After eight months of work, including creating a Game Design Doc, learning Ren’Py, writing the opening 20 minutes of the game, and finding artists…the demo for Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim is done.
I’ve gotten almost universally positive responses for the Beta version of the demo, and now I’m super excited to send it out into the world. From the art to the music, I’m super stoked about everything in it!
I’ll be doing promotion and PR outreach for the demo in the coming weeks, including hopefully showcasing it at PlayNYC this year.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone who collaborated with me on this project:
This time, I’m talking about narrative—outlining the story, figuring out the characters, and writing the opening scene. Because Black Heaven is just a demo at this stage, there are only four scenes, each of which introduces the player to one of the key characters: the necromancer No-Eyes, the scholar Ru Okazi, the martial arts master Izagi Ito, and the conwoman Leathe. Still, putting together the demo meant having a general outline of the plot for the entire game, as well as in-depth outlines for the characters.
Plot and Setting
The first step in creating the game’s narrative was brainstorming the plot. After a few iterations on the general idea of collecting ghosts for a necromancer in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, I came up with this summary:
Five years ago, a devastating plague spread across the world, driving humanity into the long-abandoned subterranean ruins known as the Starving Kingdoms. As one of the few survivors, you’ve been living a lonely existence, haunted by memories of the world you knew…until a necromancer named No-Eyes offers you a deal: if you bring him the ghosts of three people, he will bind one of them to you for eternity. However, the others will be trapped in his grimoire forever.
This summary was eventually adapted into the game’s overall description, but first and foremost it was a clear, concise encapsulation of the game’s setting, plot and conflict. I split it into four parts:
Setting: post-apocalyptic fantasy world ravaged by a plague
Plot:
Desire: your character is lonely, and desires companionship
Solution: you make a deal with a necromancer to obtain a ghost companion
Conflict A: you must find and capture the ghosts, as well as convince one to become your companion
Conflict B: if you fulfill your end of the deal, the other ghosts you collect will be doomed
Apart from the expected challenge of romancing one of the ghosts (Conflict A), I wanted there to be another conflict for the player to deal with, which was a moral dilemma that asked whether the player would sacrifice the souls of the other two ghosts they didn’t choose to romance (Conflict B). The moral implications of Conflict B eventually developed into a third secret, conflict, which I won’t go into detail here…
Setting
As for setting, I drew strong inspiration from the landscapes and worlds of Dark Souls and Bloodborne (the latter of which is also afflicted by a rampant plague). I liked the idea of exploring the ruins of a dark, subterranean city, and decided to set the game partly underground.
When it came to the worldbuilding aspects of the game, such as magic, metaphysics, and history, I drew on my own body of stories. One of the key elements I incorporated was “physiomancy,” the study of the human body with the goal of discovering a path to eternal life. The main character used to be a physiomancer, as were No-Eyes and Ru, and the study of immortality is woven into the origin of the plague that swept through the world.
Here are some of the visual references I used when imagining the world of the game (all are from the Dark Souls series or Bloodborne):
Characters
The first and most important character I figured out for the story was No-Eyes—he’s the primary “antagonist” and the person who gets the plot going. The player meets him while scavenging in a subterranean library, an encounter that serves as the intro to the game.
I decided to use a character profile format I’d picked up when I was interviewing at Gameloft, which included an occupation, personality, and key words. Here’s what No-Eyes’ character profile looked like:
NO-EYES
A sketch I made of No-Eyes.
Key Appearance Traits: close-fitting black robes, smooth, eyeless helmet, gloves, no exposed skin, tall, emaciated
Occupation: Necromancer
Personality: No-Eyes is irreverent, outgoing, charismatic, highly intelligent, cynical, and entirely without morals. He sees other humans as amusements or puppets, and is highly adept at twisting them to his own ends.
One of the things I learned during my creative writing courses is to set up “trios” of characters: trios allow a writer to flesh out characters by making their traits opposed to one another, which “bakes in” the potential for conflict and tension. For the demo, I decided to introduce a distinct trio of potential romance interests:
Ru, the shy scholar
Izagi, the fierce martial artist
Leathe, the shrewd conwoman
Each of these characters was designed to be easily and intuitively understood, but with a few hidden dimensions unique to each, which would come into play in their horror forms and relationships with the player.
