Date or Die

So it’s been three weeks. And what do we have to show for it?

… truthfully, not a lot.

The last few weeks have been a doozy. Two of our team got sick (though they’re both on the road to recovery). Our multiple outside commitments got very committed. And there were some moments where some of the more finer points of logically plotting the story got head-to-the-wall stressful. That’s not to say nothing happened, though: we finished another key CG, overcame the particular narrative struggle we were dealing with, and this next week is going to be all about new beginnings - redrafting sections of Mesmer’s outline, starting the sketches for another piece of key art, and getting down to brass tacks when it comes to organizing principles.

We’ve mentioned this before, but the fact that this is a pure passion project - one with no initial funding, supported by our work outside the game - is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because the version of the game you’ll eventually see will be uncompromised - we don’t have investors to please, there are no board meetings about targeting key demographics, and we aren’t racing headlong toward an impossible deadline. On the other hand… well, we aren’t racing headlong toward any deadline. Crunch isn’t really a concept we’re looking to embrace. If we need to take a week here and there to take care of ourselves, we’re going to take it.

Hello! We’re fresh off the back of another hectic couple of weeks, but read on for the latest:

Writing

This week has mostly been devoted to trying to unpick a couple of structural issues - specifically, the interplay between one of the Host’s challenges and the scenes leading in. As a result, the needle on the proverbial dial (reading on the thermometer? Bookmark in the epic? None of these sound quite right) hasn’t moved all that much, but it’s all necessary foundational work. Part of why we made the concrete decision to narrow our initial focus to one route was so we could address any narrative concerns as they come up; that way, when Mesmer’s route is largely complete, we can go into the next with a solid understanding of what to expect. There’s a plan, of course, but some narrative issues only reveal themselves when you’re getting to grips with writing one scene at a time!

Artwork

Below, we’re sharing step-by-step images from one of our latest CGs. For some background - it wouldn’t be a reality TV show without confessions to camera, and the Host graciously affords our contestants the opportunity to get their feelings off their chests. The shots below are from a scene where… let’s just say Hat Trick’s starting to feel the pressure.

You’ll notice that the background is already fully-drawn from the first sketch, and that’s deliberate - by layering in characters as necessary, we can keep the pace up. You’ll have noticed that we did something similar with the character bedrooms - each one starts from the same outline, with detail added to fit each character.

September was something of a distracting month - two of the team were AFK for extended periods, so progress was a little slower than usual. That said, here’s what we’ve been working on.

(Oh, and a quick sidebar here - a lot of the time, we’ll be focusing principally on progress with the art and the script. This isn’t to discount the fantastic work being done by our composer and programmer, but they’re both harder to chart when it comes to this kind of incremental work; our score is something where we’re less keen on displaying rough cuts and works-in-progress, and the best programming tends to operate invisibly.)

Writing

As we discussed in our last post, Arden’s continuing to focus exclusively on Mesmer’s route, and work continues apace. Without getting into spoiler territory, there are certain focal points that each route is anchored by - our goal for the next week is to up to the second challenge the Host presents to the contestants (the details of which we’ll keep under lock and key). Because these challenges and shared scenes tend to require a little more lateral thinking, they tend to take up the better part of a week to develop by themselves; with any luck, by the time we check in again in a couple of weeks we’ll have a rough version drafted.

Art

Here’s another background. As you can probably tell, each bedroom follows the same layout, with crucial character differences depending on the contestant (though everyone gets a framed portrait of the Host, naturally). Here’s Hero’s bedroom:

Additionally, we’ve been working on the UI - which, if you’ve played our demo, was somewhat unfinished when we first presented the game to the public. Here are a few screens:

We’ve gone back and forth on structure when it comes to completing the first draft of Date or Die, and for a while it’s looked something like this:

This has been useful… to a degree. It gives us a quick snapshot of what’s being worked on at any given time, and allows us to operate asynchronously - if one section is drafted out, Julian or Christa can dive in and work on the art and music while others are being written. That said, it’s also sometimes run the risk of being a little scattershot; as much as it’s fun to go where Arden’s passions take them each week, it’s also easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

That brought us to this week’s decision, which preserves the ability to go where Arden’s most engaged while working to a more concrete milestone: getting to a full first draft of Mesmer’s route before working on anything else.

There are some solid reasons for this. For one, there are a few scenes that - while retaining variability and the potential for twists and turns - largely share the same structure. Case in point - in every playthrough, early on in the game, the Host organizes a mandatory party with the expectation that all the contestants attend. How that party plays out differs depending on the path you’ve chosen, but the bones of it remain roughly consistent. By working through an entire route, Arden’s clearly signposting the shape we can expect other routes to take, even as they go in different directions depending on your decisions.

On the artistic front, Julian’s currently working on a couple of CGs. Staying in the spirit of our current direction, here are a couple of work-in-progress shots involving Mesmer!

