STEVE GABRY Chats Taking SALLY FACE From Console to Tabletop

Julia Roth

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Sally Face and a headshot of Steve Gabry.

Some fall in love with video games and spend their entire lives playing them. Others fall in love and make it their whole lives. This can be said for indie game designer Steve Gabry. He has followed his passion from his early years through school to today. Under his studio, Portable Moose, Gabry released his dark adventure Sally Face. And after years of popularity, he is jumping from console to tabletop. Check out everything he had to share about his inspiration behind the franchise, what it was like bringing it to life and his upcoming boardgame Kickstarter for Sally Face: Strange Nightmares.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Steve Gabry

Sally Face wondering if they are dreaming while in a white field.
Sally Face

Julia Roth: Before we dive into the world of Sally Face, can you help us understand how you found yourself in game design? What led you down this path?

Steve Gabry: I think just at a young age, I fell in love with video games, and like, at a certain point, I realized these could be like really cool pieces of art. Not just a simple, like Mario‘s side scroller, nothing against Mario. Mario‘s incredible, but they could really be these fantastic pieces of art. That started my path, and I went to school for game design, which was like really new. And then, after college, I started a little indie studio called Wither Studios. I made a couple of games with them. But then I started my Portable Moose, which is my solo company and made Sally Face, and that ended up taking off. So then, that’s been my full-time job since 2016.

JR: What was your initial drive to bring Sally Face to life?

SG: While I was in college, I had this idea for an animated cartoon, but I had no time for it. The original spark of the idea was a mix of wanting to make something that was a callback to nineties cartoons but darker and weirder. The main character was initially inspired by a dream I had. Finally, ten years later, I had the time to bring this to life. But instead of just doing an animated cartoon, I made a nice adventure game.

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JR: How was designing it? Was this a solo project, or did you contract out parts of the project?

SG: Sally Face is all mine. I’m not a programmer, so I had to learn some new tools like Unity and visual scripting. It was a lot of fun, but my problem is I have too many interests. I like playing music, drawing, and storytelling, but I am sometimes too spread out. But it was well worth spending time learning to code.

JR: Sally Face is a terrific game, so thank you for taking the time to learn to program. What made you want to take it from digital media to a tabletop board game?

SG: The idea was originally brought to me by the company that does all our merch. They knew the guys from Maestro Media and thought it would be an incredible collaboration. And I loved the idea of my game becoming a board game. I also always wanted to dabble in designing a tabletop game, so the opportunity was pretty fantastic.

Sally Face searching through a living room.
Sally Face

JR: Was there anything from the video game that you knew how to be in the tabletop game?

SG: I was pretty open in the beginning. I didn’t have anything specific that needed to be in the tabletop game. But as the design evolved, essentially, it ended up being structured in a way that follows the same storyline in the game but different. It’s not exactly the same, so returning players will have something new to explore. But it will be similar enough that they will have tons of things to recognize and look forward to.

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JR: Was there anything that had to be changed?

SG: The video game is a single-player adventure, but we wanted to make the board game co-op. We were able to make this work since we have four friends who are working together to solve the mysteries found within. And then another noticeable change is the vibe of the Sally Face board game. There are lots of dice rolling to solve mysteries. We have a story deck that gives you the narrative side of the game.

JR: Have you given any thought to expansions?

SG: Definitely, we are talking about expansions. There is a lot of cool stuff we want to explore that follows the same storyline but then branches off on its own. We’ve talked a lot about how we can continue this story going forward with different characters and stories.

JR: So, will we be seeing another video game soon?

SG: I am working on the sequel right now. I’m really early in production, so it won’t be for a few years, but it’s coming.

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Julia Roth
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