Making sports into drama (and games?)
An anime analysis from a game design perspective I admit: I am a great sports anime nerd (and I’ve previously written about the volleyball anime Haikyuu and its fandom) – something that also affects my thinking around game design. What makes sports anime so good – better than watching
Is the goal to make players feel good?
In this series of posts about relation games I’ve been discussing game and narrative design from a relational perspective. I’ve been meaning to explore the role of player agency in games centered around relationships. I also posed some specific questions: Should players get a wide variety o
Relationships and gameplay
If fictional relationships feel real, as I proposed in a previous post, then we need to be mindful of how we utilize characters and relationships in games. Why are the potential relationships there, and what do we want players to feel? Most often, we are not entirely free when we design a game ̵
Impressions from Devcom & Gamescom
Last week was a really intense one for us, as we attended both Devcom and Gamescom. At Devcom, we did the first IRL showcase of Truer than You, during the two conference days, as well as at Developer Night | Courage Cologne. Then we moved over to Gamescom for meetings, where we were part of [&hellip
Fictional relationships feel real
I’ve been writing a few posts now about the relationships in Knife Sisters and what we learned from making that game, as well as from the comments we received (here and here). This post is about one of the most important findings we’ve done when it comes to relation games. Players invest themsel
Welcoming an eventful autumn
We’ve had a pretty productive summer over here in Sweden. It started with us doing a game jam for an upcoming title, which we hope to start pre-producing next year. We have also been working quite a lot on the story for Truer than You, and are now feeling pretty confident about it. This story [&he
I’ll make it up to her!
Games that are about relationships and making tough choices in regards to other characters can evoke quite a lot of emotions. We have already talked a bit about how some players objected to being forced into a relationship with Dagger in Knife Sisters. Another very emotional message we got from a pl
Would you like being forced into a relationship?
When working on relation games, there are many things to take into consideration. I’ve already elaborated a little upon the fact that the choice of characters in relation games is very important, and will affect the players a lot. When working on those kinds of games I have asked myself question
Systems for Emotions – Knife Sisters
In this blog post, I’ll go into Knife Sisters as an example on how a game’s system is created to convey a story, and how the characters are chosen to play a part in that story. (Be aware, there will be spoilers!) When we started working on Knife Sisters, I mainly only knew that the […]
Systems for Emotions – Exploring Relation Games
The games we’re making are relation games: games centered around existential questions and ways to relate to others. We also have a large focus on LGBTQ+ issues and characters. In 2019, we released a game called Knife Sisters, and this blog post, as well as a few upcoming ones, will be centered ar
Making Relation Games
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the games we make, and what kind of games we want to make. When we started the new company this autumn, we also did a lot of business planning, working on the brand and so forth. Doing that kind of work is something I really enjoy, since it […]
From games to the world and back – 2022 in review
This was a year that began and ended with video games. That might not seem very strange when we’re a game studio, but nonetheless it has a special significance this year, which has been quite an eventful one, to say the least! Previous Next The year began with Hades I’m not an avid game player,
Variations on Amnesia
Adaptations are very common in the domains of manga and anime, the most typical being that an original work of manga is adapted into anime. But there is a third media form that sometimes get adaptations too, namely games, and more specifically, the adventure game genre visual novel. [This text was o
The fan art makes up for it!
In this text I will analyze fandom and fan creations connected to the shōnen (targeted towards boys) media franchise Haikyū!!. The text was originally written as a short assignment in the course Japanese Popular Culture Represented in Anime and Manga at Dalarna University. Haikyū!! is originally
Implicit Storytelling – The Excellence of Descending Stories
Descending Stories – Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju (~Showa and Genroku Era Lover’s Suicide through Rakugo) is a work of fiction by Kumota Haruko that is originally released as a 31 chapters long manga series (2010-2016) and then adapted into two seasons of anime (2016-2017). It’s a very comp
Knife Sisters got the Long Feature Award!