Of course, there’s already an avalanche of articles, charts, and memes exploring the very well-established archetypes of female romantic interests in anime, like this one:
I’m not a huge fan of this kind of pigeonholing, but I do understand that most characters end up falling into archetypes. Ru, for example, resembles Yuri from DDLC: shy, bookish girl who’s nervous around other people. No-Eyes resembles an archetypal Mephistopheles or “manipulative bastard.”
If Joseph Campbell has taught me anything, it’s that archetypes are a part of writing. It’s not a bad thing that a character is recognizable or familiar, but a writer needs to make their own mark on them to make them unique.
Working with Archetpyes and Creating Complex Characters
After thinking about conversation trees and how I would structure player interactions with the characters, I decided to take inspiration from Mass Effect‘s Paragon and Renegade elements. However, instead of a dichotomous ‘hero’ or ‘rogue’ option for each conversation, I created a three-option system, where each choice falls into one of the following attitudes and appeals to certain characters:
Gentle (associated with Ru)
Bold (associated with Izagi)
Cunning (associated with Leathe and No-Eyes)
The more the player chooses a certain type of option (such as “Gentle”), the higher the disposition of the corresponding characters. However, though Izagi responds positively to the Bold options because her character’s ‘archetype’ is fierce and brash, her personality is more complicated than that.
One key idea I took from my writing courses is that complex, believable characters are built on contradictions. When I was designing the character of Leathe, for example, I wanted her to take pride in her ability to manipulate people, emotionally and physically—as a conwoman, she sees it as part of her craft, as well as proof that she’s smarter than other people. The contradiction is this: Leathe ends up getting tired of pretending to be someone she’s not, but is too afraid of expressing herself genuinely, which is something she associates with vulnerability.
Before writing out the introductory scene for the game, I made a list of the things I needed to introduce or establish:
The main character’s connection to the character Ru (a former friend)
The main character’s previous occupation as a physiomantic scholar
The plague that effectively wiped out civilization
Ru’s death
The subterranean setting
The way the player survives in the post-plague world (a filter mask)
The player’s current location (the Library of Gizaron)
The character of No-Eyes (including his background)
The three conversation options/paths (Gentle, Bold, and Cunning)
The deal between No-Eyes and the player
Information about the ghost characters
The beginning of the player’s quest
I decided to start with a horror-tinged dream sequence that introduced the plague and the player’s former relationship with Ru. Dream sequences aren’t exactly original, but done right, they can be surreal and horrifying, especially if the player isn’t sure if it’s the real opening of the game.
The dream is interrupted by an immediate threat: the player’s filter mask is clogged with ash and dust, suffocating them. From there, there’s some exposition and the player gets a chance to relax and take in the setting. Immediately after that, they encounter No-Eyes, who hasn’t seen them yet. The player must make a choice about how to approach him, which leads to the introduction to the three-path conversation system.
Outlining the Scene in Twine
When I first started the Twine outline for Black Heaven, I wanted it to be as complex and non-linear as possible in order to give the player a lot of agency. Each of the little squares below represents a text passage, and each of the lines connecting them represents a connection between two different passages, with an arrow showing which direction the narrative is flowing. Depending on the choices a player makes, their narrative path will be different.
As you can see, the map below has a pretty small number of text passages, but has a whole lot of connections:
Here’s a closer view of the story map, which shows how complicated and multidirectional the narrative can get. You’ll also notice that a big branch in the narrative happens at one passage: “Get Up Intro”. This was meant to be one of the key choice moments in the scene, and would cause the player to branch into one of the three routes based on how they handled the initial meeting with No-Eyes.
Unfortunately, this structure caused some pretty significant problems. Because the conversation could go so many different ways (and even cross over into different ‘routes’), each passage in the narrative had to be somewhat modular so it could fit together in many possible combinations. Though this modularity meant the player could get to the same place through multiple routes, it also meant the flow of the interactions between No-Eyes and the player came across as abrupt and choppy.
This caused a realization: the more player choice you allow, the less control you have over the unified effect of the narrative. It’s much more manageable (and impactful) if choices are restricted to a few key moments, rather than try to offer a hundred ultimately minor options that sacrifice quality for the illusion of freedom.
After a few revisions, the story map looked like this:
Notice how clearly defined the three routes are (top, middle, and bottom, joining together about halfway to the right), how many fewer lines cross between the routes, and how few lines there are in general. Though “linear storytelling” is usually a dirty word among gamers, writing this short scene showed me that it’s especially useful in the beginning of a game, when the writer is trying to establish the setting, characters, and situation. Here’s a closer look at the story map:
Conclusion to Part 2:
Like with Part 1, this covers a very small part of the work that went into the narrative aspect of the game—instead of diving into the minutiae, I’ve tried to hit the highlights and big ideas.
