A stand-up comedian from Blackburn spent a year in lockdown designing and making his own videogame from scratch and without any prior experience.
Lewis Costello has been performing stand-up since he was 15 and has performed live shows all across the UK and even abroad in Amsterdam, New York and Toronto.
But when the news came that the coronavirus pandemic would see all venues close for an undisclosed amount of time, Lewis saw all stand-up opportunities dry up.
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Filled with the need to keep busy, Lewis decided to deliver his unique brand of comedy via a different means - videogames.
With plenty of free time on his hands, he uncovered an old sketch from when he was eight years old of an eccentric bird he called Birdbrain.
This drawing from over two decades ago had one important detail written onto it - an imperative to the future Lewis that Birdbrain must be made into a game.
With this in mind, Lewis went straight into designing his game, named after the titular character Birdbrain, despite having no previous experience in game development.
When asked about the lack of experience in game development and coding, Lewis told the MEN: "I had no experience at all. That was the thing that made me think this is going to be completely impossible.
"But I, and this is what I think's quite mad, I found some coding software called Buildbox. And there's other versions like Unity and stuff, but I didn't know about these.
"And even though they're not the easiest thing in the world to get your head around it's like video game designs becoming accessible.
"I'm not technical at all. To be honest I'm useless with computer. But it turns out if you've got patience and if you actually stick to it for a long period of time, anyone can make a game now - a kid could - that sort of blew my mind to be honest."
Lewis said he spent around a year making the game while overcoming many obstacles in the creative process, even calling it quits on some occasions.
"I nearly threw the computer out the window," he said.
"I thought 'I'm done' but then you give it like two or three weeks and you realise you're so into it - you're so invested that you're like 'right one more time'.
When talking about the focus of the game, Lewis noted how he wanted kids to be inspired by the difficulty of Birdbrain.
"When I was growing up I really loved Super Mario and Banko-Kazooie and I really wanted to make something that ticked that box for me where I was like if I could make something that foes alongside those at the moment I think it'd be a lot of fun.
"I think Mario's gotten much too easy. When I was a kid I remember it being really difficult and now I feel like I can literally walk through a Mario game.
"So I thought make Birdbrain a kids game, make it sort of like the Mario aesthetic, but make it annoying, make it difficult.
"I just thought it'd be nice to have a game that looks kid-friendly on the surface like Mario did for me."
Lewis also spoke about the possibility of making a sequel to Birdbrain by building on what he has learned and expanding all the original ideas that he had to scrap in the first game.
Hinting that it could be called 'Birdbrain's Big Adventure, Lewis wants to make his next game more of a platformer, similar to the Super Mario franchise.
Among the ideas Lewis was forced to scrap early in development was having enemies in the game.
"I had this whole Super Mario World kind of grandiose thing that had been scaled down," he added.
"I want to add different game mechanics, more dialogue, more of a varied story and those are the things that sort of get me going now where I think those are so much more doable now that I've got all the basics out of the way."
When Birdbrain was first released on Google Play and the App Store, Lewis noted that constant ads and paywalls were ruining players' experiences with the game.
"On the game now, there are three play modes. I've made it totally free.
"I was playing it for quite a while and I was pretty good at it but people were finding that there's more ad time than actual game time.
"So, I've removed all the ads now and I've taken all the paywalls down."
Now that venues are back open and recovering from the pandemic, Lewis described how excited he is to do standup again.
"I'm doing a tour starting in May and I'm super looking forward to it, to be honest, it'll be good because I started all these side projects really as a means of keeping sane during lockdown.
"So writing a book, for example, and making this game just to give me some sort of structure because I was literally just stuck in a chair.
"But I thought I needed to create the illusion of being busy. But now that stand-ups an option again, it's very exciting.
"So I've been in loads of gigs just in and around the area, little tiny shows. Then, come May, I'm going to be taken around here, there and everywhere and I'm up for it to be honest.
"And when that's done I'm probably going to get Birdbrain fever again."
Birdbrain is currently free to play on Android and iOS devices via Google Play and the App Store.
