X-Men: Exhaustion

Cyclops (V.O.): Previously, on X-Men Dating Sim: Amanda and I developed a cast of superhunkos for the player to date.

Next, we began developing the story arc of our visual novel. We kicked this off in a design session after work on a Wednesday. Not a great idea, but more on that in a moment.

To begin designing our dating sim, we decided we needed a “design doc,” essentially an outline for games. For ours, we wrote five sections:

Summary: A two paragraph mini-outline that gives the reader a sense of the main story, the core conflict(s), the main cast, the tone, and the kinds of choices the player will make. We sent this section to Jessica at Dorian, our publisher, prior to developing the full design doc. Jessica really dug it and gave us great feedback. More on her specific feedback in a future newsletter.

Characters: We finished fleshing out our characters. Is there an innuendo I can work in for “fleshing out?” No? In that case, let’s move right along to…

Player Mechanics: I took a first pass at this section, since game mechanics are more in my wheelhouse, then tweaked it with Amanda. In a traditional design doc, this section could be 40 pages long and divided up into multiple sub-sections, but this particular game is pretty simple mechanically, so I kept ours relatively brief. I outlined how players would be given choices periodically, which either turn-on or turn-off their hero teammates. The heroes they vibe with most, after tallying their scores, will be available for hot team-up missions. In the end, the player can decide who to seriously date between the heroes they clique with. The player’s choices will also determine their personality type, which affect how the players’ powers evolve. At the start of the game, the player knows they’re some kind of psychic, but they might end up a telepath, a telekinetic, or some other brainiac.

We decided the success of the team’s missions would be determined by how well the player gets along with their teammates. So if they decided to disobey the leader, knowing they would anger him, then the leader might make a mistake and get frustrated with the player. This isn’t an action or combat strategy game, so we wanted to keep the focus on the interpersonal, even during battle scenes. We wanted to reward players who got along swimmingly with their mission/romantic partners.

Art Reference: We pulled a bunch of stills from X-Men ’97, Young Justice, and Invincible to give Dorian’s art team a feel for how we wanted the art to look. Clean lines. Modern American superhero cartoon. Anime-influenced. Superhero musculature. Bright colors. Technically, this section was at the end of the design doc, but the next part of the newsletter is the focus here, so I swapped the order for the newsletter. Get off my back, mom!!

Season Arc: This is where we summarized all 10 episodes of the first season of our game. On Dorian, their visual novels are formatted as series released weekly in 5 minute episodes. This is common practice for mobile dating sims and visual novels. It’s also a perfect fit for our project. We want to capture the feel of the X-Men cartoon series. X-Men ’97 gave us something to talk about week after week. 10 episodes felt to us like a nice, round number. Later, if we wanted, we could package the episodes together and re-release them on Steam or consoles. (We retained all the rights.)

You should know that Amanda and I are the type of couple with a shared Google Calendar. Our whole lives are in that calendar. When we miss an event because it wasn’t on the calendar, we panic and run into the yard to cry, but before we do, we add “Cry Time” to our shared calendar. So, after our terrific sessions designing the characters, we were excited to dive into the story. However, when we were making plans on a Sunday afternoon, we noticed the next weekend was already booked. So we decided to try working after we clocked out that upcoming Wednesday. Not ideal. Both of us have creative gigs. I write the stories in video games and Amanda edits graphic novels. So, it’s not like we’re brimming with creative energy after a long day of work. (Is anyone?) But we were so pumped, we thought we should try. On our shared calendar we put a new event: “Sexy X-Men.”

Wednesday eventually rolled around. We were both clearly spent at 6 pm, but the calendar event reminder dinged. I don’t think either of us wanted to disappoint the other. So we gathered around my office computer and got designin’.

