Confession time: I really dig Mel C. For a band manufactured as a product, that any of them have a career once the flash leaves the pan, there really isn’t anything but “remember them” tabloid fodder, when you see them 10 years later and life has not been kind to them. So despite the usual trajectory these stories take, the fact that she sings incredibly well and has managed a unique style to call her own is very much to her credit. She even pokes at herself, in song form! I bring her up because I am doing the groundwork on the engine I want to make the Also Rans in, and there is not a really well defined path for me.

Today I learned: Visual Novels are a thing. They can have gameplay elements, but it looks like they hew more towards character interactions and dating sims, which is not my thing. Well, character interactions ARE me, but not 100% of my story is that. I found some excellent advice on how not to make them crappy, and one piece of advice that really stands out: Don’t try to create your own engine. Which, I do appreciate, as I am not by any stretch a programmer, and the learning curve on Godot has intimidated me.

The problem is, the tried and true VN software options are not really optimal for a game. Sure, people have kitbashed them into a RPG, but I don’t actually intend to hew close to an RPG for much of the game, and don’t want to limit my creativity because of a tool’s limitations. Unity has Naninovel, but, uh, Unity bad. Godot has Dialogic and Dialog System 2, which is good, because Godot good.

So great, I have a resource I can use AND it looks like I can lean on modules created by actual programmers to implement the game bits and story bits. Why did I name drop Sporty Spice? I dunno, I just like her. No, wait, I do have a reason: Because she doesn’t really have a label that works. She’s not a pop star, she’s not a lounge singer, she’s not a dance club diva, she’s.. all of them. Which is really hard to market because back when music stores existed or people paid money for music, it was important to have a section in the store to put music of a specific genre into. And that is a issue for me because the more I learn about Visual Novels, the harder it would be for me to label the Also Rans as one. It also isn’t a narrated action RPG, a la Deathspank or Bastion, because the narrator tends to follow around the player and comment on their (stupid) actions in a hilarious way, but by and large lets the player have the agency in the story. Its more a narrated RPG where the player gets to play independently while the story takes a pause, or natters on in the background while a game is going on, or the player sits back and relaxes while a story is read to them for a bit. Or.. all of them.

So that’s my elevator pitch. “I want to make a game that is like Sporty Spice, because that woman has a career that defies easy labels.”

Maybe I had better work on that pitch.