Hello, everyone! Welcome to the first Q&A of 2023. It’s been a while since we’ve started doing these, and I appreciate that people have still been sending in questions every month, and we’ll just get right into them.
I’m curious, will we be able to start dating Baxter in Step Four, or will we need to date him in Step Three to have a relationship with him?
You can start dating him and Step Four. If you want to go out with him in Step Three, that’s fine, but there’s no obligation to do that. You can still be friends or crushing and not date, and then only get with him in the future.
Hi. I remember you were hiring writers for the Baxter DLC, and I was wondering what process you go through when looking to hire a writer and what you look for specifically?
Well, the first thing that’s helpful is to see if they’ve ever worked on a visual novel or interactive fiction or text adventure or story-based game before. And if not, that’s okay. But that is definitely something I look for. And when it comes to their actual writing, I definitely want to see engaging and sort of personality-full prose, that’s not too long. Because I can do a lot of the dialogue myself. I don’t need somebody who’s super great at dialogue. But the hardest thing for me is having prose that’s both not too long, but not just sort of boring and explanatory and repetitive. And that can be hard to find because often for writing you have longer sections of prose, and maybe if you do have more time to write it out, you can make it interesting. But once you have to sort of narrow it down to just a sentence or two between dialogue, like we have it in our visual novels because we don’t usually like to go too long with description, it can be tough to make it fun to read. So now, you know, I guess what to send in if we ever open up for writers again. Which is scripts that don’t have long prose but do have good prose.
Are there any songs or albums that you listen to when writing? Are there any songs or albums that remind you of specific characters?
And the answer is yes for songs, no for albums. I’m not an album person. I just take songs individually and separately. But I do definitely listen to specific songs when writing certain moods or games. And there are definitely songs that make me think of certain characters. For one example, I listened to “We Were Rich” by Runaway June a lot when writing Step One of Our Life 2.
The Next question starts with a lot of nice words about the game, and I appreciate that a lot. But the question is: Would Cove, Derek, or Baxter be open to a queer platonic relationship with the MC? And yes, they would. And then also, it might be too far to discuss, but do you think the options in Our Life 2 would as well?
And they would in theory. I don’t know if or how that’d end up in the game because I don’t know if that would have to go in like a potential wedding DLC, which may not happen for Our Life 2, or I don’t know if that could be fit into Step Four where you officially get into that relationship. I guess it depends on how committed you want it to be, like actually like a marriage or if it’s more like just being partners. So, I guess we’ll see what potentially happens in the game, but at least in theory, they wouldn’t have any problems with that.
Next are two questions in the same comment, which is: Which Our Life character have you found the hardest to write so far?
And that’s always the most minor characters. The more time I have with the character, the easier they are to write. The less time I have to write them, the harder it is to write them.
And the second is: Are there any characters you’ve made that had specific inspiration from real life people?
And only slightly. I’ve definitely included specific little phrases or quirks or preferences that I’ve seen from people in real life, but there’s definitely no character that is just like someone I’ve ever known. One funny example is in “Sightseeing”, you can talk to Baxter about his black and white color preference, and there’s one way to get him to say a line where it’s like, “Do I like black and white movies? Well, does Clark Gable have a mustache?” And that was a real response from an old friend of mine, not specifically about black and white movies, but she loved them so much that you’d ask her an obvious question and she’ll be like, “Well, does Clark Gable have a mustache?” I always thought that was very charming, and so that was something I included for Baxter. But she would not think that she is like Baxter overall at all. It’s just little things like that.
How do you think Cove would get along with the main characters of XOXO Droplets? In my head canon, the one Cove would get along with best is Pran, but that may just be because they’re both tall, gentle, and slightly socially challenged. I’m interested in hearing, if you would have any thoughts.
I definitely don’t want to force you to change your head, cannon, but I don’t really think Cove would get along with Pran at all because Pran is quiet and socially awkward, but he is not nice. He’s very difficult, and I imagine Cove would struggle a lot with how difficult Pran was. And he wouldn’t get along with any of them except for Jeremy, who he does end up getting along with fairly well in Step Three and then very well in Step Four. The other ones, it would not go well unless they only met as adults when they’ve sort of mellowed out.