In Part 3, I’m going to cover my first interactions with the Ren’Py engine, including learning how to use Python and set up a scene.
I haven’t finished a novel in at least two years. It’s a pretty shameful thing for someone with a degree in Creative Writing. It’s even more shameful for someone who originally wanted to work in book publishing. Instead, I’ve been playing games like Doki Doki Literature Club, Katawa Shoujo, VA-11 Hall A, and Mass Effect (among others).
Logo design by Joel Clapp
I’ve written articles about the characters and narratives in those games, and after a long gestation period in my head, I decided to put together my own game. Or at least a demo of it.
That game is Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim. So far, it’s been one of the most rewarding and challenging projects I’ve worked on, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with people once it’s complete. This series of articles is gonna talk about what it’s like putting it all together, from concept to (hopefully) final demo.
A Story of Two FAN Letters
I don’t think that any creative person ever stops being a giant fanboy (or girl) for the people that inspired them, no matter how experienced or acclaimed they become. So I wanted to start off by talking about two fan letters I wrote to the creators of two games that really shaped this project.
A big part of my drive to create a visual novel game came from playing Doki Doki Literature Club, which won over fans and critics despite being one of the most disturbing, twisted games in recent memory. After I finished my first playthrough, I opened up a window in Gmail and wrote Dan Salvato a letter. Here’s an excerpt:
…I wanted to send you a letter saying how much…I’m not sure. It’s a terrible thing to say I “loved” a game about girls committing suicide. To be honest, I felt sick playing it–it felt like it was slowly picking apart my sanity in ways I believed nothing could…
When I was done, I felt like I was looking at the whole world in a new light. For me, DDLC reignited my passion for storytelling, for games, and for creating elaborate fantasy worlds where, as Yuri might say, you can lose yourself.
As the internet legend goes, Katawa Shoujo started as a joke on 4chan that progressively became more and more serious. Forum members started pitching ideas for a dating sim, which ranged from disgusting to surprisingly thoughtful. Some committed posters got together and assembled the game in Ren’py, a free visual novel engine.
The game’s story revolves around the male protagonist’s transfer to a high school for handicapped youth after he suffers a heart attack, and from there, becomes an exploration of vulnerability, honesty, and empathy. After my first playthrough (Hanako’s Path), I wrote another letter, to one of the writers behind the game. Here’s an excerpt:
“…every now and then, I come across something that illuminate my life, whether it’s a song or a conversation with a friend. Katawa Shoujo was one of those things, and I’m so thankful that it exists. I hope that one day I can write something so well-crafted and devastatingly honest.”
What was so striking about these games was how engaging they were, despite having very limited animation and relatively little player interaction. Instead, the strength of the writing had to carry the game. As a writer myself, I wanted to create something that evoked the same feelings I had while playing these games.
Brainstorming Black Heaven
I’m a big fan of necromancers. I wrote a whole post about designing a terrifying helmet for my necromancer character No-Eyes, who appears in this game. I also published a standalone short story about No-Eyes in the professional fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I’m fascinated by immortality, forbidden arts, and riding the line between being human and…something else. Horror really hooks me, and I wanted to weave that into the game.
Concept art for No-Eyes’ helmet, by Joel Clapp
I’m also a big fan of worldbuilding, to the point that nearly everything I write or create takes place in the same world. So when it came time to lay the groundwork for Black Heaven, I decided to set it in my shared world. Because of my love of DDLC and Katawa Shoujo, I decided to make the game a dating sim, but with a necromantic twist: you’d be romancing ghosts.
One of the guiding ideas of ghosts in my stories is that they’re shattered mirrors of who they used to be–the memories, traumas, and desires of their past warp and twist their mind, and their memories become muddled. This added an interesting dimension to the ghost characters: instead of just building a relationship with a ghost, you’d need to learn more about their past and psychology.
After several iterations on that theme, I came up with the central conflict: your character makes a deal with the necromancer No-Eyes to collect a list of ghosts from across a post-apocalyptic landscape and bring them to him. In return, you get to keep a ghost as a companion. However, as the game goes on, you realize that turning any of the ghosts over to No-Eyes may mean condemning them to an eternity of torment…
Laying the Groundwork
As soon as I had the central kernel of the plot and some rough sketches of where I wanted it to go, I started thinking about the project as a whole: what would the final product look like? How would it be framed to potential players? What would the guidelines be for the art? And what would be the game’s “pitch”?
