WHEN WE MADE...


Mickole Klein Nulud, founder and game director at Polychroma Games, tells Vince Pavey everything he can about his point-and-click indie darling Until Then before his memories become unreliable and start to disappear


How do you describe Until Then to people who aren’t familiar with it? Nulud: For today, I’ll choose to describe Until Then as a story about friendships, love, and loss in the guise of the world almost ending, memories being in the wrong place, and things seemingly being out of place. In the end, these larger-than-life elements somehow come together to tackle the raw, human themes of the story.


Mickole Klein Nulud


You could’ve made any video game. What made you want to tell an emotional, coming-of-age story about parallel universes? … and how long did you have to think about how you adapt the process of grief, loss, and acceptance into video game mechanics? Nulud: When doing this multiple timeline story structure, you have to have a reason why time keeps getting reset, and in narrative design where we’re taught to empathize and capture the human condition, there was no other way that seemed better to me at the time than framing it in the context of loss. This story structure excels at showing how the stages of grief work in a nonlinear fashion. So I guess it’s kind of like


40 | MCV/DEVELOP August/September 2025


an “a-ha!” moment but, at the same time, it was through   structure wouldn’t work if the story is not good enough of a match to begin with.


What was the design purpose of the minigames like the ticket machine or the fish-ball stands? Was it just worldbuilding and fun, or? Nulud: Both! For worldbuilding, you get a sense of the atmosphere we’re immersing you in. For fun, ‘cause we  walking around from time to time.


How did you decide on what should be a minigame?


Nulud: For the just-for-fun minigames, we just thought of whatever we think would be funny based on our   goes in.


There’s a lot of Filipino architecture and culture in the story. What steps did you take to avoid shallow


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