When I sat down and created that first room, inspired by both the game Quake and the movie Cube, I had only one reason to do so: It was fun, my friends enjoyed it.

It was not the first thing I created in Hammer, but it would certainly be - dramatic pause - the last.

I didn't know that I would be sitting here fifteen years later, still uttering that silly name: Halfquake. Or Half-Quake, as I used to write it, but that hyphen gets old real fast, trust me.

Michael recently asked me the following: "Do you feel somewhat trapped in HalfQuake limbo, since it was the most successful project of yours and people keep expecting something similar from you?"

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: You have no idea.

P.S.: Wait for twenty minutes. I'm a dragon. (<

I always try to do different stuff. Between Halfquake Amen and Halfquake Sunrise, I bravely ventured away from the Halfquake theme, resulting in several flash games, a book, and two music albums.

But nothing stuck, so after six years, I went back to making what people wanted.

Halfquake Sunrise was a big deal for me, I've talked about that before. Finishing it was an even bigger deal. Because - what the fuck was I supposed to do now?

During testing phase, a friend of mine once finished Halfquake Sunrise right in front of me. He turned around and told me, "You know, I preferred the style of Halfquake Amen."

You have all these emotions coming up inside your body, like hands shooting up in a classroom. But you turn them all down, and just smile and nod.

You start to think to yourself: "I could do Halfquake Amen 2. It's so easy! People want it, right? People already expected Sunrise to be Halfquake Hallelujah."

But then I try to remember why I created Halfquake in the first place. I think it was supposed to be fun. I'll try that.

Making games is hard. But you know what's harder for me? Not making Halfquake.