The Death of Our Wolverine

Cyclops (V.O.): Previously, on the X-Men dating sim. Amanda and I finished writing a design doc, which includes bios of our four main muties and outlines for the first 10 episodes.

When we submitted the design doc to Jessica Delfanti at Dorian (our publisher), I figured there would be notes. After all, Dorian was funding the game’s sprite artwork and marketing the title to their audience on their platform. I imagined our Google Doc would be peppered with comments. “Can we get a premium choice here?” “We need a steamy battle scene in episode 7.” “When the heroes confront the big bad, could they be shirtless?”

But Jess didn’t leave any comments on the doc. Instead, she wanted to have a call to discuss the outline and how to implement it in engine. I was certain this is where the other shoe would drop. She probably had so many notes that typing them up would be laborious for her, so she’d rather just have a Zoom.

For the record, I’m not opposed to notes. Some writers are openly hostile to feedback, like Magneto is openly hostile to bridges, but I welcome and expect it. I don’t always take every note I get – part of being a writer is recognizing notes that will make the project stronger, perhaps in spite of my ego, versus harmful notes that’s veer the project off-course – but I appreciate that game development is usually a team sport. We all have something to contribute, including our publisher. Heck, we probably wouldn’t be making this game at all if Jessica hadn’t reached out to me at GDC, and she’s an expert on dating sims. So I was curious to know what she had to say about our work.

I began the Zoom call by introducing Amanda and Jess, who hadn’t met yet. After hearing Amanda’s credits as a book editor who has worked specifically on LGBT romance graphic novels, she said together we’re probably the most experienced dev team to create a Dorian dating sim. Of course, that’s no guarantee of success, but I think it’ll help that we collectively know our way around game design and romance fiction.

In terms of the main outline, she didn’t have any specific or “nitpicky” notes. Jessica said she was excited to bring our proposal to their lead artist! Hooray, we did it!!

“Unfortunately,” she said, and off in the distance, I could hear the rubber soles of a shoe dropping to the ground.

Ours is not the only game in development at Dorian, Jess explained, and Dorian’s development dollars are stretched thin. Therefore, Dorian could only fund three datable characters to start, not four. If the “pilot” (what they call the first three episodes) proved popular, they would consider creating more original art assets. For example, our fourth hunky hero. This was a very disappointing note. Amanda and I have grown fond of this group of four misfit mutants, and we designed a nice rapport for the group. If we knew from the onset to design a game with three datable leads, we could’ve saved ourselves a let down.

Also, aesthetically, four members is the low end of a hero team. The Fantastic Four and the Ninja Turtles immediately come to mind. That’s not to say there are no hero trios, but the ones I think of are parodies (The Powerpuff Girls), TV oddities (Spiderman and His Amazing Friends), or a subsection of a larger group (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are often a team, but they also form the core of the larger Justice League). This is why we gravitated towards four, which also felt like a nice selection for the player to choose from.

You may recall in a previous newsletter, I said the four heroes we developed were a tough leader, a dashing playboy, a kind outcast, and a ferocious man-beast, all modeled on popular X-Men. Jessica suggested losing the man-beast, our bear-man homage to Wolverine. She pointed out that we had a freak in the lovable outcast and physical strength with the leader, so our man-beast was kind of an overlap in terms of romantic fantasy. Point taken, but can we really make an X-Men inspired game without a Wolverine? He’s the most popular character in all X-Men media. It’s either him or Deadpool. Speaking of money, Wolverine and Deadpool co-lead a movie that just made over $1 billion dollars globally. If that’s not a popularity indicator, I don’t know what is.

After the call, Amanda and I discussed what we wanted to do next. One option was to take our (fast-)ball (special) and go home? Dorian wanted us to tranquilize our man-bear! We could scrounge together the funds to make this whole game independently, but the art assets won’t come cheap, and programming the game ourselves will take time and more sweat equity, even with tools like Ren’Py to make it simpler. Our hope was to launch on Dorian, see if there was momentum for our game, then potentially create an enhanced version of the game for Steam.

Another option was to choose a different character to cut. A team leader is too much of a pillar to the team dynamics. Jessica really gravitated to our outcast. We loved him, too. Perhaps the pretty boy wasn’t as integral to the team? But as a character with the most active libido, he would ground the action in romance, which is the core appeal of a dating sim.

Ultimately, we decide to stick with Dorian, but we wouldn’t put down the beast-man entirely. Instead, we’d use some comic book storytelling and tease the character. In our design doc, we already wrote that goes on days long periods where he becomes a deadly and ferocious bear, and when he reawakens as a human, he has vague, but violent memories of what happened. So we decided to weave in references to our Wolverine throughout the pilot, to build anticipation for him, then we’d debut him in a big way. Not unlike the way Deadpool was a relatively minor villain in Marvel comics, but over time fans gravitated to him via small guest shots. Or the way Thanos’ debut was teased in multiple movies via the MCU.

Ultimately, we decided we could make lemonade out of claw-sliced lemons. There’s also another benefit to doing this. It makes the fictional universe of our game feel larger, full of characters as-of-yet unseen. That said, it’s definitely a risk launching an X-Men type project without a Wolverine at the center. We’ll need a little more luck. Anyone have Domino’s number?

It’s not a surprise that our Wolverine had a healing factor that allowed him to survive. But Jessica had one other major note. It wasn’t about content, but about the creative process for working on a Dorian game. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before and I’m fascinated to try it.

📨 Next Week: I’m taking a week off to celebrate my birthday! 🎂 In two weeks, the second half of our call with Jessica.

🎲 Your Turn: What’s your approach to handling creative notes? Is there a note you received that was particularly memorable? Reply to this email or hit the orange comment button below to tell the whole world.

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