have to keep making what you believe in."
That he did. When Nintendo faced down the negative backlash over the announcement of the eShop sunsetting, Dulay seized on the opportunity with a solution, if they'd make a huge exception for Dulay. "It was quite common knowledge that Nintendo stopped accepting new games for these consoles a while ago," Dulay explains. "Nintendo was not obligated to accept new games for the eShop at that point, and in all honesty, they should have said 'no' to me, because it was a significant amount of extra work for them."
The pitch was simple: "I basically told them 'this is a negative situation right now. People aren't feeling good about this. And I'm willing to do the work. Here are the games that I have prepared. If you give me the chance, I'll develop these games, and I'll launch them exclusively for the Wii-U and 3DS.'" To Dulay's surprise, Nintendo of America's representatives took him up on the offer.
From that moment, Dulay had to deliver all his games in time not only to beat the shutdown date, but soon enough for turnaround on certification and final approvals for publishing. It would be a race to four simultaneous finish lines. No small task for an entire studio, let alone one man working on his own.
Despite the immense hurdle, Silver Falls has since seen multiple entries launch on Wii-U and 3DS. Every game planned has hit the deadline, some while this very feature was being edited. The experience has been incredibly heartening for Dulay, saying, "I saw a human side of Nintendo. I'd been a Nintendo customer my whole life, but this showed me that there were actual people in Nintendo that really cared, doing a significant amount of work in order to get these games launched."
"Nintendo was not obligated to accept new games for the eShop at that point, and in all honesty, they should have said 'no' to me."
Each game in the Silver Falls series is a totally divergent experience. There's everything from a first-person crafting survival game and top-down RPG to a homebrew Game Boy playable on actual hardware. Those that have the various Silver Falls titles can also unlock bonus crossover content between the games, such as exclusive characters and content, all with narrative connecting them together. "Basically the games have a code handshake," he tells me. "They shake hands, and they're able to unlock content in each other, and in order to implement a system like that, you have to know what you're doing ahead of time."
Though the reception to 3 Down Stars was less than desirable, Dulay now focuses on the responses he gets from fans, taking their suggestions into account going forward. As for the constantly changing genres, it all goes back to his central design philosophy of avoiding stagnation and pushing himself creatively.
Even his Game Boy Color title, Galaxy Bound Curse, is framed as an old Gameboy game due to its story being set in the late 90s, aiming to merge the presentation with the narrative's time period. "I thought 'this is an interesting way to tell a story'," Dulay says, "We were all so innocent in the late 90s, so to have something traumatizing happen, I think that's an effective way to get someone engaged with the story that you're telling."
The year-long sprint to get these games out was not without significant trials. As a solo developer, Dulay would spend up to 130 hours a week on the various titles. The upside was that, due to working on his own, Dulay is able to stay agile with his products, including making ambitious post-launch updates.
"When I'm creating a game, I'm never just creating one," he explains. "I'm also creating others simultaneously. So if I get to a game, and I'm developing it about 50% of the way, I might take a short break, and then I'll work out another game and develop that to about 20%. That then gives me an idea of how to get those games to integrate with each other in an interesting way." He acknowledges the sacrifices it has taken to get this far, but is proud of the work he's accomplished.
He even goes so far as to unveil one of his most ambitious, and unconventional, titles on the horizon - Silver Falls: Homebrew, with two versions that can only be played on homebrewed versions of consoles. Despite the DIY mindset one will need to experience it, the title is actually about literal beer homebrew, letting you get to know the cast of Silver Falls as you brew them beers, chatting them up in visual novel conversations. It's like an ultra exclusive, UFO-infused spin on Coffee Talk.
As for his current bevy of releases, Dulay is delighted by fan feedback. "Someone said 'I brought my Wii-U to my friend's house, and we played the multiplayer,'" he begins. "Fans are letting me know that they're enjoying the new games. I'm very happy to hear that - you want to hear positive things about something that you worked so hard on." It all ties back to his goal from the beginning - to make the end of an era of Nintendo gaming still feel special.
While there have been requests to potentially bring some of his titles to other platforms, Dulay feels a strong loyalty to Nintendo for all the help they've given him.
In the meantime, Dulay's final 3DS game, Silver Falls: Deathly Delusion, just launched on March 9, and he's currently working on a substantial update to Episode Prelude on Nintendo Switch. It's incredible to think that what could've been a one-off project has now become an indelible part of Nintendo history. Between being the last Wii-U developer on Earth, a self-published tie-in novel, and new games on the horizon, the future is looking bright for Silver Falls.