Dominic Esquire

1. “Duvet” by Boa (Song)

During the production of this game, I watched Serial Experiments: Lain for the first time, and it blew my mind. Obviously this song had to go right onto the soundtrack inspiration playlist. I really like the forlorn / sad vocals, and I like to imagine that specific characters from the game are singing it when I listen to it (Specifically Oilchan, but you don’t know who that is yet...)

2. ‘Ziltoid the Omniscient’ by Devin Townsend (Album)

Me and one of my best friends have been jamming this album for a long, long time. It’s so easy to listen to all the way through me, and I often find myself putting it on when I know I need to sit down and work on the game for an hour. Check out the song “The Greys,” that’s the one that made it to my OST inspiration playlist.

3. “Conflict Minded” by Drug Church (Song)

I am a big indie punk fan, and Drug Church was actually my most-listened-to band of 2022, according to Spotify. This song has this really cool bridge portion with a female singer who isn’t usually in the band doing a monologue. I’m not sure who she is, but, it’s a great addition to the song. I like to imagine that the singer is Monica, the main villain of [Unannounced Game Project]. If you listen to the lyrics in the song, then play the game when it comes out, you’ll know what I’m talking about. 

4. Pretty much any song by Nine Inch Nails

I’ve always been a pretty big Nine Inch Nails fan; they’re not like my favorite band or anything but I really like them. For this game, I actually got the name from a Nine Inch Nails song... Can you guess what the name is just based on that? Probably not. 

5. ‘Somewhere City’ by Origami Angel (Album)

Musically speaking, this album is nothing like Ziltoid the Omniscient, but, they’re both super easy to listen to all the way through. This album has these great, sentimental lyrics that capture a certain nostalgic / sad / happy vibe that I like to go for in some of my games. 

As far as video game soundtracks, I’ve gotten a lot of influence from Toby Fox’s game soundtracks, all three of them. Yeah, I know, big surprise, I’m a Toby Fox fan, just like everyone else. I also really like the Lisa: The First soundtrack, but it is a little TOO trolly sometimes. 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Check out some of those songs / albums if you want a sneak peak of the vibe I’m going for with the new game.

WHY LIMIT YOURSELF?

The less characters there are in the game, the more fully developed the characters can be. My games can’t rely on graphics or in-depth game play, so I have to make well developed characters that people like / are interested in at least in order to keep players around through the whole game. My first game, Hellbound, only has four playable characters in the game. The good part about this was that I was really able to go deep on each character. The bad part of this is that, well, there’s only four characters, and the main character doesn’t even talk. So the number of unique voices is a little low for my standards nowadays.

In Trash Planet, there’s technically eleven playable characters, if you count Scrappy (spoilers?). Even without Scrappy, that’s ten. That’s a lot! The reason for this is because I actually wrote and DM’d Trash Planet as a TTRPG before making it a video game. I got attached to each character, and even though I could have cut a couple of them, I wanted to put them in the video game because they were in the TTRPG. The good part about having this many characters is that there’s a lot of unique voices, AND I could be more liberal about killing off characters. The downside of having this many characters is that not all of them have importance to the plot in a meaningful way. 

That’s why I’ve settled on eight for [UNANNOUNCED GAME]. I think this will give me a little leeway to kill off a couple major characters without making the team feel hollow. Also with only 8, one of which being the player’s own character, each character should serve a specific purpose in the story.

WHAT’S THE CUT?

I am an avid (and sometimes competitive) Magic: The Gathering player. If you’re aware of MTG, you might have noticed some MTG references in my various games. When making a finely-tuned Magic: The Gathering deck, a question you often must ask yourself is: What’s the cut? Sure, there’s a cool new card that just came out, and you want to put it in your deck... But what do you cut from your deck to make room for that new card? It’s never wise just to jam more cards into your deck without first getting rid of something else. 

So let’s apply this logic to Trash Planet. There are ten characters that we’re working with (I’m not counting Scrappy). If I was to hold myself to the 8 character limit like I am with the new game, what’s the cut? 

First, I think I would cut Omen. She’s a fun character, and she was particularly cool in the TTRPG that I ran of Trash Planet. That being said, I think her power conflicts with Guuchi’s, and her pre-determination power didn’t end up being as important to the video game as it was to the TTRPG. I think if I were to make Trash Planet again now, I would cut Omen but combine elements of her character with Guuchi. For instance, Omen is the female-female love interest that’s available for Tilda. In a re-envisioned Trash Planet, this element would probably be carried over to Guuchi. I may have also used some of Omen’s visual elements when combining her with Guuchi, because I always thought Omen’s face-sprite was one of the better one’s I’ve ever done.

Second, I would cut Ride. He’s also fun, but he’s just a reference to the lead singer of Death Grips. He’s useful in the late game because he has really high attack damage output, but I think I could have beefed up Phede / Guuchi / Mendy’s damage in the late game and had the same effect. For this cut to have worked, I would not have had to change the story much. Ride could still have helped the party break out of the Mega Prison, but not joined the party. 

I think another character that could have been cut would have been Mendy. She does come along pretty late in the game, but she provides useful utility as a healing character. I think by cutting Ride and Omen, I would have freed up some space for Mendy to breathe a bit more. 

Obviously if I’m cutting Omen and Ride in this theoretical re-imagined version of Trash Planet, that means I’m cutting two of the three characters of color in the game. I think this could be remedied in a re-imagined version by redesigning Guuchi and another character’s sprite (Tilda? Mendy?). This is something I would have had to deal with if I cut these characters from the game. 

That being said, I have no plans to edit Trash Planet any further. It’s going to stand as it is. I’m just thinking about the playable characters ahead of [UNANNOUNCED GAME] because I want to make the best game I possibly can.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! I’ll reward you with face sprites of some of the party members from the new game: