Coming in half-way through development.

Love Surge was the first time I wasn’t present for from the start of narrative development. As of right now, I am mostly in charge of developing narrative systems. So lots of spreadsheets and meetings with designers/ programmers. My secondary function is character development. THAT BEING SAID when we shift into the more game writing heavy stages of development I will be responsible for the implementation of the characters Celci and Mickey.

Making Conversation into Mechanics.

Something that was really important to me when I joined the team of a dating sim was to make something that really felt refreshing and special. Dating sims and visual novels as a whole are a widely untapped medium for storytelling and ingenuity. The team as a whole was struggling because no one wanted to just make a normal visual novel. The problem was, how do we simulate conversation and getting to know someone with mechanics in a way that is fun and authentic?

After working hand in hand with the design team for weeks, what we came up with is a deck building card game that also triggered dialogue.  On the board you have topics of conversation, and your deck is determined by how you build your stats. You try and finish a conversation by playing the correct combination of cards on a topic. While you play your cards you will watch these conversations play out as you play.

Turning Dates into Design.

Which brings me to this mess. Our combination of traditional visual novel elements, rpg mechanics and a card game. Dates are broken up into small chunks, Always starting and ending with a traditional VN cutscene but otherwise occupied by little card gameplay nodes. Peppered between card gameplay, to give players a break, are little skill checks based on stats. These exist to fulfill the role of, for example, stumbling onto a claw machine during a date and trying to win a teddy bear for the person you’re with.

The intention of this complicated web of things is to make dates feel like a truly landmark event. We decided that the core action of falling in love is learning about each other. This structure allows the player to connect with a character in a variety of different activities. Dates are never as simple as just going to a place and hanging out there for a while. We wanted to capture the magic of that experience through this system and I’m pretty happy with it.