Cyclops (V.O): Previously, on Sexy X-Men Dating Sim. Amanda and I figure out a way to make background assets for our game. See them for yourself by playing The Phenomenals for free on the Dorian app, available on both iPhone and Android.
I get ambitious when I design games. It’s a gift and a curse. My ambition leads me to make complex interactive art I’m super proud of. But I also like to collaborate with friends. When I try to partner with creative pals on games, they get overwhelmed by the intricacies of interactive storytelling. Or are they getting overwhelmed by my designs specifically. Maybe a little bit of both? I could make simpler designs, but I’m motivated by self-ambition. I want to test the limits of what I can build, like a child building a Lego tower to the sun.
I write and design interactive fiction for clients. (In fact, the first trailer for my main studio’s game Clone Drone in the Hyperdome just launched! 🥳) One of the voice actors on a recent project was dumbfounded by my script. Not his character or the dialogue or the story itself. All that made perfect sense to him. But the script has lots of narrative branching, which can be intimidating to folks. I would contextualize scenes for the actor by saying something along the lines of, “If the player angers your character by not turning over the power crystal, and lied to you earlier about being an omelet chef, this is what you say.” The actor couldn’t understand how was I able to keep track of all the various options the player had to change the story. How was I able to keep all the “twisty passages” of possibilities clear in my head? The funny thing is that the complexity of the script he was reading was pared down considerably over the course of development to make it simpler and easier to produce.
By the way, this is not what the kids who are now adults would call a “humble brag.” I don’t think complexity is a virtue of smart narrative design. My ambition isn’t to create complex-looking charts no one besides me will ever see. What excites me is the ability to give player agency in how their story unfolds and create systems designed to foster meaning and emotion. My branching gets complex as a result of trying to give the player a richer experience.
So, when I work on an independent project, I tend to go wild on the structure. Even when I tell myself I won’t this time. And that’s where I led Amanda and I for the second chapter of The Phenomenals. I didn’t realize I was leading Amanda into the deep, chaotic waters of my kooky ambitions until I made things uncomfortable.
In our outline, we imagined the player would get acquainted with The Phenomenals’ home, a sprawling manor base for our heroes. They would be prompted to enter the Panic Dojo, a dangerous combat simulator designed to push phenoms and their special abilities. If this is all sounding familiar to you, it should. It’s X-Men. Remember, one of our artistic goals is to write a love letter to Marvel’s mutants. That said, I prefer “Panic Dojo” to “Danger Room” now and I give Amanda full credit for the name.
Here’s where we diverge from the source material. In our universe, phenoms develop their power by spending time with other phenoms and being in sync with them. So rather than a pure combat strategy simulation, which would feel out of place in a dating sim, the Panic Dojo is designed to bring phenoms closer together and amplify their powers.
One of the most time intensive branches you can design in dating sims spring from “who” choices. The choice itself is very easy and effective: “Who do you want to join you in the Panic Dojo?” It gets to the core of the wish fulfillment fantasy of a dating sim. The player not only has many eligible dating prospects, but is able to choose between them as easily as flipping channels, a metaphor that will soon make me sound like a cranky grandpa. (“Back in my day, the only thing we ‘streamed’ was water, and our lives were very boring!”) The challenge for the designers of “who” choice branching is writing parallel sequences for each character choice. What happens if you take Gleam into the Panic Dojo might be different than if you pick Sureshot as your partner. I was well aware of this problem, so I decided the general story beats would stay the same no matter who you chose, only the dialogue would change. Still a lot of work to design, but not too complex. Not yet, lol.
You see, I had this other idea. In the Danger Room, the X-Men can die. In fact, there was a comic arc where the Danger Room itself turned against them! (If we had a workout room in our home, and it tried to kill us, I would put those treadmills on the curb immediately.) To give the player more excitement in the sequence, I figured there should be stakes. I began to think of the Panic Dojo as a mini-game testing how in-sync the player was with their partner. If the player is in-sync, the bond with their partner would grow, as would their power. For example, if Fever says they should get to higher ground to attack the giant robot, and the choice is “climb to the roof of the truck” or “dive into the sewers,” the player would be rewarded for climbing the truck with a power boost and a tighter bond with Fever. So every decision in the Panic Dojo would have an “in-sync” or “not in-sync” option. So that meant not just variable dialogue for every story beat (the “who” choice), but also “sync” branches that would also have variable dialogue options.
Oh, but I couldn’t leave it at that. What about premium choices? Dorian games are designed so players can spend “heart” currency to unlock spicier content. The Panic Dojo would be the centerpiece of the episode, so we needed to integrate premium choices into the design. I had an idea for that, too. Since the Panic Dojo’s purpose is to bring teammates closer together, it made sense to me there would be an option to further reward teammates who were in sync with a rush of dopamine. The Panic Dojo could be, effectively, a holographic hook-up machine for people who think blasting robots is a romantic date. (Like me!) The player would have the option to turn up the intensity setting as a premium option. But this meant that every “in sync” choice would have an optional premium end branch, and three of those would have to be written for each love interest. (As we were writing all these branches, I felt a twinge of gratitude Dorian killed our Wolverine, which would’ve added a fourth set of monster branches.)
All of this design came out of a conversation I was having with Amanda. I would explain these ideas to her as I was getting them, drawing out the branches on paper as we talked, and then trying my best to explain the effects of each one. At times, I felt like I was Charlie Day at the conspiracy board. As I was getting more and more excited for the Rube Goldberg device I was proposing, Amanda got more and more confused. I don’t blame her! It was like I was saying, “What if we modulated electromagnetic waves? Ooh, and then… we use an amplifier and demodulator to clear up the signal?” As opposed to saying, “What if we built a radio?”
When Amanda gets confused about something, she gets frustrated with herself for not understanding. It’s a major reason why we don’t play a lot of video games together. If the controls aren’t intuitive, or not tutorialized well, she turns on herself for not getting it. So, as I got giddier with the design, she became more anxious, until… she broke down. Amanda started questioning what she was doing here with me making a video game. The interactivity was too complicated.
I felt awful. The main reason I wanted to collaborate with Amanda was I knew it would make the process more fun, and here I was making her process miserable. Not on purpose, of course. But still.
We talked it through. One idea was to cut back the complexity of the design, which I was more than willing to do. Screw the premium choices, or maybe the player does the Panic Dojo three times throughout the game, each time with a different love interest. But I think she saw how happy the wild design challenge made me. She didn’t want to compromise on player agency or my kooky vision.
Then I had another suggestion, which was to better define our roles on The Phenomenals. I could be the narrative designer, focusing on how the player interacts with the story and the underlying systems to support storytelling. She would be the game writer, focused on writing dialogue and bringing our characters to life. Amanda immediately took to that. We would collaborate on all aspects together, but we would trust each other’s creative instincts. This way, she didn’t have to understand the design, only the individual scenes and the dialogue therein. We got back to the project, more confident than before. Another win for structure.

🎲 Your Turn: What motivates you to create art? Self-expression? Personal growth? Ambition, like me? (Sound off, fellow ambies.) Reply to this email or hit the orange button below to leave a comment and tell the whole world.
🔌 Plugs: Seriously, check out the trailer for Clone Drone in the Hyperdome. I’ve been working on this game for a year and it rips!
📨 Next Week: I take an epic side quest into the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons and come away with legendary loot… cardboard boxes of my own book! (An example of loot I have way too much of.)
2 responses to “Survive The Panic Dojo”
What motivates ME to create art? SPITE.
Stadium Crowd: “SPITE! SPITE! SPITE! SPITE!”