I truly love the Our Life game and had such a positive impact on me. Thank you so much for your hard work. Well, thank you for playing! I’m glad you liked it. What advice would you give to new visual novel developers, particularly solo developers?
And we also got a second question from someone else asking if I have any advice for people who might want to create their own VN. And unfortunately I don’t have any good advice for solo devs. I am not a solo dev by far and that is an entirely different experience to having a team that you can rely on. And if you do, do it all yourself, that’s incredible. But you don’t want me to tell you how to do that! As for advice in general, it also kind of depends on whether you mean to do it professionally, like to make a commercial game, or just at all. You just want to make a game. And if you just want to make a game, I would say find a game jam going on and see if you can join a team. And that’s probably the fastest and easiest way to get into making any game at all. I also personally recommend using the engine Renpy, but there are plenty of other options and you can figure out what works best for you. But if you’re trying to make a VN for an audience either to make money or just because you’re hoping a fair amount of people will play what you make, my best piece of advice would be to not feel bad with however well your first game goes, and to basically expect that you will have to make another game. That you can’t just make one game and then your dreams will come true or you’ll have a fan base or you’ll be able to do it full time. That just almost certainly won’t happen. And it can be very saddening when you make a game and you think maybe it’ll go somewhere and then basically nothing happens with it. And so I do recommend that you prepare yourself for that first game to do very little, but you can build from there. So just if you’re already thinking, “I’m going to make this game and once that game is done, I’m going to make another game and hopefully that one will do even better.” I think you might have a better time when you release that first game. Now, if your plan is just to always release one single game and then you’re moving on with your life, then obviously do whatever you want and make it as good as you can because that’s your one shot and then you’re never going to do it again. But definitely, if you have any intentions of making this last, you can’t take how well that first game does as the one and only sign of whether or not you should continue because odds are it’s not going to be that great. But being able to take the experience you got from making that first game and then also having a game that you made in the past to point to and the time that you spent building up your presence in the visual novel community, that will all come together to help make your next game have a better opportunity to get out there and be well received. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of advice you were looking for, but that is my rambling recommendation on what to do if you’re starting out in making VNs.
I seriously love all your games. Thanks for being literally the perfect game developer. Well, that’s very nice of you. Was when Baxter mentioned seeing us in Golden Grove sometimes soon, despite not visiting it anytime soon, a little fourth wall break?
And it is. It can be. But also it is meant to make sense in the story where basically he’s implying that, “Well, if you go to the town, I will go with you.” But also you can take it as “If you go play that other game, I will also still be there.” So, it can go either way.
The next question is, hey, thank you for doing this Q&A. I’ve had a lot of fun listening to the past ones. I’m glad that you have. I wanted to ask, how did Noelani and Pamela first meet?
They met in college. They went to the same school in California.
And then it says: If you have time to answer a second question, what were the inspirations for their personalities? Was there anyone or anything that inspired you?
And I’m honestly not very good at answering these “What inspired the character” questions. I don’t remember that well, especially after how long it’s been since I’ve made them. And I usually don’t use a lot of specific inspirations. It’s more just like what I want to do at the time and how I can make them seem compatible with each other and not too similar to characters that already exist. So unfortunately, there’s not much I can say about that.
When it comes to stereotypical terms, some people end up using them in a joking or proud way, but some still aren’t comfortable with such terms and don’t want to be called that. And so in a roundabout way, they’re wondering: if Derek would be okay with being called a himbo?
And he definitely be able to take it as a joke, but he would not personally describe himself as such because he thinks that he’s smart and himbos are sort of meant to be good hearted but kind of dumb. And Derek is very much a “the brain is also a muscle” kind of guy. So you could call him that, but he would take it as a joke and not as a sincere description of himself.
As usual, I’ll start by thanking you for doing these. They are always so fun and cool. Well, thank you. I’m glad you think so. We know what the Our Life love interests would think of the MC being a merperson, but what do you think of players head-canoning their MCs as having merperson blood?
I mean, that’s fine with me! I don’t personally believe magical creatures exist in that universe, but it’s totally fun and neat if players come up with more fantastical elements for their stories.
And the comment has another question, which is: Are you planning on having a relevant, magical creature being mentioned in Our Life 2, for example, some kind of fay or woodland sprites?
