Indie Game Development for a Writer

Hello. On the great expansive frontier known as the World Wide Web, I'm known by one of two names, either SchwerMuta, or SetaBlaze. These names aren't relevant yet but who knows what the future will hold? I sure didn't on June 15th, 2021, when a friend of mine showed me resources for a little tool I had bought a long time ago by the name of SRPG Studio, which sent me tumbling through a downspiral that has led me here, writing this post now as I speak.

Let's back up a bit further though. The year is 2005. I'm 16 years old and I meet a wonderful woman that's aspiring to be a novelist. She teaches me everything I know, from prose, to structure, to plot hooking and resolution. I admired her; we didn't have the best interpersonal relationship, but I owe my skill to her. I would spend the next half of my life perfecting this skill. I would write fanfics to start with, then I would go on to pen my own original story... and then rewrite it another five or six times from the ground up. I would get hired to do freelance journalism, I would write articles, short stories, and begin having greater aspirations. I wanted to publish my own novel, but I wanted something more, something... closer to my childhood. A childhood I spent the vast majority playing video games due to circumstances.

I wanted to be a game developer.

My novel is centered around a little country called St. Ronika, on a grander continent named Eirea. Sound familiar? I always wanted to expand on that setting and I always loved strategy games, particularly Fire Emblem. It was the perfect blend of 'casual' and 'deep' in terms of it's strategy. Nothing too complex, in depth or nail bitingly difficult, even on the hardest settings, but still engaging enough that it made me think about my choices and got me thinking on how to proceed. So, I thought an SRPG like it would be the perfect outlet for a story that involved all of Eirea, something that took the protagonist on a continential tour of sorts, while also fleshing out the war between nations that was often mentioned in the novel.

Oh what good fun did I not realize I was going to have.

It's been rough! Adapting my usual 'novel-like' style to pure dialogue boxes, utilizing the game's engine to try and get back the 'show' part of my 'show and tell' modus operandi, trying to craft a well balanced and fun game on top of that all... it's a vastly different experience to just hitting the keys on a keyboard and seeing what came out of my brain noodle. I've received a lot of feedback since I released R0 to the public. Feedback on my story has been most fruitful; it was the product of an idea I had about ten years ago and never really improved upon until I got this chance. Before releasing it, the story obviously underwent a lot of revisions, and I do mean a lot. But even then, the story needed more so. Much more.

My strength in writing has always been in characterization. In my novel, there's a couple of grand, overarching plots, but each scene revolves around the observations of the story's protagonist, one Samantha Colanthe, as she idly and mentally comments on the world around her, and tries her hardest to socialize with others in a world that's idyllic, yet more crapsack than she'd like it to be. The novel introduces a set of six other characters, each with their own issues, their own quirks, and their own stories, and their character hits hardest when the grand plots start going into full swing and are dealt with by way of character arcs, where each protagonist gets their story, their character, told over a singular chapter that has them overcoming their problems to aid with the grander plot as a whole. It's still undergoing a lot of refining, but at the very least, I've captured the attention of my friends and am interested to see what other attention with it I could catch.

But then June 15th, 2021 happened.

The idea was that I could take advantage of my strength by utilizing a popular concept from a series of games called Fire Emblem, the 'support conversations.' I always felt like support conversations were the strength of the characters in most fire emblem games from Binding Blade onward, and it really showed in Awakening and Fates. I thought that if I could nail this particular aspect, I'd be golden, because I was confident in the rest of my story. Oh, blissfully ignorant me, not realizing that the main story is, in fact, the bulk of the experience, and where everywhere will first look, with support conversations being the supplemental stuff that only a small fraction will see. I found myself inserting a lot of supplemental scenes that were free to view before most chapters, to help characterize the side characters more and garner interest in these support conversations, but still yet, the main story is what absolutely everyone will assuredly see first and foremost and that is where my focus should have been from the very beginning.

You see, I also opted to have permanent death in my game. A grave mistake, this would affect my writing of the main story for the year to come. I was never able to guarentee that a particular character would be alive for a given period that I would want them, and for some characters, this turned out to be a deal breaker; I needed characters like Cliffton, Chelsea and Sienna alive for very important main plot reasons and thus, they stole the spotlight from other characters that could die but could still be relevant, such as Angela, Aleamor and Eleanor. As a result, if you could perish, your stake in the main plot after you were recruited was pretty short. This stifled my ability to write. On one hand, it meant that I could focus on a smaller group like I was used to, but then it also meant that all these auxillary characters felt throw away, like stat sticks that you just had on the field because their numbers were high. I needed to fix this.

