Self-taught Sudbury game developer releasing sequel to popular game

Sudbury's Chris Larue went from a job as a truck driver to becoming a full-time indie game developer.

And now he's working on a sequel to his first game, Tall Poppy, a short horror comedy in which the player character goes to a graveyard looking for his wife's purse, and is chased by an old grave digger named Tall Poppy.

"It's a fun-house comedy game, a comedy horror in a first-person perspective," Larue said. "You walk around and discover new locations and try not to get killed."

The original game came out in 2019, but remained obscure until last Halloween, when it was featured in a number of TikTok videos.

According to its listing on the indie game website itch.io, it was a top seller on the website for a seven-week period in 2021.

It has received positive user reviews on the website, and on the popular PC gaming platform Steam.

"I really liked the game!" wrote itch.io user iChelleWin. "Though I was losing my breath at all the jump scares, it was actually pretty funny."

With that success, Larue said he wants the sequel, Tall Poppy 2, to showcase his skill as a self-taught programmer.

He learned todesign every aspect of a video game, from programming to graphics, by watching YouTube videos.

"Well, the first game is short. It's basically like a tech demo of my skills, but this game is going to be what really classifies me as a game developer," he said.

"So I'm taking all the things I learned, all the mistakes I've had in the past, all the iterative work that I've been working on. And this is going to be the showcase of what I can do, I suppose."

The sequel picks up right where the first game left off. The player returns home, with their wife's purse in hand, but discovers she is missing. They have to find her and rescue her from Tall Poppy.

While the first game could be completed in around 15 minutes, Larue said Tall Poppy 2 will take two to three hours to beat.

Larue said he plans to release the sequel later this year.

"We're going to produce a demo and a full fledged trailer in another couple of months," he said. "And we just want to make sure everything's feeling good and looking good."