And the answer is maybe. I can definitely see Tamarack really liking fairies or something, but I can’t say for sure if it’s ever going to come up in a specific event.
Who is your favorite?
And my preferences are very fickle and they usually go to whatever is the newest thing that I’m doing. Like my favorite game is whichever game I released the most recently. And my favorite characters are the ones I’ve most recently sort of figured out and I’m creating events in a story for. Hilariously, for a while, while making the Our Life DLCs, it was obviously the cast of Our Life 2 that was my favorite. But it’s been so long that I’m now a year into coming up with plans for the game after Our Life 2, and so secretly my favorites are the characters from Project W that no one has any idea about! But I personally love them very much. They’re very funny. I’m excited for the day when I can share any information at all, but I definitely still love the cast of Our Life 2 and I’m very excited to work on that game as the main project very soon. That’s going to be nice.
Is there any chance for Elizabeth from Our Life 1 to make an appearance in Step Three of Our Life 2? And if so, could she be a potential love interest mirroring Baxter?
And unfortunately, no, she’s not going to appear in the game at all and wouldn’t be able to be a love interest even if she did. I’m sorry about that.
Is there any hope for more Jeremy content in the future?
And that is sadly also probably a no. I mean, I want to release some of the XOXO Blood Droplets content that wasn’t fully finished but did get started. And hopefully that happens. But there definitely will not be any new appearances for him in future games because there’s just too many other characters that have never had any cameos at all.
Thanks for all your hard work. I wanted to ask, are Baxter’s parents busy or away from him often? From what you said, they aren’t very close, and he seems pretty well acquainted with being alone.
Not really. There are problems with his parents, but they don’t come down to them just never being around. They are actually pretty involved in his life, and part of the problem is that they’re too involved in his life. Baxter’s issues with being alone definitely comes a bit more in how he’s tried to create relationships, and his sort of inability to create relationships outside of with his own parents who love him because he’s their son.
How many games are you planning to make in the Our Life series?
And it’s probably going to be two. After Our Life 2, it’s going to be Project W, and after Project W, who knows if I’ll even still be making games. But if I am, I probably won’t go back to Our Life. I’ll likely still want to make something that’s really new and different. I mean, if I’m making games for like 20 more years, it’s possible I’ll go back to the Our Life series, but that may not happen. I guess we’ll see.
As his writer, are Shiloh’s emotions just as much of an enigma to you as they are everyone else? Or do you have at least a slightly better idea of how he feels about certain things? Thanks for answering in advance.
And I do not. I have no idea. I’ve made no decisions on it. I personally think he’s not a very good person, but I definitely don’t have a problem with others thinking maybe he’s just more troubled, but still good deep down. However, I can’t give any definitive statements one way or another. He’s just like that to everyone.
Thank you for all the hard work! Will the choices you make in Baxter’s DLC Moments influence the other Moments? And if you play the second DLC Moment before the beach outing one, does that impact those interactions too?
And yes, there are references between all the Moments, including his DLC Moments and his other DLC Moments, and his Moments and the Moments that are not from his DLC. It’s not a ton with the Moments not from his DLC, but there are at least a few changes and references you can get in those original Moments.
Could you describe more about Baxter’s cologne? We get to notice it a few times, but was there a particular scent or brand you had in mind when writing?
And the answer is no. I have very sensitive asthma and cannot handle anything scented. It’s completely noxious to me. I hate every single thing. I have no idea about perfumes or colognes and cannot even smell them for research purposes. So, I’m afraid it’s going to have to remain kind of vague and very general.
Is there any chance of us seeing more representation for people with disabilities and neurodivergence in your games in the future?
And yes, I’m sure we’ll still have things like that in future games.
I know that in Our Life 2 you can have a jealous MC. Does Autumn or Tamarack ever get jealous of the MC for talking to/spending time with others?
Only if you put the jealousy meter on in Step Two and beyond. That won’t happen automatically.
If Our Life had Our Life 2’s relationship dynamic system, what would the default expression of elements be for Cove, Derek, and Baxter?
And I can’t really pick. The way their personalities are, and especially Cove with his warm/cold system, it just doesn’t work with the dynamic system. And I don’t think I can choose something that would make sense in every context.