In the first few episodes, we’d introduce the player – a “self-insert” protagonist – to the world of outcast superheroes. In episode 1, the player is a 20-something superhuman who doesn’t really know how to use their powers. The player is suddenly exposed as a “potentially dangerous” super-being while trying to return an air fryer to a department store. They’re in trouble, until our super cuties come in and rescue the player. Depending on their choices, the player can help save the day, get a feel for their powers, and get closer to one of the heroes in the heat of battle. In episode 2, they get a tour of the hero’s tricked-out compound and try out the “Panic Dojo,” a shameless rip-off of the X-Men’s Danger Room, but with a funnier name. In episode 3, they go on their first mission and become a junior member of the team.

These first episodes would be right out of the X-Men playbook. X-Men season premieres typically center around a “follow character,” who is meant to be an audience surrogate. Jubilee fills this role in X-Men: TAS. In the pilot, she’s a typical 90s teen “mall rat” (our children are vermin!) who doesn’t know anything about being a superhero. When she’s accidentally outed as a mutant and chased by giant robot Sentinels, the X-Men come to her rescue. Jubilee shows us how a regular person might understand and relate to the weirdness of X-Men. At first, shock, confusion, and even anger, eventually giving way to respect and familial love once she fully appreciates how much they care about her and the world they live in.

This plot works really well in terms of visual novel game mechanics, too. Who better to serve as our follow character than the player themselves? In the main action sequence of episode 1, we decided to divide the heroes up by giving them three separate day-saving tasks. This way, the player would hop between them with the pretense of assisting them in battle, but under-the-hood they would be getting to know the heroes 1-on-1 and putting “money in their tip jars.”

As we were discussing the remaining seven episodes, we found ourselves gravitating towards themes of exploitation. The X-Men live in a world that hates and fears them. Our heroes have that, too, but as a consequence of all that hate-fear, their primary danger is being captured and forced to provide value for shifty corporations and the military-industrial complex. The story might’ve evolved that way for a couple of reasons.

Maybe it’s because we both have anti-capitalist adamantium covering our bones.

Maybe it’s because our dating sim is about forming consensual, mutually beneficial partnerships, so a natural contrasting force would be oppression.

Maybe it’s because one of our favorite arcs in X-Men: TAS is in the first season (“Slave Island”), when Gambit, Storm, and Jubilee go to the ‘mutant paradise’ island of Genosha, only to be captured and forced into a work camp to perform slave labor with their powers. Another favorite of ours is “Mojovision,” where the X-Men are abducted by an alien showbiz executive and forced to star in deadly reality shows. These eps still slap!

There might be a fourth reason. Stacey Mason, a brilliant narrative designer who I’ll probably mention a hundred more times in this newsletter, once told me that the narrative of a game will reflect the making of the game itself. For example, an inside joke among the gamedevs will get inserted into a line of dialogue. Or if the team is rushing towards a fast approaching ship date, there will suddenly be a quest about rushing a scroll to the Creative Director Wizard before the sand runs out of the magical Hourglass of Crunch. In our case, as we were trying to finish writing a season arc when we were tired, hungry, and desperately wanting to lie on the couch and watch AEW Dynamite, our story might’ve been trying to tell us something about exploiting ourselves.

I don’t think we got very far in that particular session. What you see above is the result of a few sessions after. That Wednesday, I was feeling snippy and getting tunnel vision. Just trying to put words on the page to feel a sense of accomplishment, rather than having fun and enjoying the collaborative process, which is often circuitous. This project is about having a super enjoyable process, and it felt like we were crunching for literally no reason. Our next design session was much brighter and more free-wheeling. It was on a Saturday afternoon.

I would say lesson learned, but I’m typing this very newsletter, hangrily, on a Wednesday at 7 pm. Ugh.

🎲 Your Turn: What’s your favorite setting for creativity? What are your preferences for location, time of day, and general mood? Email your reply or hit the orange “Comment” button below to tell the whole world!

📨 Next Week: I had a lot of feelings about one of the many Wolverines in Deadpool & Wolverine. Seeing him took me back to the apex of my X-Men comics fandom.