A future with Sam

Writing about Sam is a bit tricky, as it is with every character we want to talk about during pre-release days (we really get a kick out of surprising you). I will however go into some brief, possibly interesting bits that went into her creation and what you can expect from her once your grubby mitts are all over the game.

So with Valhalla, Jill (main character) was this girl with the resting bitch face trying to get by in a harsh environment, what with the rampant crime and civil unrest going on outside of the bar limits. Her storyline was a bit divisive, with some people wanting to listen to the bar patrons rather than hear to Jill’s plight, while many others felt she was the most relatable video game character ever witnessed – and we are very happy with these reactions as making divisive aspects is a sign that we are doing something right.

When the idea for Nirvana first surfaced, the idea of a bartender who was a mother was kind of an instant thought, something along the lines of writing someone who was the polar opposite to the previous main character, and that’s how Sam was born.

Jill uses mostly dark colours, Sam has bright pink hair. Jill is a single 27 year old woman living alone in a tiny apartment, Sam is a 32 year-old mother in a (rocky) relationship, not to mention that Saint Alicia, the place where Nirvana takes place, is pretty much heaven compared to Glitch City, and so on.

The biggest difference however… is that Sam smiles a lot!

First ever sketch I did of Sam. Not a whole lot changed except for the way I draw the hair (had to modify it in order to do the anime bits you saw in the trailer).

 

Many people have also pointed out that she has a cute accent going on. That one’s a work in progress but her way of talking is also very important in this quest to differentiate her from Jill. And it’s not like her whole deal is being the opposite to Jill, but rather that all the good ideas that occurred to us happened to be very different from her, so took the ball and ran with it as they say. We also refuse to make Valhalla again, as it was made in a very specific moment in time and its magic is impossible to replicate, and the sooner we stop chasing that lighting the better as we wouldn’t want to taint the memories you have of it.

One fun fact is that some folks already hate Sam because I was too horny last year and gave her a big bosom, which is understandable but you should know enough about us to trust our judgement in this kinda thing. We’ll just let the game speak for itself when the time comes, as we always do.

So what can you expect from Sam? We really don’t wanna spoil anything, but you should look forward to a more cheerful person crafting the cocktails this time around, someone who is still coming to terms with motherhood, a troubled past and a relationship she’s not really feeling anymore. Probably less relatable to the average Sukeban Games fan, but I think her story goes beyond these superficial aspects and we have no doubt you’ll end up loving her, and being reminded of yourself or somebody else while playing. Relationships are a universal thing after all.

Here are some non-spoilerific facts about her:

She’s Sam!
She’s cute!
She has pink hair!
CUTE!!!
She loves a good beer and tries too hard to be a good mom, to her own detriment.

By the way, we have some cool news to share later, but let me say right now that we are currently working on a public demo – that’s right, just like the one we made featuring Anna way back in 2015. Using all the feedback we got from the trade show demos we managed to improve the game a lot, so we are pretty excited about it.

We don’t have a solid timeline for this, but we are doing our best to make it a thing.

For now, please wish list Nirvana if you haven’t already, it really helps with visibility on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/914210/N1RV_AnnA_Cyberpunk_Bartender_Action/

And sign up to our mail list right here, so you get all the juicy and important Sukeban news.

https://tinyletter.com/sukebanfriends

Ahí nos olemos.

Musings about innocence and being yourself

When I was reading RINE messages in Steins;Gate 0, I found myself answering as soon as I got them. But anyone that has interacted with me knows I’m extremely bad with email (though I’ve never really told anyone the reason behind that. And I won’t be telling it now, that’s for sure).

It made me think how I personally think we can’t fully be ourselves when given the choice in a videogame. This is because when you play a game, you get rewarded for doing good things. Of course, this is not the case with every game, for example those where you play as a criminal. However, in games with a bit more leeway in the morality scale, such as Catherine, or even Steins;Gate, and outside of the personal choices of the characters, I feel like there is no genuine way to make the player act like they do in real life.

Huh? Go on sempai.

