#aevee bee

Pilot a mech, Explore the stars, and Sext your Enemies: An interview with the developers of Heaven Will be Mine by  by Spencer Hayes (@SPNKr)

One day in the future we’ll be all be riding in mechs. We’ll fight in mechs, go grocery shopping in mechs, and if the folks behind Heaven Will be Mine have their way– dating in mechs. If HWBM looks familiar, it’s because it’s by the folks behind We Know the Devil and is a sort of spiritual successor to 2015’s bible camp adventure. But this time you won’t be hangin’ out in the woods but fighting and sexting your way through space. I got the chance to talk to the team behind this game and pick their brains about flooded development studios, growing as creators, and their favorite pilots.

Alright, first up: Who are you all and what is Heaven Will be Mine?

Aevee Bee: I’m Aevee Bee. I’m the writer and co-creator. I also did a whole bunch of other extra random things here and there that weren’t really writing, which I think when you’re writing for games is pretty much a given.

Mia Schwartz: I’m Mia Schwartz, the co-creator, lead artist and visual director of the game. Heaven Will Be Mine is our follow up to We Know The Devil, a love letter to the giant robot genre, and a love letter in general.

Christopher Simon: Christopher Simon, optional party member who you pick up in a hidden area of the game after fighting him, with confusing backstory and confusing skill-tree/special abilities. Heaven Will Be Mine, in my head canon, is a phrase painted on the side of somebody's ship/-self, WWII nose-art style, probably accompanying some pin-up mecha art.

Conrad Kreyling: Conrad Kreyling, developer and code man. Heaven Will Be Mine is a spiritual successor to We Know the Devil, but this time it's in space and there's mechs and stuff.

Heaven Will be Mine is a game that’s equal parts about big mechs and the personal lives of their pilots. Why did you want to combine these two different elements?

Aevee: Giant Robot stories are almost always really about personal conflict. In fact, the whole idea of a giant robot in the first place is a way of depicting conflict as more personal—you can depict political and military struggle on a huge scale but still have intimate duels between individuals. I especially wanted to explore those ideas in the emails and chat conversations, and I'm really interested in what people think about some of the ideas expressed there, about conflict, war, and the metaphor of gravity.

Mia: These things are very much woven into the fabric of mecha as a genre, and the messy human drama is the best part of them to me. Not only are the complicated personal entanglements fun and compelling, but the intense rivalries between heroes and villains also end up having a romantic, sexual tension to them. The original Mobile Suit Gundam series was a big reference point for the project and the creator (Yoshiyuki Tomino) was even quoted in an interview saying he wanted the audience to question if the series’ most iconic hero and villain were gay for each other. (Source) And like, yes. The audience did question.Long before even meeting anyone on this project I dreamed of getting to explore these themes in a mecha project and provide my own take on them, so this game is truly a bucket list item for me.

The player doesn’t make dialogue decisions in We Know the Devil, at least not directly. Instead, every decision they make is in terms of what two characters will be staying together during a specific moment or task. It’s a subtle way to build on characters, but even more than that, it cuts to the core of what the game itself is interested in seeing the player decide- not what Venus, Neptune, or Jupiter say or do, but who they do it with. That’s what matters to the larger narrative structure, and that’s what the game places in the player’s hands.