Just a short update this week, with a couple of pieces of artwork:

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

A lot of you have emailed in over the last year asking what’s going on with Date or Die. That’s fair - after a few convention appearances and a reasonable amount of fanfare, we more or less disappeared from the internet. The answer is a little complicated, but the key takeaway here is that yep, we’re still working on it and no, we're not finished. 

Now for a longer answer. 

To give you a little background - Date or Die is absolutely, 100% a passion project for us. We’re a tiny team with little to no outside funding. On the one hand, this affords us some flexibility - we can pick things up and put them down as other commitments arise, we don’t have angry studio heads demanding that we meet a release date, and the finished product will be exactly what we want you to see. On the other hand... it affords us the flexibility to do something like neglect to update our social media channels for over a year.  We’re planning to fix that, starting with this post and continuing every few weeks from here on out. Sometimes, we’ll just be poking our heads in to say it’s been a quiet couple of weeks, but we want to keep you up to speed with our progress. Speaking of...

Here’s How We’re Doing

We’ve spent the last month or so returning to the roots of the game - figuring out the best structure, expanding character development, creating a workflow for key art assets and establishing different branching paths - so that we have a solid foundation going forward. We’re also using some higher level project management principles so we can keep ourselves in check. Development has stopped and started a few times over the last year, often for reasons out of our control, but we’re redoubling our focus for the foreseeable future.

Writing

Most of our routes are fully planned out and number of scenes (spread out across characters, but roughly adding up to the length of one full route) are first-draft complete. As you might expect, actually writing the thing is the area where we have the least to say, short of sharing excerpts (which is tricky to transpose from an interactive format to a blog post). We don’t want to overstate things here - there’s still a lot of work to be done, and it’s definitely too early to give you an idea of a release window. That said, our primary goal right now is getting every route to a state where there are words on the page, and we can expect to pick up the pace over the next few weeks.

Art

Here’s where we can be a little more concrete - our main priority for the last couple of months has been getting to a point where all of our in-game sprites are finished, and we’re proud to say that we’re almost done! Here are a couple: 

Once we finish the final polish on these, we’ll be moving onto backgrounds, starting with the character bedrooms (each of which has its own distinctive style).

Music

Christa's been hard at work developing distinct themes for each of our characters - below you can hear a few excerpts:

Disabled for Tumblr - head to our website to listen!

And that’s about where we are right now. There’s still a long road ahead, but we have a clearer sense of purpose and we’re feeling great about our next steps. 

Finally - and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention this - we want to thank you for sticking with us. It’s easy to fear the worst when a project like this suddenly goes dark, but your dedication has been overwhelming and gotten us through some of the slower periods over the last year. So again - thank you, and keep your eyes peeled.

BIG NEWS: DATE OR DIE IS COMING TO PAX EAST!!!

i just wanted to make another quick post about something i’ve wanted to say ever since the demo came out

to everyone who’s drawn fanart, written fanfic, anyone who’s made even a single post in the tag, thank you so so much!!! i can’t even believe people have written stuff for us - the reception for this has still felt so surreal. none of us really expected date or die to blow up the way it did, and it means the world and then some to us.

i really wish that this blog wasn’t kept exclusively for dev posts, so i could reblog every piece of fanart to show it off. all of it has been so wonderful, even the horny host fanart, especially the horny host fanart. it’s all lovely and it’s hard not to send everyone thank you messages for it all, but as is, i hope you don’t mind me just saving all of it to my computer and sharing it within the team. all of us yell and jump up and down about it - yes, every piece. no matter what, it’s loved and appreciated so much more than we can say.

so, everyone, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Hi y'all. Sorry for the quiet. We're still alive and Date or Die work is still going! Progress is slow because this isn't anyone's full-time job right now, but the team is doing our best. I (Arden, writer/designer) don't use tumblr, so I forget to make update posts, but I'm very active on my personal Twitter account, @sproutella. This is where I talk most about the game in addition to making bad posts about other things.

Right now we're polishing up our existing demo to have a much prettier UI - screenshots attached! - as well as putting together a new demo we hope to show at PAX East 2017. This will be a slightly altered version of the game's prologue.

I've been hammering away at the script and I'm pleased with progress so far! I think the entire script will, fingers crossed, be finished by the time PAX rolls around. From there we'll focus on art, funding, and implementing everything.

Thank you for your patience and continued interest in this project. It seriously means the world to all of us.

(game-relevant images below the cut!! -julian)

I can't believe the year is almost over. It's freaking me out! But work is going well - the first draft of a script for a Date or Die demo is complete. You'll be able to play an early scene from three characters' routes. I'm not sure when it'll be playable - there's still a lot to do!

December will be a slow month for us. Artist Julian has been working hard creating art assets for another indie game called Defragmented, a cyberpunk-flavored top-down shooter with visual novel elements. Julian's art is gorgeous and the game is a lot of fun to play, so please check it out if that appeals to you! It'll be releasing early next year.

As for me, I'm going to be away from home for most of the month. I'll be speaking on a panel at GaymerX3 in San Jose! It's my first time being asked to participate in something like this, so I'm kind of nervous but mostly really excited! My friends at Date Nighto and I will be talking about writing compelling game romances. If you're near San Jose, I hope you can make it to the convention! I would love to meet you.

Thank you for staying tuned and reading this brief update! Hopefully we'll have more Date or Die goodness to share soon.

Hi! It’s Arden again. I don’t have a ton to say for this month’s update other than “yeah, we’re still working!” but that’s still something, right?

Julian and I are both working on other paying projects to support ourselves, which means Date or Die’s development is slow right now. I could say it’s a ~labor of love~ but that’s just a way of sugar-coating the fact that no one on the team is making money from this and we have to be able to support ourselves and make a living! That’s important!

We haven’t revealed the last contestant yet, but before we do we’re switching gears to try to produce a demo. I’ll feel a lot more comfortable asking for financial assistance once I have a playable section to show people. Plus, when you’ve been working on something for such a long time without even a little scene you can play, it can somehow make your work feel like it’s not real. Even though that’s not true! Date or Die has so much work done on it already, but not being able to show it off makes it feel intangible. 

Hi! It's time for another Date or Die character profile!

Cheerful and empathetic, Hat Trick is a caring young woman who tries to carry everyone's burdens on her shoulders if she can. Even in her day job - working at a bakery - she tries her hardest to leave a positive impact on people's day, through saving a regular a favorite pastry or drawing a smiley face on someone's coffee cup. In her free time, she does a lot of volunteer work, and one of her favorite things is teaching self defense classes. While she genuinely enjoys interacting with people, it can still be a nerve-wracking experience, especially given that she's autistic. Social interaction is already troubling enough when you're not trapped on a murderous game show with five strangers!

FUN FACTS ABOUT HAT TRICK:

She always smells like fresh bread. It's fantastic.

Sad commercials wreck her shit. Animal shelter ones wreck everyone's shit, but sometimes she cries over particularly touching car commercials too. Her roommates don't even bother to ask why she's crying anymore, they just have a designated crying pillow at the ready.

Hat Trick actually loves doing chores and cleaning. If you let her stay at your house for a night or two, she'll go full Studio Ghibli protagonist and surprise you with a clean living room.

Her nickname comes from the fact that she's black, queer, and autistic. You know, a hat-trick! The Host is a fucking dick!

As always, the beautiful character artwork is done by Julian. I had help creating Hat Trick from the smart and lovely Gita Jackson. We hope you love our amazing daughter and that you can save her from the terrible hellscape she’s been put into.

Hello! It's Arden. Here's what we've been up to the past two months while working on Date or Die.

I've been able to get more actual writing done, which feels great! Chris has been wonderful to bounce ideas off or help me with scenes when I need it, and I've been getting feedback on the cast from consultants helping me with writing experiences outside my own.

Game development is fraught for big studios with large teams with years of experience. Writing a game with no funding in a small team is also pretty difficult, unsurprisingly! Progress goes slower than you'd want it to, and it's hard to balance trying to make a living and taking care of yourself with your passion project, no matter how much you love it. I don't say this to go "woe is me", but to be honest about the parts of indie development that are not fun and exciting. Games take a long time to make!

I don't want this to be a gloomy update, though - things are picking up again, and I'm feeling better about the game than I have in months. Stuff is happening, but it's all in the awkward phase where I can't show you a finished thing yet. We'll post the next character profile sometime in September, so please stay tuned for that!

So, first off: we’re not dead. (Or dated; thanks, Twitter.) A few personal matters have slowed us down recently, but we’re still writing and continuing to figure the finer points of the plot out.

There’s no art in this update, but we do have some news items, the first of which being that

We’ve added a co-writer

Christopher J. Fraser is the author of two science fiction books and a contributor to the film magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room, and he’s now part of the Date or Die team! He’ll be helping to round out each of the characters, as well as expanding and refining the plot. As a work with several distinct routes, Date or Die has a lot of writing involved, and distributing the workload between two writers should mean that we can take more care when putting it all together (as well as, hopefully, reducing the amount of time it takes to finish the game).

We’re scoping the game down a bit

We started out thinking that making a game like this with ten contestants would be relatively straightforward, but that seemed less and less plausible as we started to put a plan together. So, here’s the bad news: there are now six contestants in Date or Die.

Now, the good news.

With a smaller number of characters, we’ll be able to work harder on rounding out each character. Rather than having one story with a few key variables, there are now going to be several separate routes, locked in after you make some key decisions early on in the game. We’ve done this so we can expand the role of each character in turn, and deliver a game that continues to surprise you after your fifth playthrough. Will there be some crossover between routes? Yes - although the same elimination challenge in a different route might play out completely differently. Does this model mean that we can make major changes to the plot depending on which route you choose, allowing for much greater replayability and the space to get to know characters in much more detail? Absolutely, yes.

Some of our character details are going to change