It's not often that a game will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about it right in the title, but I think it's fair to say that An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs is nothing if not entirely on the nose.
I first spotted An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, which I am told is okay to abbreviate into the more palatable "Dog Airport Game", at this month's LudoNarraCon - a digital convention dedicated to indie games that emphasize on narrative-driven experiences. As I browsed the list of exhibitors, Dog Airport Game immediately caught my attention due to the sheer absurdity of its premise: You're the last human being left in existence, which makes intergalactic air travel significantly more daunting due to an irreconcilable language barrier. Also, airports are now run by dogs.
What that ends up boiling down to is a mixture of walking simulator-esque mechanics that have you exploring some architecturally challenging airports as you complete fetch quests (since they're for dogs), solving puzzles, and eventually catching your flight. Then on to the next airport. Rinse and repeat.
Yes, you can pet the dogs.
After spending a fair amount of hands-on time with the demo, I was left feeling a tad bewildered, if not slightly underwhelmed, by the whole experience. I wasn't sure what to make of Dog Airport Game, mostly because I felt as though I was on the outside of a conceptual inside joke, and my confusion was the punchline. Fortunately, a brief Q&A with creator Xalavier Nelson Jr. helped to clarify some of my initial observations, as well as shed light on the more artistically nuanced aspects of the game.
First and foremost, I wanted to know the why. For a game that at times struck me as being more of a statement than anything else, I had to know the inspiration behind it. According to Xalavier, Dog Airport Game was always intended to make airports, or rather, their often-times contradictory nature, its central focus. However, the "run by dogs" part was something that came about, somewhat by accident, later on during the game's development.
"I've been in enough airports to break my brain", Xalavier tells me. "[Airports] are these artificial ecosystems [with] self-contained stores and ways to exist that are both made by humans and inherently hostile to humans. There's no good airport. There's not a single good airport. But all airports are both good and bad. They're in a quantum state while you observe them. They're weird - they're weird places! There's suspicions that some airports are like fronts for like devilish cults and conspiracy theories - like the Denver International Airport. I can't speak to that - I know nothing about that - which is actually what I'd say if I was part of the conspiracy, but I'm not. The point is, Airports - I've spent a lot of time in them. I've accidentally circumnavigated the globe. They've broken my brain in the process. So I wanted to make a game called "Airport for Aliens" where you would explore these alien environments - be surrounded by these aliens you couldn't really talk to and you had to decode their language and like find out how to navigate this as a traveler in a strange land."
I've been staring at this sign for so long I'm afraid to ask what it says
Apparently, Airport for Aliens was a game that Xalavier had been wanting to make for years, but it wasn't until he received surprise funding from New York University, as part of their Game Center Program, that he was able to move forward with the project. With funding, all that was needed to turn his vision of a game about alien airports into a reality was a bit of technical guidance. For this, he enlisted the help of programmer Tom Vinita, who assisted Xalavier in learning the ins and outs of the Unity engine. Tom also provides all of the "voice acting" for the game's many canine NPCs.
How "An Airport for Aliens" would later evolve into "An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs" is an entirely separate story, which Xalavier admits came about partly due to his inexperience with the Unity engine.
"As a joke to myself I stuck in a public domain stock photo of a Jack Russell Terrier. I didn't quite know how large the dog is supposed to be in comparison to the human body, or a player, so when I press play on this game for the first time with this photo of a dog stuck in as a joke to myself, the next thing I know there's an eight foot tall Jack Russell Terrier towering over me, following me with its face asking me if I wanted a ticket to Uranus, and I was like 'dang, this is the game I could be making. This is a game that makes me happy just to make it - am I allowed to make a game that makes me happy to make it? Is that legal? Can I do that?' the result was, ya know, I pivoted. It went from 'An Airport for Aliens' to 'An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs', and I'm exponentially happier with the game that I'm making as a result"
Photo Dog is a Time-Lord. It's Canon.
One of Airport Dog Game's quirkier features, and there are many, is its use of those aforementioned stock photos to represent the game's NPCs. It's a bold move, to say the least, and could easily be interpreted as a concession made in response to a lack of technical know-how or the game's limited budget. However, I'm told that the decision to use stock images is entirely intentional and is simply meant to add an additional layer of humor. Perhaps so, but I pointed out that the inclusion of stock images in place of animated NPCs, in conjunction with the game's many other surrealist-leaning elements, creates an atmosphere reminiscent of those old Adult Swim cartoons that would only air at three in the morning. To my surprise, Xalavier not only acknowledges this observation, but embraces it.
"[The game] is deeply ingrained in that same sort of absurdity that you did see in [those] Adult Swim cartoons. That sense of absurdity given surreal life and taking sometimes an intentionally low budget. Could we [animate the dogs]? With a certain budget, yes, but it wouldn't be as funny. Those Adult Swim cartoons took limitations that they put on themselves and used it to create legitimate weird art of the scale and likes that we haven't really seen again, and taking that process and applying it to a video game is something that excited me on every level - creatively, financially - I'm not a rich man by any means, but I can take some stock photos of dogs and build a world around them with the assistance of incredible, talented people and I get the opportunity to do that, and I am deeply thankful for it."
Having heard directly from its creator, I feel as though I have a more profound appreciation for where Dog Airport Game is coming from as a satirical, highly surreal work of art. Although it may have at first appeared to be a somewhat random, thrown together assortment of pre-existing assets, it would now seem as though these elements are a bit more intentional than first thought. That said, it will certainly be interesting to see how An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs continues to evolve over time.