Tonight at the A MAZE. Awards we won the Long Feature Award for Knife Sisters! We are honored and humbled! 😀 THE LONG FEATUREThis is the award for complex games and developing virtual reality worlds. Those are the ones, who challenge your life by offering immersive storytelling and much more than
Processing the Process – On Game Creation, Burnout and the Existence
Long time no see, comrades! Last year, on April 24th, me and my team released Knife Sisters, a story-based game about love, manipulation, relationships and sex. We had been working on it for 2.5 years, but the creation process had been pretty straight forward – something that could not be said
Bridging the Gap – Steam and 18+ Content
This is a post in the series “When your Wholesome, Queer Game is Seen as Very Controversial” in which I’m circling around questions such as: How are we supposed to discuss topics like consent and sexuality with young people, if those topics are banned from almost every platform and hidden behi
Knife Sisters is selected for the IndieCade Showcase at E3
Knife Sisters has been selected for the IndieCade Showcase at one of the world’s largest game exhibitions, E3 Expo in Los Angeles, June 11-13. We are super happy and proud to be able to show a game that expands the limits for which stories can be told through games, and who gets to be represented
The reception of Knife Sisters
Knife Sisters has been out for a little more than one month. The reception has been very positive, and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the ones we aimed to reach. Here are some impressions: *inhales* If you want to explore queer relationships, empathic BDSM scenarios and wonderfully writte
Showing Knife Sisters at Creative Coast and Nordic Game Conference
Knife Sisters will be shown at Creative Coast Festival (20th of May) in Karlshamn and Nordic Game Conference (22-24th of May) in Malmö. Come by if you want to try the game or have a chat with the developers! 🖤
When Your Wholesome, Queer Game is Seen as Very Controversial – a Blog Series
On the 24th of April we released our dark, emotional, and erotic visual novel Knife Sisters on Steam and Itch.io. In a series of posts, I will look into what happens when you approach the commercial markets with a game that explicitly aims to explore sex, power and consent. Knife Sisters is set in a
Welcome to the release party for Knife Sisters!
Knife Sisters was released on the 24th of April on Steam and Itch.io, and now we’re celebrating that the game has reached players all over the world – in countries where being queer is not as accepted as in Sweden. Join us at DevHub, Torggatan 2 in Malmö, the 31st of May from 18.30. We’ll
For all the lonely souls – I give you Knife Sisters!
Today is a big day: Knife Sisters hits Steam and Itch.io. This game means a lot to me, since I see it as the essence of what I’ve been doing artistically since I was a teenager. I’ve been working in the games industry since 2005, and my aim has always been to explore what games […]
Knife Sisters will be released April 24!
Our dark, explorative and erotic visual novel Knife Sisters will be released the 24th of April on Steam and Itch.io. We are so looking forward to share this interactive love story with you all! 💖
Knife Sisters approaching closed beta
EDIT: The spots for our closed beta are now filled! Keep an eye out for updates about the game by following us on Twitter, Instagram or Discord. 💥⛓💣 We are happy to announce that we are approaching closed beta for Knife Sisters, and we are looking for story game enthusiasts to
5 tips for doing a Kickstarter campaign
In november 2018 I did a Kickstarter campaign for the visual novel I’m working on, Knife Sisters. This was in part an impulse move, which I will get back to, and it was instigated by meeting a representative from Kickstarter at IndieCade in L.A. in October, who told me he thought the project c
Dark, cute & queer – inspirational sources
I’ve been posting pictures on Instagram from inspirational sources for Knife Sisters, and it made me want to sum it up here as well, in a little more detail. First, the origins of a project are of course a multitude, from events in one’s own life, people you’ve met, experiences that are kept i
Symbolic and Logical – The Tarot Cards
I’ve always had a great fascination for tarot cards and other similar meaningful/figurative cards, such as the Kille card deck. As an eleven year old, I created my first divination game, based on my own cards. I’ve since worked on many projects that incorporated divination and tarot cards in dif
The hurdles of marketing a game with adult content
So, the Kickstarter campaign is soon coming to an end! During this campaign I’ve learned so much that will be invaluable when the game launches this spring, and for that I am very grateful. But some of the things I’ve learned are a bit bitter to swallow … When I started this project, I didn’