Thank you so much for the hard work. Please take as much time as you need to ensure you are mentally and physically healthy. I appreciate that! Are Derek, Tamarack, and/or Qiu first generation Americans?
Derek isn’t, but I’m not 100% decided on Qiu and Tamarack.
Do Serenity or Bianca have canon surnames yet?
They don’t.
How would you rank the five Our Life love interests on how overt they are when it comes to their crush on the MC?
And I’d say that, honestly, they’re all pretty high. If you do set it to “Crush”, none of them are really that discreet about it. It’s either they’re very transparent as people, or they’re just very forward about it as people.
Are you going to make a post on the Patreon when the Kickstarter is open for Our Life 2?
And yes, I will. It’ll be posted everywhere when that’s happening, and even when there’s just a preview page for it.
I saw in the 2022 closing post that you guys are going to extend the demo again in April or so. Does that mean the beta will also be extended, or is this something you aren’t able to answer?
I think you mean the demo for Our Life 2, and that’s not the right time period. April to June is when the Baxter DLC is about going to come out, and then it’s July to August or September, when the Our Life 2 public demo is going to be extended again. But there will be beta extensions that happen throughout this year, sooner than that. I can’t say for sure when the beta will be updated, but it will be sooner than that.
Is “Secret Project R” discontinued?
Unfortunately, yes, it is. Basically, all of those older projects that were supposed to be worked on these past years and had to be put on hold because of how long Our Life took, they’re not going to be able to come back into production.
I apologize if this is a bit redundant, but I want to make sure I have this right. In Step One of Our Life 2 and Step Two of Our Life 1, Baxter’s hair is dark gray, then he dyes it black in Step Two of Our Life 2, and then he has white and black streaks in Step Three of Our Life 1. Finally, he dyes it black again in Step Four of Our Life 1, or does he let it go back to being dark gray?
That’s almost right. His hair is dyed in Step Two of Our Life 1. It’s natural in Step One of Our Life 2, then when he’s 14, which is when he appears in Our Life 1 for the first time, it’s already dyed black. Then it’s still dyed black in Step Two of Our Life 2, it’s black and white in Step Three of Our Life 1, and it is still dyed black in Step Four of Our Life 1. So a little bit confusing, but basically he has dyed it some degree ever since he was 14 and continues to do so.
What kind of movies do Cove, Derek, and Baxter like? Any specific genres they’re into?
I mean, I imagine Derek’s into a lot of the big blockbuster films, action and adventure. Baxter likes black and white films and dramas. Cove, he’s really not that much of a movie guy. It’s mostly he has types of movies he really doesn’t like, like horror or anything really bombastic. And then he’s just sort of neutral on other things, like he’d be willing to watch maybe more like all ages sort of fun comedic kind of stories that aren’t too intense. But he doesn’t love them, especially either.
How do you pronounce SSBites? I pronounce it as S-S-Bites. And does anyone at SSB actually call the students that? I don’t think we ever heard anyone but Missy say it. So is the nickname a widespread thing? Just a cheerleader thing, just a Missy thing, or something else?
And it is mainly a cheerleader thing. Or anyone who’s got a ton of school spirit and wants to identify themselves as someone specifically going to this school. A lot of the students don’t do that. They think it’s silly, but the people who are definitely into being attendants at this specific school do call themselves SSBites.
If Cove, Baxter, and Derek are compared to animals, what kind of animal do you think they are? (The furry kind, like cats and dogs)
I mean, I guess Baxter would be a cat, and Cove and Derek would be dogs if it was limited to just sort of common furry pet animals.
Does Baxter know that Renee transitioned before he left in Step Three?
And no, he left before that happened, and he hasn’t looked into what’s going on with them ever since.
What is Baxter’s actual position at his work? We know he’s a wedding planner, but based on his college major, is he one of the company’s partners?
He is just a wedding planner. He also plans events for other people as a freelancer, basically. But at that company, he’s their resident wedding planner, and he just got a job that wasn’t very relevant to his degree.
And that is all of the questions for this month! I hope I didn’t miss any. There were a few that I couldn’t answer, and I left comments about it, but I tried to get to most of them. Hopefully that was fun or interesting and I’ll talk to you again next month. Take care everybody!