Archives for February 2018

Not much in development news to share for Arcade Spirits; we’re grinding out minor fixes, content updates, and finalization of the dating scenes in 05 for the March Patreon milestone. It’s funny, when you play it it’ll feel like maybe a third of a chapter, but that third had to be written eight times over. One date per major character, plus an option to just chill by yourself if you’re not in the mood for lovin’. So it’s a ton of work for not much payout… but that payout is unique to you and your path through the game.

So, in lieu of some major content drop this week, let’s philosophize:

Is our game a visual novel?

We’re certainly using the visual novel style — character art, dialogue box, click through, pick stuff off choice menus. We’re using a visual novel engine, too. But we’ve got a few key differences which nudge us towards one subgenre, away from another, then down a different road entirely.

First of all, we’re using “date sim” style game mechanics, where your interactions are scored and can be tracked. Not just flags, but a numerical score based on how well you’re getting on with someone, and how your personality’s shaping up. I’ve heard some VN veterans say “date sims are not visual novels” so… apparently we’re not a VN? Sure feels like a VN, though.

Second, we have tons of interactivity. You’re constantly deciding how your character reacts to what’s going on around you… deciding who to spend time with, how to solve problems, even just what words you want to use in an otherwise trivial little conversation and what those words say about you as a person. Many VNs offer little or even no choices whatsoever; we’re going the Bioware/Telltale route instead.

Lastly, no routes. Many VNs will have few choices, but those choices send you down wildly different branching paths… often with no visible signposting. Picking “eat waffles for breakfast” could, for no logical reason, mean suddenly you can’t date Hiroko-chan anymore because you aren’t on her “route.” Our game has a lot of leeway for screwing up, saying the wrong thing, picking different options and still arriving at your chosen romance. You can’t accidentally step off the route. You can completely alienate someone and have no chance with them, sure, but you almost have to work at it to do that.

So, if we’ve got some actual game mechanics, lots of roleplaying, and no hard-set routes… what are we? A visual novel? A narrative roleplaying game? An interactive comedy? An eggplant? I don’t know. But I gotta figure this out because, uh, PAX is coming and I need an elevator pitch which isn’t soaked in too many genre buzzwords. Yikes.

We’ve been sharing a lot of Arcade Spirits art lately, but not much music. Let’s fix that. Have a listen!

Enter “Neon City,” the track which plays at the start of most chapters of the game. It speaks of the bright optimism of life in the unspecified city where Arcade Spirits takes place.

I was tempted to upload this one to YouTube but we haven’t even touched the idea of the possibility of the notion of a proper game trailer, and I’d hate to have that be our first and only non-screenshot media.

I’m looking to cut together a proper trailer soon, though. We’ve got a public demo releasing in early April, before PAX East, and, uh… I’ve never made a video before. I have the tools, so maybe I can learn? Unless someone reading this wants to volunteer or knows someone who can cut together screenshots and art assets into a quick promo video hint hint wink wink?

Meanwhile, enjoy the fine musical stylings of Greg Mirles. If you like it, scope out his bandcamp page. Seriously good stuff, yo.

It’s been some time since we did a proper art update for Arcade Spirits. (Which now has a swanky new website!) So, let’s rectify that. Here’s some new artwork which was introduced in this month’s Patreon build, which you can play if you’re backing at the $5 or up level!

We begin our tale at DonnaWood, the mansion of an 80s pop idol. It’s been abandoned for years and is going to ruin, but the treasure trove of classic arcade games underneath is being auctioned off…

Overseeing the auction is the enigmatic and Rich-as-Creosote Hamza (aka Sir Not Appearing In This Blog) who tells the story of the MTV queen.

While the place is in pretty bad shape, and, well, the games are in pretty bad shape too… Naomi’s super excited, all the same!

And hey, some of the games apparently still have power! So let’s take a few minutes to kick back and enjoy one of them. You’ve earned it through your hard work and effort, right? Right.

Fun and games, indeed.

All this thanks to the excellent background art by Taylor Rose and character art by Molly Nemecek.

Oh, and if you want a sneak preview of the music of Arcade Spirits, we’ve got you covered over on Twitter. I strongly suggest following our twitter feed; we’re using it to send out micro-updates like that, between the major blog postings.

Exciting times for us, in the run-up to the April release of our public demo. Stick around, there’s nothing but good stuff ahead.

And by bonanza I mean “two things we could use your feedback on.”

We’re pondering two changes to the UI of the game, and wanted to run them by you, the backers and potential players. See what you think before we plow forward on them.

1. The Quick Menu. That’s this thing, to the right of the dialogue box.

Right now it’s just a series of text labels, which dark-gray themselves out if inapplicable. But we’re pondering making them into icons instead, to be a bit flashier. …or would icons be cumbersome and unclear? We could do pop-up labels when you hover over the icon, but that’s also cumbersome. …or is what we have too plain and functional and you’d like something more in keeping with the visual theme?

Basically, we’re not sure. What do you think?

2. Rollback. Right now, the game allows you to roll back in time with the mouse wheel, re-picking decisions after you’ve made them, etc. It’s handy for catching text or animations you accidentally clicked through, but cheapens the whole game concept that your decisions matter and you should stick to them. We added a “Difficulty Mode” setting, with Easy allowing rollback and Hard disallowing, but maybe we could do better there.

What if, instead of that system, we lock out rollback until you complete the game once? That unlocks rollback for all future playthroughs, and allows you to explore the game now that you already know what to expect. In your first playthrough you can still view text you missed via the History button, but you can’t deliberately turn back time. You can still save and load the game if you REALLY want to go back but you’ll have to manually do that.

We’ve researched a pile of visual novels, and determined half of them allow rollback, but half of them don’t. So there isn’t consensus on this. The Renpy community loathes people who block rollback with a burning passion and made it deliberately hard to implement, but… we’re not making a traditional VN. We have tons and tons of choices and those choices matter. And we’re concerned rollback cheapens that experience.

What do you think? Does unlimited rollback hurt the game, or are you okay with it? Is the current “Difficulty Setting” approach fine enough? What about unlocking it after one playthrough? Or something we haven’t thought of?

…

Okay, that’s all we need from you this week. And as proof we’re listening to feedback, here’s the results of the “how to address sexual orientation” poll we took recently.

• 13 – A quick token Iris explanation
• 4 – Don’t mention it at all
• 2 – Change alignments accordingly

The overwhelming majority were in favor of having Iris offer a quick and token explanation, a simple “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be steering you to anyone who wasn’t into you.” To split the difference this explanation is behind a choice option, so you can simply choose not to hear the explanation if you’d rather it not be mentioned at all.

Your feedback helps keep us on track to make the best possible game we can. Thank you for all your support!