Christine Love on making a new RPG Get in the car, loser!

Creation Get in the car, Losing!, an RPG adventure road game in which high school kids face off against “machine devil cultists” to save the world, was a labor of love for its developers, Love conquers all games. I spoke to Christine Love, the main developer of the game, about the team development process and how she approached the story, in which the hero, Sam, deals with anxiety and self-doubt. as a queer person.

READ MORE: Gay Road Trip RPGs are a thing now, and I’m into it

Sam embarks on a quest to save the world from a road trip with his friend Grace and Grace’s partner, Valentine. Writing this adventure was a balancing act for Love, as she navigated between her comedic moments and the heaviest questions Sam struggles with. She wanted to make sure the story didn’t lean too far into its comedy, so much so that there was no room left for characterization.

“I wanted Sam to go on a trip and grow up on that trip [while] go through a lot of anxiety, worry and fear, ”Love said. “It is the story of her who became a heroine. At the beginning of this story, she is constantly [riddled] through self-doubt, taking an ankle and making jokes at his own expense. Just anything to deal with his anxiety.

Love drew on a lot of her own experiences when writing not only for Sam, but also for the characters who offer advice to Sam throughout the game. Valentine, who is not binary, often serves as voices for the kinds of things Love would like people to say to her when she was Sam’s age, like telling Sam to stop making self-made jokes and be kinder to herself.

Love has worked hard to portray the fun and endearing qualities of Sam’s insecurities while also inspiring players to want to protect her and get to know her better. “At the end of the day, the comedic aspects are there to bring you closer to her,” she said. “They just immerse you in that group dynamic and immediately make you say to yourself, ‘Oh wow, I know how to relate to these people because we have good jokes. We just shoot shit and it’s fun. It’s a good ending for the heavier things that everyone in the group has to go through.

An inspiration for love was Scott pilgrim writer Bryan Lee O’Malley ‘coming of age story Disappeared at sea, in which a shy high school student named Raleigh joins classmates she has never spoken to on a road trip along the California coast. Love opted for a road trip story because stories that lock people up in closed quarters for long periods of time provide an excuse to write about introspection, learning, and self-discovery.

Yoko Taro Deny and Drakengard The series have also been sources of inspiration, especially for the way the game communicates its story. In the same way that weapon and item descriptions expand the storytelling in Taro’s games, the various items and knick-knacks characters find on their journey through Taro. Get in the car, loser! revealing details about the larger game world. “It was a natural extension of what is an interesting feature on a road trip: finding trash in any stores you stop by on the way,” said Love said.

The fight of the game has a few Final Fantasy XIII in its DNA. Love was initially terrified of designing this aspect of the game because Get in the car, loser! is his first RPG. Previously, she had created visual novels with choice-driven mechanics, but this time around, she wanted to do something new.

“I have certainly written a lot of games about girls who let go of their feelings and go through hard times [and] learn a lot of things. But having a game where someone can punch, and it feels good to do that, it was honestly totally new to me, ”she said. “I don’t want to make a game that looks like the game I made before, but is a slightly better version or a slightly different version. I want to explore new ideas, new themes and even new mechanics. Despite his initial apprehension, creating a combat system eventually became his favorite part of working on the game.

Get in the car, loser! is free on Steam and was funded by the success of the developers’ three previous games. Love’s decision to make the game free came from her experience in 2010. Digital: a love story, a visual novel in which the protagonist must solve the mystery of a girl’s disappearance using a bulletin board system on her 1980s computer. She said Digital was also a very popular free-to-play game among its early players, although she thought the game was “a bit rough around the edges.”

The biggest challenge for Love and her team with Get in the car, loser! was to find a way to reach new players and introduce them to Love Conquers All Games and its writing style. Faced with the choice of letting players buy the game or make it free and bet on the income from its DLC, Love Conquers All Games opted for the latter.

“I want[ed] having something that was a great primer to help reach people who aren’t already fans of my work and who might be intimidated into buying the kind of games I make, ”Love said.

Players who purchase the game’s DLC, Battle on the Grand Promenade, which Love described as her beach episode, will find it a fun, light-hearted comedy with items and powers that Love thought were “too lopsided” or “too weird” to fit into the main game.

“I hope people who really love the game will say, ‘Oh, well, I want to take the DLC [and] get the weird stuff [and] get the bonus content, ”Love said.

She saw Get in the car, loser! as an opportunity to tell a story that was linked to her and that touched on the insecurities around the homosexuality that she had in her. “The fact that a lot of Sam’s anxieties and insecurities come from this personal place means that I can really explore metaphorically, what does that mean beyond being a lesbian, and how can -we understand what those feelings mean, ”she said. noted. For her, it’s about making the kind of games you want to see in the world. “I feel like if I don’t tell those kinds of stories that I want to tell, then I don’t think I can expect anyone else to do it.”

Regarding the sequel to Love, she said that Sam and his team may have more adventures in the future DLC and that she would like to continue working in the RPG space.

“After working on this game for four years, I’m just delighted to finally see, ‘Did it work? “” Does it reach people? “” Is it attractive? “Did people find that funny?” I hope I can continue this.