Archives for May 2018

This pertains more to folks who choose to get involved with our Patreon, but for Arcade Spirits fans who are considering donating to help our game funding, it’s good info to know.

So, generally speaking each month we release half a chapter worth of content to Patreon. There are skips when business or conventions slow the process down, but that’s the goal. It’s a milestone system similar to how I wrote paperback books and it works pretty well, overall.

But there’s one drawback, and it’s closing in on us fast — what happens when we run out of story, but still could use your generous help to fund art and music assets? Right now we’re poised to deliver chapter 06 across June/July, 07 across August/September, and 08 across October/November. But the game itself is looking like an early 2019 release, because art and music takes a considerable amount of time. What do we do for December and beyond?

Currently we’re promising a game key for the finished product to anyone who contributes $25 or more over the course of development. (We don’t know the final game pricing yet but it’ll be in that ballpark.) But when December hits, anyone who contributes just $5 will get a more-or-less complete game. They might decide “Nah, I’m good” and bail after getting that ‘beta’, meaning long-time patrons are paying more for the same content someone got for peanuts. That’s not fair to our longest-standing fans. How to fix this?

Well, I have a few ideas, and I invite your feedback since you’re the ones paying for this bonus content.

What I’m thinking is that we hold back the final chapter 08 update, the big finale, to ONLY backers who contribute $25+. Basically, if you want the whole story, you need to pay the whole price — the $5 tier becomes early dev blog access only at that point.

I’m also pondering having anybody who hit the $25 lifetime goal get bonuses, like cheat codes, their name in the credits, things like that. Make it really worth your while. Perhaps special highlighting in the credit for someon who’s done $50 or more (there’s a few of you!)

What do you think? Is that fair? I’ll grant we have, like, five months to ponder this particular problem — but I like to think ahead, y’know? Let me know how you feel. This is a weird and non-standard funding model, sort of a hybrid of crowdfunding and early access, I know. But I think if we put our heads together, we can make it work.

In June, Arcade Spirits will level up. We’ve been invited to participate in Dreamhack Austin as a finalist in the Best Casual Game category!

Dreamhack’s a storied game meet-up I’ve always wanted to attend. I remember back in the 90s when it was a demo scene competition in Europe only, flooded with amazing releases by Future Crew and more… then it evolved to be a huge LAN party for competitive PVP gamers. And now, it’s that, plus a thriving cosplay and indie game scene.

The booth is free, but man oh man, we are adulting very hard and dropping some coin to get this going. Getting t-shirts for sale, notably; we’ll have Moopy and Pixel Heart shirts available, identical to the ones Percy and Naomi wear in-game. We printed up buttons for folks to earn by playing the demo. We’ll have banners and signs and more. It’s nuts. (I wish I could go physically, but disability is a pain in the ass — instead Aenne, our co-author, will be present and accounted for.)

All that… and something super secret I can’t talk about yet, not until we’ve bounced a few more emails around.

Honestly, all of this is kinda scary. It’s a whole new level of indie creativity and production, one I’ve never reached before. I probably should’ve been doing things like this for my novels, so I could reach a triple digit audience… but no sense living in the past. This is the now, this is happening now, and I’m ready. Are you?

Two people meet, fall in love, walk off into the sunset, the end. It’s a standard path but not one we want to walk with this game. Like all my stories I like to show the beginning, middle, and end goals of a romance — you earn your happy ending, and your story doesn’t stop just because someone said “I love you.” You need to get through the obstacles in your way… even when those obstacles are each other.

In short: Today, I’m writing an argument between lovers. Specifically Lover #1 being your chosen romance, and Lover #2 being the player character.

This is harder than it sounds, and it already sounds pretty tough. In a linear story where you have full control over the characters you can set up any situation you want where two people get in conflict with each other. But… how do you do it in a roleplaying-driven narrative game where you have freedom of choice? How do you make the player either CHOOSE to have a conflict, or give them a conflict they can’t simply choose to avoid?

It’s a bit of a puzzle, and one I’m tangling with this week. I can’t reveal TOO much without spoilers, but let me give one example of one I’m cooking up, based on what you already know about these characters.

Naomi loves Pengo. Loves it, loves it, her favorite game of all time. She wants to decorate her Pengo cabinet with a statue or something on top to call attention to it, but there’s no Pengo topper out there… so she takes a Pengy, a popular japanese mascot character, and doctors it to look like Pengo. Except the company that owns Pengy is /fantastically/ litigious when it comes to protecting their brand, and has been known to even sue day care centers that paint fake Pengys on their walls and such. She’s going to get the arcade into hot water if she leaves the art up.

So how do we offer the player freedom of choice? My thinking is we have three options. Let her down gently, let her down honestly, or let her have her way. In the first two cases she doesn’t take it very well and an argument breaks out. In the last, she feels happy she got her way, but… Gavin is angry at you for ignoring his advice. And Naomi is wondering if you’re just pandering and caving in to avoid an argument, or if you genuinely feel that way. And thus, an argument breaks out anyway.

It’s not perfect — it’s an illusion of choice rather than a true choice. And I may be juggling this around, this is only my first take at what this encounter could look like. I welcome your input. Can you think of any other narrative games that do arguments well, where you feel you have control but that you can’t simply solve it by saying the right thing? I’m curious. Let me know what you think!

This has stuck in my craw since the very beginning of Arcade Spirits… our character creation system. I was never entirely satisfied with it. From Renpy’s clunky text entry system to the limited palettes to the way the colors didn’t quite reflect the final product, it grated on my nerves like a cheese grater.

I mean, look at this FILTH:

“Doesn’t look too bad,” you might say. “And it’s all on one screen, which is great, right?”

NO! It is FILTH! And I can do better. Behold!

Now, you can adjust each item individually, without any clunk or input errors or accidentally hitting the key that skips dialogue or anything like that. But wait, there’s more! We’ve got expanded color palettes, which more accurately reflect on the character! That pink pastel hoodie and light blonde hair weren’t even possible before!

And now, I feel… cleansed.

Since it’s been ages since we gave the $5+ backers a build, I’m going to whip one up which includes this system plus a number of art and music updates we’ve made since our last build. It won’t import your previous saves since there’s no new story content yet — you’ll get full import and Chapter 06 content in June.

The biz side of things… and the code, as you can see… have really eaten into our writing time. But that’s over. We’re full steam ahead. And there’s so much more to come…