David Talks Deckbuilers & Narrative In Malys

MAY 2ND: KICKSTARTER DEV LOG

Note: These posts were written for the Kickstarter campaign that ran April-May. Some information may be outdated or incorrect.
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Hey everyone!

Meredith tells me this is a good opportunity to answer questions, so I guess I’ll start with the most basic one - the same question that (a very confused) Liam asked when I told him I wanted to make a deckbuilder: “Why a deckbuilder?” Only it was more like “Whyyyyyy a deckbuilder?” with his Australian accent and a very puzzled look.

I am, after all, known for my love of all things narrative, and it might be a bit hard at first to reconcile that with deckbuilders - a genre, which (often rightfully so) is associated with having very crunchy gameplay. I imagine there’s a big chunk of our audience that feels the same way, and might feel leery about taking the leap.

My answer is that, for me, narrative isn’t solely about being told a story. Yes, sure, dialogue and prose are lovely things that can be very evocative in conjuring that story in your head… but there’s something I just love about how some card games can do the same. The cards each tell a small part of the tale, and as you play them it all strings together as a more emergent form of narrative.

When we were first tossing around the idea, I brought up this crazy notion of a game about high school where you played as a Popular Girl engaging in social battles with your rivals - but instead of a health bar you chipped away at each others’ self-esteem. Imagine, if you will, a sudden confrontation in the hallway where the cards played out like so:

Scathing Retort
But I’m a Cheerleader!
Your Shoes Are So Last Year
I’m Too Good For This
See You In The Yard

Does that series of cards not conjure an image in your mind of how this fight went down? It does for me, and this is exactly what I imagined a card system doing for an exorcism. Not a blow-by-blow account, but an emergent narrative told by the intents and styles of the cards.

If you’d like to check out a few other deckbuilder games I believe do this well:

• Griftlands- This game was such an unexpected delight

• Marvel’s Midnight Suns - Seriously, I can’t recommend this enough. It has a lot of rough parts, but the friendships you build with the heroes reminds me of Dragon Age and the gameplay gives the best feeling of being a superhero I’ve ever seen in a game.

• Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - This coming from someone whose eyes glossed over at every Gwent portion of the Witcher III. I started playing this game just to see what it did, expecting to drop out quickly, and it sucked me in right until the end.

I am so excited at the idea of getting this out to you all and letting you experience (the more twisted side of) what’s going on in my brain right now. It’s dark, sure, but fun!

So, we’ve talked about how not all narrative involves being told a story. My focus there was on the kind of narrative that can be invoked by the cards you play during an exorcism, but it occurs to me now that this may give someone the impression that Malys doesn’t contain the kind of narrative where you’re told a story.

I am, after all, kind of known for that sort of narrative, so I agree it’d be strange for me to make a game that doesn’t include it at all.

So let me say it straight up: yes, there is a story. You play as Noah, a man who was once a priest but now works as a loner exorcist. You’ve arrived at this dark and demon-infested city, riding in on your cool motorcycle (cue me excitedly describing to our audio and cinematics folks how I wanted it to go VROOOM every time Noah rides from place to place) on the hunt for your arch-nemesis. As you progress through the city, you’ll have encounters that range from possessed people (called ‘hosts’) that you need to exorcise but also characters minor and major that you can build relationships with, and in both these situations you’ll encounter the “told” part of the narrative.

An example of an in-game 'storylet'.

How do we do that? Well, I’ll start by saying what it’s not: it’s not choice-driven dialogues, like the sort you might have encountered in Stray Gods or Dragon Age. Instead, it’s delivered through chunks of prose we call “storylets”. The one part about roguelikes I really enjoy is when the run is diagetic, meaning it’s an in-world element that all the characters recognize is happening. When Noah fails for the first time and begins the night over again, he rides into the city once more… only this time he pauses, having a sense of déjà vu. Hasn’t this already happened? Was he dreaming? What’s happened to the possessed hosts he’s already exorcised? Is it possible for him to even help them, if the night simply restarts?

As he goes through the city once again, some of the people he encounters will be those he encountered before… many won’t remember him even if he remembers them, but others are fully aware. Those are the ones with power, the ones who Noah can build relationships with and potentially ally with. That’s where the choice element comes in: you’ll have to decide who Noah ultimately trusts and accepts help from.

Lydia is a potential ally you can encounter, one who will sell you magical curios

Building the storylets to evolve as the story evolves and Noah learns more about what’s happening to him was the real challenging part of the writing. I can’t say a lot more without spoiling the story, but when the dramatic reveals occur they can completely change your understanding of events you may have already encountered numerous times, and this is all present in the text.

Noah encountering Angel out in the world.

All that is, of course, dependent on whether reading the storylets is of interest to you. If you’d rather, we have a “skip” function that allows you to jump to the end of the prose - where you’ll often receive a reward or a penalty or gain access to a bargaining interface (or begin an exorcism, if it comes to that). For those who are interested, however, there’s a story in Malys which will evolve over time, involving themes of love and regret and redemption… all told in a moody, film noir style which (I’ll be honest) is the most fun I’ve had writing in ages.

Speak soon,

David