The original draft of the Black Heaven logo, made in MS Paint.
I came up with a proposal document, written and outlined so that I could show it to possible collaborators to give them a quick, effective summary of the project. Mostly, though, it was meant to be an internal reference document: I’ve found that pretending to explain a project to a complete stranger can quickly solidify what the project is and what it should be, and the proposal did that. In essence, the doc galvanized the specifics of the game and gave me a clearer picture of what needed to be done.
In addition to the game’s description, I listed the art assets I needed for the project (such as character and background art), narrative content, character profiles, and marketing materials (such as a logo and cover art).
The proposal became my guide for the rest of the project, but I realized I needed to create separate docs to start outlining and designing the characters.
I decided to sit down and sketch out backstories for each of the characters, covering their history, personalities, and key experiences, as well as their deaths. I boiled down these backstories into very short, succinct profiles for each of the characters, which listed key traits, physical descriptions, and a summary of their personality. After that, I found reference photos from real-life models to help get a clearer picture of their appearance and assist the artist in drawing character art.
A reference photo for Ru Okazi, one of the characters.
Visual novels live or die based on their art and visuals, I wanted to make sure the art brief clearly expressed what I was going for. In the brief, I give some samples of the type of art style I envisioned for the game, as well as samples of character art from Katawa Shoujo. I also outlined how I wanted the concept art and design process to work.
Because of the visual novel format, each character would need at least three “portraits,” each of which would express a different emotion: happy, neutral, or sad.
In addition to their normal forms, I decided to give each ghost a “horror form,” which must be dealt with before sealing the ghost in the player’s grimoire. The idea was that the player must see beneath the horror form to find the person underneath, and then appeal to their humanity to convince (or force) them to enter the grimoire. Each horror form had its own description and set of reference photos, which were meant to guide their design.
Horror forms were partly inspired by the monsters in Silent Hill, which were designed to be expressions of the protagonist’s suppressed thoughts and feelings. Another influence was my reading into the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which described the many layers of psychological hang-ups a soul must peel away before moving to its next reincarnated form.
Key Question: ARE WE JUST MAKING PORN?
I got in touch with Joel Clapp, an artist friend of mine, to discuss creating some of the concept art for the game. I sent him the art brief I’d put together, but soon after creating some sketches for me, he brought up an important and troubling question: how sexy should he draw them?
Screenshot from Bandai Namco’s “Girl Friend Beta: A Summer Spent with You “
This led to a conversation about the morality of dating sims in general and how comfortable we were with creating a game in a genre where women are explicitly treated as sex objects. Here’s an excerpt from my email response to Joel:
“From the beginning, I’d planned on Black Heaven being a subversion of your normal dating sim, but as you point out, just because Doki Doki Literature Club is a subversion doesn’t mean it doesn’t exploit sexuality to attract players and implicitly promise them sexy times to get them to play—the characters still have accentuated breasts and curves, which were designed to attract people.
This brings up two questions:
Are we making low-key porn and putting up fancy window dressing in the form of narrative and setting to disguise the fact that Black Heaven is essentially a sex doll house, where all the characters are designed to titillate and gratify the player?
If we’re not doing that, then are we being dishonest by calling the game a “dating sim” and marketing it like one?
In my mind, the answer to the first question is no. That’s not what attracts me about dating sims, and it’s not what I have planned. In my mind, this is gonna be a game about romance, but it’s not just gonna be about that—it’s about learning how to put yourself back together by helping others do the same, it’s about being honest with yourself and others, and it’s about choosing between your own selfish desires and what’s best for someone else. It’s not just a pretext for porn.
As to the second question, I think the answer is also no. Games like Katawa Shoujo prove that you can have a conventional dating sim, including sexuality and multiple romantic partners to choose from, and still tell a heart-wrenching story that does not boil down to you picking out a 2D sex doll. It is possible to creating a dating sim that uses romance and sexuality as part of a bigger, unified effect, and I think a lot of players are looking for something like that…
…I think, when designing these characters, we should stick to making them tastefully attractive, but with a greater focus on bring out their individual characters. It’s more important to make them memorable and distinct than making them sexy.”
Conclusion
This is a really short summary of the concept stage of the project, which went through a bunch of iterations and alterations. In Part 2, I’ll talk about the narrative design process, including drafting scenes and revising them in Twine.
