The NYU Game Center Showcase 2024
˚✦★⋆. ࿐࿔ .˚ *✦ ˚.˚ .✶ -͟͟͞☆
⟢Thesis
⟢Capstone
⟢Studio II
⟢Major Studio
⟢Mosaic
Mend
⊹ ࣪.⋆~⊹₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆✩࿐
For Studio II
A visual novel where you play a lonely soul seeking companionship and belonging in a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by nature. Perhaps you can find it in the mysterious stranger who is quarantined away in the vine-ridden house next to yours… if only you could cure them of their unknown illness.
Interview:
✧In one or two sentences, what is your game about?
Underneath it all, Mend is about the importance of queer community in times of adversity, and the dangers of abandoning that community for the sake of assimilation.
✧What was the inspiration of the game? What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
We were interested in making a visual novel/dating sim type game, but wanted to take it in a slightly different direction by focusing on one romanceable character in a unique situation— being quarantined and thus unable to come into actual contact with the player. We wanted to explore the ways we could develop a relationship with these restrictions, and try to make the love interest compelling without the player being able to see them, or engage in any physical affection with them before the game’s conclusion. We also wanted queerness to be an indelible undercurrent of the game’s narrative, with both the protagonist, the love interest, and several of the NPCs being queer, and themes of queer community and bureaucratic queerphobia present throughout the game.
✧Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it?
We struggled a bit to find the best way to create a visual-novel style game within Unity, given there are no built-in tools for setting up the trappings of the genre. The plug-in we turned to, Fungus, was largely functional, but also gave us a lot of grief due to its quirks. That experience has informed our decision to look more deeply into other potential resources, and to switch our game to another system as we go forward with development.
✧ Were there darlings that you had to kill? What were they? Why was the decision made to remove them from the project, and what were the reasons that you like the darling so much?
We originally planned to include some darker paths for the protagonist and their love interest’s relationship to go down, but ended up having to cut them for time. Given the premise that the love interest is isolated almost entirely from others and the protagonist is basically the only person invested in helping them (at their own peril), the risk of either of them developing an unhealthy fixation or obsession made sense. We wanted to explore different forms their story could take based on what the player decided to do, and include a real range of outcomes, but for this first version of the game, it simply wasn’t meant to be.
✧Talk about your teammates! What was everyone’s role?
Spyri was the editor and lead writer of our game, crafting the concept and narrative of the game’s world along with drawing our title screen and character sprites. Isaac was our lead programmer, responsible for making our game actually work, through crafting our behind-the-scenes system and troubleshooting any bugs. Alley primarily served as our producer, keeping us on track and organized. She also did part of the programming, particularly helping Isaac wrangle Fungus, and drew some of our backgrounds, dabbling wherever her help was needed. Alex drew most of our lovely backgrounds, bringing our game’s world to life with her art. Andie designed our game’s UI, keeping it in line with our game’s theme of nature for a cohesive finish, and wrote the first draft of day 2.
play this game on itch.io
Spyri
Alley
Andie