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We’ve got final art for Chapter 05, “Under the Boardwalk,” and I thought I’d share it with y’all because I know the thirst is real.

But it wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I just tossed up some pictures, so let’s toss up some words, too.

This chapter of the game is based on my own nostalgia for the mid-Atlantic beach boardwalk towns I used to visit as a kid — Hampton Beach in New Hampshire and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, specifically. With white wood trim on the buildings and a long stretch of boardwalk packed with greasy food delights, these tourist trap towns were awash in arcades back in the day.

But beyond nostalgia, this chapter of the game serves as an important milestone in the plot. It’s the first time you really see your friends outside of a work environment. It’s the first time you see interactions between characters who hadn’t interacted before. And importantly, here is where your romance arc begins.

(I say “begins” because we trace the whole arc — from love blooming to having a spat to resolving issues to finding a future together. Too many romance stories stop after ‘love blooming’ and lean hard on ‘happily ever after’ to say that they’ll never have trouble, ever. Which ain’t reality, bucko. Gotta show the up and the down.)

I’m looking forward to sharing this chapter of the game with you when it launches in early 2019. (If you’re an impatient sort, Patrons at the $5+ tier will get an early version of the chapter — story is basically finalized aside from some tweaks, art is mostly final with some placeholders.)

Grab your surfboard, load up on tokens, eat an inadvisable amount of boardwalk fries, and let’s have some fun!

Arcade Spirits has been growing by leaps and bounds! Does my anxious little heart good to see those demo downloads and website visits rising. New Twitter followers, new retweets, and even new Patrons! Word’s really getting out there, and that’s super great — it helps ensure that when this crazy thing finally launches into the wild, it’ll get the response we’ve been hoping for.

So, if you joined our little community recently — welcome! We’ve got a lot of different things you can dig into, depending on what you like to do…

• There’s the Developer Blog, weekly posts every Monday with a peek into development and our thoughts on the whole thing.
• There’s our Patreon, where everybody gets early access to the Developer Blog posts, and people kicking in $5+ get beta builds of the game!
• We’ve got a Discord server, where you can chat with the devs and fellow fans. We’re happy to answer your questions!
• And of course there’s the Twitter feed, where I post silly fanfic-like screenshots and links to things of interest to retro gamers and VN fans.

But one thing I’m curious about, especially for folks who joined us in the last month… where’d ya hear of us? We’d love to know more about you! How you heard about Arcade Spirits, what you’ve liked so far, what you want to see more of from us. Feedback’s always welcome and getting to know you helps us out quite a bit, so we know how to make this community better and better.

You can leave feedback in the comments below, tweet at us, chat in Discord, email me… whatever you like! It’s all good. Thanks for being here, and welcome!

Recently, Aenne and Steph from the Arcade Spirits team went to DreamHack to exhibit our game. For this week’s dev blog, I asked Aenne to write up her thoughts. Here they are!

This last weekend, Arcade Spirits found itself in Austin, Texas for DreamHack, a celebration of all things gaming. There were eSports competitions, speedrunning, a pop-up arcade, Artist’s Alley, and in the middle of it all, the IndieZone. And that’s exactly where we found ourselves, one of the four winners of the Best Casual category. It was such an honor being invited to this event and this is the first time showing Arcade Spirits in the convention setting.

This is the first DreamHack I’ve been too, and honestly I didn’t know what to expect. But, overall and, it was a blast! Seeing the overwhelming positive response to Arcade Spirits lifted our spirits in turn. It was great watching people fawn over characters, get excited about a hot new dating sim, and just jam out to the music. We met so many other streamers, those that enjoy visual novels and love streaming them. We bonded over doing the voices, and falling in love with fictional characters. Their genuine excitement made me giddy and I can’t wait to watch everyone’s playthroughs.

One of the things we absolutely adored was watching everyone make their character. Everyone was so different and they all enjoyed going through all the options. Next convention, I’m making a collage of all the “Ari Caders” out there. Unexpectedly, there were a few people that new about us before DreamHack, and that brought me to happy tears. Knowing that our game has reach and people are excited about it is the best feeling out there. Hands down!