For example, when you play Catherine, and knowing there are several outcomes depending on your choices, you instinctively seek for the good answers, those that go for the blue, the color of the nice people, instead of red – and this is only from a morality standpoint, mind you, because I know a lot of people would go red because that meant staying with Catherine.

When playing Steins;Gate, I answer messages as soon as I see them, and my only true, benign act when I do so is choosing what to say depending on the moment. If Okabe, the game’s protagonist, is having a very serious conversation, I would tell anyone messaging me that I’m busy. In real life, I wouldn’t even respond, yet in Steins;Gate I do, because that’s what good characters do and lead to a good ending, or so my brain thinks.

Another good example would be Persona (3 and up, because of social links), or any dating sim. In these games you need certain stats to successfully interact with the characters. One character requires that you have a good physical condition, so you can train with them or something, or require you to study a lot so they think you’re smart. In dating sims, you build these stats like you would in real life: dedicating time of your life to improve that part of yourself in order to advance. However, I know many people, including myself, who would never go out there and study willingly to pass an exam because “that leads to the good ending” or “this is my favorite character’s route” – most people study because they have to, or don’t because they don’t see any worth in doing it, or are lazy, etc.

Humans never act in real life thinking their actions will lead to a reward. Even the most driven persons, like the entrepreneurs who went from rags to riches, don’t make the choices based on the rewards at the end, only for the perceived goal (grow my company, change the world, etc.), or pleasure in the short term, like when you cheated on your girlfriend despite knowing it would lead you to the bad ending (if she’s into monogamy anyway).

This is one of the issues that prevented me from fully enjoying Undertale. I couldn’t play much of it because I knew a lot about the game. Not even spoilers, just that it threw a lot of curveballs and used video game mechanics as a tool to manipulate your emotions, or something like that. People compare it a lot to Metal Gear and NieR in that sense. However, once I got to play it, all I did was chat my way out of battles, because I  knew the game was gonna throw a curveball somewhere if I killed too many people, and sorta felt the best ending would come up if I was just a nice guy.

Sure, in real life if you don’t kill anyone, you are a good person… relatively speaking, but it still didn’t feel like a sincere choice I was making inside the game. It felt very deliberate because I knew it would lead to a good result, the best ending.

“You must be a very popular son of a gun, huh? what with not liking Undertale. Really, what a smart guy. If I had a fedora I’d tip it right now”

Granted, the game could be very different, since I didn’t beat it for the reasons above. But I think it’s some sort of “gamer instinct” that never allows me to fully be myself when I have the chance. A video game never makes me feel “safe” enough about my choices. People who act like me in real life can get a bad ending, a good ending, a mediocre one, but in videogames, as long as you have that “gamer instinct”, you already know the outcome of the choices you have in front of you. You’re always a good girl, or a really bad guy because you can’t be one in real life with real life consequences.

Some people tell me this was one of the flaws in Valhalla. That you didn’t really have much choice, and what little interactions you had only lead to a slideshow after the credits. While there’s a lot of merit in this criticism, this was just a small risk taken for a little experiment, in which there was no clear way to tell if you were “in the good route”, or doing the correct flags to get the ending you desired.

I feel like the most important choice in Valhalla is to pay your rent, because it has a universal outcome that not even videogames can avoid: If you don’t pay rent, you’re homeless. Easy as that. So when people said “I was too scared to go on because I knew I didn’t have enough money for rent”, even if they already played a lot of games before, it felt like we had achieved an important step forward towards an unusual amount of nuance in a videogame choice. They knew what was going to happen, and so they had to act like they would in real life: They’d need to work their asses off to keep a roof over their heads, or give in to that sweet fan you just needed in winter to cope with your crippling depression.

I still don’t know how to fully achieve this, but hopefully as we keep making games, we’ll be able to beat the “gamer instinct” and make players act more like themselves. And while I don’t consider Valhalla a full success in that regard, it did make me see where we should go to fully achieve that personal holy grail of player interaction.

The worst thing that could happen is that, because of this writing, your “gamer instinct” will make you avoid our next games, just like mine didn’t let me enjoy Undertale.

Food for thought:

What are some games that fooled your “gamer instinct”? I can think of several examples on my end, but I’ve already written enough for today.