Project Info
Release Date: 5/5/20 (PC), 9/10/20 (Switch/PS4/XB1)
My Role: Narrative Designer, Writer, Composer
Full Credits: Ben Walker (Project Lead / Engineer), Kyla Fury (Narrative Designer / Writer), Jackie Kreitzberg (Producer), Ryan Anderson (Combat Designer), Leo Dasso (Art Lead), and many others. Full credits here.
Published by Versus Evil.
Reception
- Best Strategy RPG of 2020 – RPGFan
“I’m absolutely stunned by how good this is… Grab this with both hands. It’s really solid stuff, a fun story, and a lovely entry-level tactical combat game, and indeed infinitely more accessible visual novel.”
-John Walker, Buried Treasure
“The story is a delight with well paced, snappy dialogue… the relationships between the students weaves a strong, believable background which plays excellently off the more fantastical story.”
-Anna Marie Privitere, RPGamer
“Wintermoor Tactics Club is story-driven in the most beautiful way… I love everything about this game.”
-Alex Southgate, ThatVideoGameBlog
At the time of writing, Wintermoor‘s PC release has a 80 Metacritic and 89% positive reviews on Steam.
Scope of Work
The following work was done in collaboration with cowriter Kyla Fury.
- Planned plot, characters, and themes of 12+ hour TRPG from scratch
- Over 50,000 words of character dialogue
- Designed all story missions, sidequests, and minigames
- Item, enemy, and quest descriptions
- Voice actor briefs and casting
- Commercial copy, including trailer script
- Detailed style guide and extensive localization commentary
Narrative Design Highlights
Player Agency
Since Wintermoor had a very limited scope, our challenge was to give players a sense of choice without causing the plot to significantly branch or requiring new assets.
One primary approach was letting the player write tabletop campaigns. The main character, Alicia, writes stories to help the other characters confront and overcome issues in their lives, which then become playable combat encounters. Because the specifics of these campaigns stay in the realm of fantasy, their scope is very contained and we can let the player customize many aspects. Examples include naming characters, choosing how to reveal a dramatic plot point, and even determining what kind of monster is the villain. (To help keep the art scope down, I came up with the conceit that she only has a limited set of miniatures for representing tabletop characters.)
When possible, we also reflected the user’s choice visually in the setting. Early on, Alicia’s friend asks for help in wording some graffiti, the results of which are written on the wall for the rest of the game. Later on, we introduce a minigame where the player has to draw a poster. The game has no way of knowing what they drew, so the characters respond to it in a noncommittal or puzzled manner. Since players often found this hilarious, we introduced a recurring gag of calling back to the posters unexpectedly during dramatic moments.
Narrative Iteration
From the start of development, I sought ways to receive player feedback as early as possible in order to iterate towards greater understanding and appreciation of the narrative. Kyla and I gave a GDC talk that delves into our process and motivations, but here are a few examples:
- From soliciting feedback on early plot treatments, we realized that it was possible to read its “nerds vs. cool kids” plot as having antisocial themes promoting tribalism. We decided to prevent this by making a prosocial theme into a primary pillar of our narrative and design, and rewriting the plot to express it as well as possible.
- After completing our first draft of the story, we contracted a diversity reader to provide feedback, which was especially important since our main character is African-American and I am not. Rather than anything censorious, the feedback encouraged us to dive more boldly and directly into some of the issues Alicia would face as a minority.
- Our playtests were accompanied by surveys about the narrative at various points. Based on the aggregate responses, we heavily revised the pacing of hints for the plot’s central mysteries so that they would unfold gradually without being either too obvious or too out-of-nowhere. We also extensively rewrote dialogue based on player perception of the characters, to ensure that their development arcs were coming across.
Combat Collaboration
Throughout development, I was in communication with the lead combat designer, Ryan Anderson, in order to foster ludonarrative synergy whenever possible. This included:
- Providing character briefs for both PCs and enemies so their move sets could match their personalities
- Syncing to make combat upgrades as relevant as possible to corresponding character developments
- Designing story-relevant “twists” or “gimmicks” in certain battles
The latter was especially relevant in the final chapter, where I collaborated to design narrative-centric battles that used combat mechanics to culminate the story’s thematic arcs.
The most crucial is a battle against the “Clubless Club.” After your opponents’ clubs were defeated and cancelled, they renounced their identities to form a revenge cult. Since the game’s main theme is about connecting with people different than you to avoid radical tribalization, fighting the cultists isn’t the answer: instead you must connect with them and remind them their lives had meaning beyond their clubs.
Since Alicia doesn’t personally know any of them very well, she must choose another Tactics Club member to speak with each cultist opponent. Each enemy’s moves and dialogue give hints as to their true identity.
Choosing correctly defeats the enemy, while choosing wrong restores them to full health. This rewards players for listening to and learning about their opponents over the course of the game – the battle is very difficult otherwise.
In another late-game battle, an argument between Alicia and her fellow Tactics Club member Colin comes to a head. Colin insists on having a tabletop battle to prove who should be the leader of the club, but Alicia wants to talk through their issues. In the ensuing conflict, the player must damage Colin’s figurine to provoke him and allow for a brief conversation. After three such conversations, Alicia is able to convince Colin to accept his fear of change and avoid making a disastrous mistake.
For the penultimate battle, we wanted to reward the player for Alicia’s many acts of kindness over the course of the game. The enemy – essentially a curse powered by victimization and isolation – seems impossible to defeat at first, but every turn one of your former enemies arrives to help. Their cutscenes contain choices that allow the player to choose the most helpful buffs or debuffs.