Kyle Banks worked as a software engineer before moving to Edinburgh and working on his debut game, Farewell North, which led to his selection as a BAFTA Breakthrough. The game features a border collie journeying through the northern isles of Scotland, restoring colour to the world.
You live in Edinburgh now, but you weren’t born there, right?
That’s right, I grew up in Canada and lived there for 30 years. Then my wife and I decided we just wanted a change. So we sold our house, sold our car, sold everything we owned, and just travelled the UK for a little bit, then landed in Edinburgh. I’ve been here for about six years now.
What is it that attracted you about Edinburgh?
I worked for a company that acquired a little start-up in Leeds, so I was out in Leeds for a few months, and I did some weekend trips. One of those trips was to Edinburgh, and I just absolutely fell in love with the city. I was here at Christmas time, and the architecture, the city, the vibe, the whole thing was just amazing.
In the back of my head I was thinking, ‘I hope my wife loves it there just as much as I do’, and then thankfully when she visited, she loved it. We both felt immediately at home here. But my grandma and my dad are from Glasgow, so getting them on board with the idea of us living in Edinburgh wasn’t so smooth…
The old Edinburgh-Glasgow rivalry!
Yeah, old habits I guess. My grandma hadn’t been back to the UK since the seventies, and she had some maybe outdated opinions on Edinburgh. So she had some choice words. But we absolutely love it here, and my family’s been out, and they see the appeal as well.
So tell me about Farewell North. You were working on it for quite some time, weren’t you?
It was in development for 50 months, so just over four years. Not all of that was full-time. I was working as a software engineer for the first three years, and then in the last year I went full-time on the game.
It was born in the COVID pandemic. We had just moved here and had just got into our flat in February 2020, then a month later we had the first lockdown. We had all these ambitions to travel around Scotland, but we didn’t get to do that, so the game was a way to explore the country through research and photos when we couldn’t physically go out and explore. Then it just kind of grew legs. People seemed really interested in it, and it spiralled out of control from there.
It’s like a love letter to a country you barely know.
Essentially, yeah. It was also a really great way to meet people. I met voice actors, and composers, and all these people who were based in Scotland and share this love of Scotland.
It’s one thing to start a project in lockdown, but quite another thing to actually go on and finish it – it must have been hard to get there.
Four years is a long time. I think that was maybe a bit too long. I had been moonlighting on games for ten years prior to that, never really doing anything substantial, never really releasing anything. But as soon as I showed people Farewell North, there was an immediate interest, and that really helped fuel the motivation to keep working on it.
I documented the whole journey on YouTube, and there was a lot of support there, and a lot of people rallied behind the game, offering to play test it and provide feedback, so that really pushed me. When you’re four years into any project, you’re going to start to feel a bit worn down at some points, but the community and the audience that grew around it really helped get it over the line.
You were a software coder for tech start-ups before, so how did you find moving over onto the creative side of coding? Is it quite different?
It’s actually kind of weird how much of the underlying technology is shared between the two, yet how there’s pretty much no crossover between the two industries. So when I tell people from the tech side of things that I’m working in games now, they have no idea what that really involves, what it entails. Even though there is a lot of shared overlap, those industries just don’t really communicate a whole lot.
But I would argue that when you’re working in tech start-ups, especially in a company that’s only ten people, you are required to wear a lot of hats, so there is a similar creative energy. It’s not the same as working in a cubicle at a 28,000-person company where you’re put into a very specific role. You have to be quite creative, and nimble, and adapt.
I guess you have to wear a lot of hats when you’re a solo game developer.
Yeah, I think maybe a bit more so than on the tech side. I definitely wasn’t doing music and sound design and all that kind of stuff before. Games are a whole new world of so many disciplines – and that’s without even thinking about the accounting, marketing, and business side of it. There’s a ton of things that you have to pick up, but I think that’s the joy of it: every day you get to do something different.
Were you surprised to hear that you’re a BAFTA Breakthrough?
Yeah, definitely. I applied as a bit of a long shot, just threw my name into the ring to see what happens.
Why do you think they chose you?
Oh, geez. I don’t know. I think I’m too Canadian to ever speculate! I guess they saw the merit of the project and saw the work and the love that went into that. That would be my hope.
What does it mean to you to be a BAFTA Breakthrough, and how will it help you?
I think it’s always really validating to be seen by your peers. Receiving that kind of recognition is always very humbling and very validating, and it means a lot.
It’s a tough time in the industry right now with funding and publishers, and I think this is the kind of thing that can help you to stand out a little bit, to give your name a little bit more credibility. It’s also really interesting in terms of being able to meet and network with people – it opens some doors.
One thing I keep hearing from people in the industry, despite all the difficulties that people face and the sometimes really long working hours, is that there is a sense of people trying to support each other and build each other up. Have you experienced the same thing?
Yeah. I think if you want to make money, games are probably not the way to do it. I think everyone who’s doing it has a really common shared interest in storytelling and game design, and all these things that bring us together. So there’s definitely a lot of passion there, and people don’t really look at each other as competition: we look at each other as friends and colleagues. It’s a real sense of community.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on something that couldn’t possibly be more different. It is an entirely different genre, game design, everything about it. We haven’t announced it yet – hopefully early next year we will – but it’s coming along really well.
It took four years to make Farewell North, and across the industry people have been talking about how to make games more quickly. Have you thought about ways to speed up development?
Yeah, absolutely. Going back to my background in software engineering, I was able to build a lot of tooling with Farewell North that is being carried forward to my next project. So from day one, console ports are basically done. All my cut scenes and sequencing and all that kind of stuff is ready to go. So you kind of hit the ground running a little bit there, and you’re not spending so much time building those foundations. I’ve definitely seen that pay off in the second game.
No one wants to be spending half their life making a game. We want to be doing things a bit quicker – and making games more quickly allows you to take more risks. The longer you spend on a project, the more of a sure thing it has to be. Whereas when you can do something that doesn’t take so long, you can be a bit more creative with it, you can take bigger risks, and do something that’s a bit more outlandish.
That’s the goal with game number two – to do something wildly different.
What kind of support do you anticipate receiving from BAFTA?
What I’m really hoping is to connect with some people with some narrative, game design, and maybe even screenwriting experience. I found with Farewell North, I became passionate about the narrative side of things, which is something I didn’t realize I was so passionate about beforehand. And that’s something that I definitely want to carry forward into future projects, and I would love to get a bit more insight from people who have that background on best practices and ways to go about things, but also just to share some ideas and get some feedback on what I’m working on.
Part of the reason Farewell North took four years is because I was figuring out what I was making as I went along. I would love to get a sense from other writers about how they structure a project and lay out the foundations of it.
Last question, have you got a dog?
Yes, I do.
Is it the same as the dog in the game? A border collie?
It’s just a chihuahua.
No way!
But she was a huge inspiration, she’s amazing. She’s definitely not your typical chihuahua. She’s 15 years old, and we just walked up a Monroe with her a couple of weeks ago – she did the whole thing herself. She’s been up Snowden. She’s very, very active, definitely not your typical chihuahua.
So she’s kind of an adventure chihuahua?
Yeah. I think the dog in Farewell North is definitely a Chihuahua at heart. People just needed the border collie exterior to buy into it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Discover more about the other members of the 2025 BAFTA Breakthrough games cohort: Stanley Baxton, Sally Beaumont, Mark Choi, and Cara Ellison.
