Last week, while discussing asexuality in Arcade Spirits, I decided to really sit down and think about what our guiding principles are — our fundamental rules of writing, a sort of contract with the player which dictates what we are aiming to deliver and what you can expect from us. This is a useful tool for any author, really, to ensure they’re consistently delivering on their original goals. Whenever you have something that sticks out, doesn’t feel right, or acts as a wonky convenience to keep the plot moving forward… it’s probably breaking one of your rules. So, it’s best to write them down somewhere so you can refer to them later and determine what parts of the story aren’t working.
Let’s go over what our pillars are that support the structure of Arcade Spirits.
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- We’re inclusive by not restricting player choice of romance.
- We want you to be able to choose how to react to things around you.
- There should be clear signposts for easy decision-making.
- One tale, with your own personal path chosen from beginning to end.
Or, to go into greater detail…
1. INCLUSION THROUGH LACK OF EXCLUSION
We’re strong proponents of the LGBTQ+ community, and want to make a game which allows them to make the choices they want to make regarding romance (or lack thereof). Too many games restrict the player to only certain options based on your hard-set character gender — we don’t want to do that. Whenever possible we want to let the player’s /actions/ be open and free, without reading any specific motive into them.
To break it down as a working example, let’s say you want to date Gavin. Okay, go romance Gavin. Done. Doesn’t matter what pronoun you picked, what skin color you picked, anything whatsoever. As long as your personalities mesh and you built up your relationship… he’ll be into you, and the game will let you do as you please.
This is a subtle two-edged sword, though. By essentially rendering your sexual orientation and Gavin’s orientation moot (they’re both always pointed in “right” direction for you) are we truly representing LGBTQ? It’s not a story of a gay man or a bisexual woman or an aromantic asexual or anything anywhere between, around, under, above, or through. It’s just a story of two people in love. Player agency and actions go without explanation.
We took a poll of our readers early on to ask them how they wanted this handled, and this was the overwhelming favorite approach: inclusion simply by not excluding anyone. For a lighthearted romantic comedy, we feel this pillar works just dandy.
2. ROLEPLAYING REACTIONS
We want to offer more choice and consequence than most visual novels. (Note we rarely provide ‘fail states,’ this is more about HOW you choose to succeed and what that says about you as a person.) Very frequently the player will be called on to react and respond to the world around them — and those reactions help build up personality scores, which other characters respond to and allow you to deploy for special moments where you must play to the archetype you’ve self-chosen for yourself.
We also want to make sure your choices are never vague or misleading; if you pick “I think you should run” it doesn’t mean “You should run… AWAY FROM MY BULLET!” and then you shoot them. While we can’t one-to-one match these, as the choice menu UI is size-limited, we’ll do our best to make sure the same tone is conveyed in the actual response.
This isn’t to say you have absolute control over everything your character says — but those moments where you don’t have control are typically passive reactions and comments. We prefer to let the player choose when they have to express an actual opinion or make a decision, with simple and neutral game-specified dialogue happening between those reaction points.
3. CLEAR SIGNPOSTING OF DECISIONS
Too many visual novels offer you very vague choices, like “Eat toast for breakfast” or “Go do morning exercises.” And if you picked toast, well, now you can’t romance Hiroko-chan because you missed her event. These games can only be played alongside a wiki or a walkthrough because it’s entirely unclear what the consequences of your decisions will be.
Arcade Spirits isn’t like that. We want every decision to be clear — if not in what the results will be, at least in how it will further your storyline with a particular character. If you have to choose to spend time with Hiroko-chan or Misaki-chan the game will straight up say something like “Eat toast with Misaki-chan” or “Do morning exercises with Hiroko-chan.” We want to take the vague guesswork out of your decision making and let you seriously ponder how you want to proceed forward, knowing full well what you can expect to get into along the way.
Even when deciding what to say to a character, it should be clear (if you’re paying attention to their personality, their hopes, and their dreams) what sort of responses they’ll approve of and which ones they won’t. Generally speaking 2/3rds of the responses at any given moment will be okay with a character; the other one they may balk at, but we won’t SUBTRACT score from the relationship. You simply don’t earn anything for that interaction other than building your personality towards your favored archetype.
4. MANY PATHS TO THE SAME ENDING
Arcade Spirits is a tale of the rise of a small arcade, and the dreams of those within. The story is not massively branching in the sense that it can take a wild left turn which only you will see based on whether you ate toast or did morning exercises. It has specific episodic tales, character arcs, an overall plot, and generally ends in the same place for everyone.
But the kicker is that since many smaller branches within that tale are exclusive options, YOUR path through the story will be unique to you. Who you spend time with, how you choose to solve problems, what personality traits you express… there are hundreds to thousands of unique combinations. You could sit down and watch a streamer play this game but still have a completely different experience when playing by yourself, because you might take a new approach to any given situation. While the story is the story is the story… it’s also, in a way, YOUR story, told by you. Make it your own.
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These four pillars are what we’ve built this game on; inclusion, roleplaying, clarity, and variety. And if you’re a $5+ Patreon backer and ever feel we’ve broken one of these pillars, let us know! That’s terrific feedback. We may not be able to adhere to them 100% but we’ll do our best to make sure we can deliver on these four things, so you can have the best experience possible. Thanks!