Are you a brick or a builder?

A woman made of leaves asks you this question in City Of Muse, a little-known seaside walking sim released in 2021. "What are you: a brick or a builder?" she says. It's a question I have often remembered, from a tiny game, likely long forgotten by the few who played it.

As Wall Week comes to a close, I want to take a sincere moment at the end of our overextended joke to talk about what we are building here at Jank, and why a paywall is more than just a turnstile charging an entry fee. This article is not paywalled - you're invited in.

When we talk about videogame walls for Wall Week, we're not always thinking of them as a divider. Even our own paywall, which is as porous and reliant on good will as any other, isn't meant to be some impassable and offensive barrier. If I build a wall in Age of Empires 2, or fix a broken one with a team of multiplayer engineers in Foxhole, I'm keeping my enemies out. But when I build a castle rampart or a cabin wall in Minecraft, I'm thinking of the future, a better time when I'll be safe and houseproud (castleproud?) enough to invite and entertain guests. It's this latter wall I want our paywall to be. This wall is not meant to lock people out. It's there to keep the roof over our heads.

So, if you have chosen to start paying for a Jank subscription this week (or if you gifted one to a friend) - thank you. You're essentially paying taxes toward our little realm.

Colourful metaphors aside, Wall Week is a silly joke we came up with to justify our demands for cash. But there is something earnest behind it. As we celebrate the dry brick textures of Counter-Strike or the zappy deathwalls of Dishonored, or even when we retrospectively stroke our chins at the era of waist-high walls and the trundling animations of Wall-e, what we're really doing is appreciating (in our admittedly weird and specific way) the silent craft of developers and artists across the planet. 

At a time when physical media is dying, livelihoods are being ransacked, AI is eating the planet, and any idea of ownership is dissolving into the depths of our glowing screens, it's important to remember that these illusory and ethereal worlds are nevertheless built by real people. By builders.

Which brings me to City Of Muse. In this short, free game you navigate the sunny streets of a post-disaster coastal town. All the residents have been mysteriously turned to ivy. By the time you meet the leafy woman who asks you the above question, you are lulled into a state of quiet appreciation. The game's title is accurate. Whoever built this city was inspired. 

I played the simple walking sim for the ten whole minutes it takes to saunter from the top to the bottom of its warm, twilit town. It is very likely you have not heard of this game until today. It was not especially spectacular or attention-grabbing. But that pointed question - are you a brick or a builder? - has stuck with me for years. Maybe it was the stressful career wobble I was suffering through at the time, or maybe I was just wistful that evening. Whatever it was, this line forced me, out of nowhere, to reflect. Did I want to be a brick - another nameless component holding up the edifice - or did I want to actually build things? 

For this reason (and many others that are not "a free Itch.io game told me to") I embarked on a sidequest to become a level designer - which eventually resulted in exactly one level design credit to my name. Not exactly a wild success story, but a tiny dream realised nonetheless. I came back to writing but the itch to build remains. So I will build. Not ancient tombs and sci-fi city streets, but a new career, reformed out of the foundations of the old. Maybe a little more laid back this time, a bit less ambitious. Imagine 16th-century Romans making a nice cattle paddock out of the ruins of the ancient imperial forum. This is, at least partly, what Jank is to me. Yes. You are standing in my cow field.

My point is that we're all building walls, and we're all doing it on top of something or someone who came before, inspired and supported. We are building Jank on the old, foundational ideas of an independent press, and we are supported by you. Just as someone at Matima Studios built the ivy -coated walls and terracotta rooftops as Unreal Engine assets that in turn allowed the creator of City Of Muse to build their own small, ghostly town. The walls of that city were laid if not brick by brick, then at least mesh by mesh; if not to last forever, at least to last a lifetime in a single player's memory. 

Collision is the bedrock of game design. A wall is a boundary, sometimes passable, sometimes immovable, always necessary. Let this week stand as a reminder to all creators that even the most overlooked games - and the most overlooked elements within a game - are essential. May your walls be built to last.