In general, narrative games are hard to show at cons. There is always so much external stimuli that it’s hard to concentrate. Having a comfy inflatable chair and noise-cancelling headphones really helped though. Next time we are bringing more inflatable chairs…all the inflatable chairs…never enough inflatable chairs.

DreamHack was pretty amazing. Met so many awesome people and forged grand friendships! I learned a ton and I can’t wait until PAXWest! Hope to see you all there!

I’m getting the June 2018 milestone ready to go for $5+ backers. It’s strange, the way it all came together, and I figured it was worth talking about in this week’s blog post.

Chapter 06 was actually largely written five months ago. We had no art assets, no new characters who are being introduced in this chapter, and I didn’t have entire scenes from my co-author… but the basic structure was there. This is a turning point chapter for the series, where we enter the final act and things start to change. I had it in mind since the beginning of the entire process back in March 2017, so I felt cool with diving in and writing it. And…

…then five months passed. We wrote chapters BEFORE this one, we filled in assets, worked with artists to get things in line. Did business stuff to prep for PAX and more. Readied material for Dreamhack. Had some behind-the-scenes emails flying around that I’m hoping to announce to you soon. And finally, now, 06 is actually being released.

It’s super weird because I’m so used to slamming a book out one chapter at a time. I know most authors don’t do that, they hop around non-linearly and do some editing here and there — they don’t lay down the tracks as the train’s rolling over them. Adapting to this new style is difficult but very important for me to learn as a skill. I think this month’s release will show I’m making progress in that regard.

Anyway, if you wanna join the Patreon, you’ll find a piping hot and freshly baked 06.5 ready for you. Hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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…

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.

TOO LONG; DID NOT READ VERSION

1. We’re inclusive by not restricting player choice of romance.
2. We want you to be able to choose how to react to things around you.
3. There should be clear signposts for easy decision-making.
4. 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.

…

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!

We’ve got a guiding principle when it comes to sexuality and Arcade Spirits: actions, not words. We don’t want to assume motive for anything, we want the player to simply DO what they want in regards to romance, dating, and relationships.

Female character dating Naomi? Sure! We aren’t assuming you’re pansexual or bisexual or lesbian, just that you want to date Naomi. And in the spirit of freedom, we aren’t locking any romances; you can date Naomi regardless of your preferred pronoun. She’ll be into you, because you spent time with her, supported her dreams, and she grew fond of you over time. Period. That heart-to-heart connection matters more than anything else in the world of Arcade Spirits. (We’ll have more on this in next week’s blog post.)

…so what about asexuality? If we’re going to support any orientation by virtue of assuming nothing and allowing players to take the actions they prefer, what about players who want to take the action of inaction?

At first I was figuring “Uh, it’s a romance game, why play aromantic?” then I figured “How hard could it be, given we already have a ‘no romance’ option in chapter 05?” then I realized “Hang on, there are many flavors of ace, from romantic to aromantic and more…” and things started getting complex…

Then I came back around to our guiding principle: Assume nothing. Actions speak louder than words.

So, if you want to play an asexual character, you can. Sex is entirely implied in this game, anyway; it’s not M-rated. Maybe you have a cuddly romance which doesn’t result in sex. Or maybe you’re aromantic and just want to spend a fun evening with your friend Juniper watching movies! We support that, too. All without explicitly stating your motives… you simply do what you feel you want to do with your life, and the game rolls with it.

In fact, we’ve coded this right to the metal, as it were. In chapter 01, Iris asks you if you want to start looking for romance right away. Before, we had two options: Yes! (unlocking day one flirting and romance), Maybe (no day one flirting but romance is available). And now we’ve added a No (no flirting or romance) for people who just don’t want that. Aromantic asexual, aromantic in general, or just a career-driven person who wants a tale of friendship through hardship… regardless, your actions dictate your path. We assume nothing.

And if you’re a $5+ Patreon backer who’s played through the story so far and you don’t see yourself represented… let us know! We’re always looking for ways to expand player expression. If anything doesn’t ring true, let us know. The caveat, of course, being some things are too hard to code… but some things are surprisingly easy to code. And we want to do our best for you, regardless of your sexuality. Inclusion is a virtue.

See you in the game! Hope we can provide a path you’ll enjoy.