I'd been putting more effort into support conversations since, but it's a slow process. There's a total of over 40 recruitable characters in R0 in the full planned game, and they all support with the vast majority of the rest of the cast. The total number of support conversations is a whopping 1,628! This is a lot! I'm only done with about 200 of them, but on the other hand, I'm also done with a massive 200 scenes. That is also a lot! I've been thinking lately on how I could better present this kind of information for the future. Maybe once you've cleared the game once, you can unlock every support conversation immediately for viewing, provided you recruited every character? (Barring two, but I'll get into that later)

Now, I know what you may be thinking. "Isn't that scope just a little too large for one person?" Yes. Yes it is. My husband is ghost writing a small number for me to help with it, but it's a small number. That said... I love writing. I adore it. I love it enough to make it my life. That is why R0 focuses on that aspect of itself, over the immense quality of life I've given it, over the smooth gameplay loop, over the art I've done and paid for it... the writing is R0's main draw, and that is because I love writing more than anything else. Over a thousand and a half of scenes is a lot, but I wouldn't have it any other way. That just means I have more and more fun with developing this game. It's a long process, but a fun one, and I feel like if you're having fun developing a game you love, then you've made it.

I still have a long way to go, however. The main story still needs a lot more polish. The gameplay itself I've polished to a fine, fine sheen, but the story, it's main selling point, is starting to lag behind as a result. I need to find more exposition for the main story, especially at the beginning, I need to include more characters in more scenes, and I need to deliver the game's plot twist in the later half of it with impeccable timing and execution. I need to hook the readers, keep them interested, and then send them to the edge of their seats when they get to the pivotal points of the story. More than that, I need to present Laelynn as the character I always dreamed of her to be.

Laelynn is a character very close to my heart, and it probably shows in much dialogue you see of her. In a similar vein, Samantha is a character very close to my heart because I write the novel she stars in from her perspective, with her commentary on everything around her being the hook that draws you into the deeper story. Laelynn's purpose is supposed to be much of the same, and I've failed in that regard. But it's nothing I cannot fix. The thing about stories is that they never start out perfect. They start as drafts. One draft comes, then another, then another, and so on until you finally get the product you're confident in. A good story starts an idea, and only becomes a story after so many revisions. Each act of chipping at the stone to carve a statue is a draft, and that's a lot of drafts. But that is how a good story happens.

In reading Laelynn's dialogue, you can tell that this story comes from the heart. It is a project of passion. And it's that the story comes from her own perspective that you can see how big this story becomes. I've not given that same attention to the other characters, many of whom can come off just as one dimensional as many of Fire Emblem Fates' characters. But I'm trying to change that. It can be hard; many characters just don't have stock in the plot. Jaspar, a future recruitable character, exists merely to give a mechanical option to Zilith, another Shaman, and it's been tough not just writing 'Henry from Awakening.' Aleamor and Eleanor, characters who should have a greater stake, only exist one at a time; you choose one or the other, and you never see the unchosen sibling again. It's even worse for Lawfer and Talia, Soldier characters who only one can be chosen, down a side chapter you're not guarenteed to stumble upon. For characters like these, it's hard to find an opportunity to put them in the lime light.

But all the same, I must try. The characters of R0 are supposed to be the highlight and though it sounds like I'm just trying to be the next tired Fire Emblem, I want to make something more, write something more than that. I don't know if I'll succeed, but I can still say; I tried. At the very least, I'm confident I can make Laelynn into a character you will remember, so long as you experience the story I've written for R0.

In the future, I'll definitely tone it down... I'd like to start writing Visual Novels. I've always loved reading japanese VNs such as Tsukihime, Kanon, Rewrite and Aokana, and they largely shaped the style of writing I showcase today. I have a lot to write, so I'll be doing this for some time yet. Visual Novels just feel like the perfect medium between 'game development' and 'writing' that I can handle, at least... on my own. I certainly know how to code, but the stress of developing a game, especially with a perfectionist nature that I have, is often too much for me.

If you've been following my Twitter then you probably already know a new revision of R0 is coming soon, with a much better looking tileset. This update will also involve transparency with growth rates, a previously mentioned option to chance the message box size, and, most importantly to this post, revisions to the main story and a lot more support conversations actually written. Stay tuned, I promise you won't be disappointed.