Crème de la Crème Turns Three!

Happy third birthday, Crème de la Crème!

I started work on Crème de la Crème shortly before the release of Blood Money, my game about being a mafia blood magician who can control ghosts. During Blood Money I wondered on and off about making school stories with the Choice of Games inclusivity ethos. Boarding school stories are traditionally very white, very colonial, sometimes including gay relationships or hints of such (often, though not always, ending tragically). I was curious about doing it myself and doing something different.

This retrospective includes mild spoilers.

This was the original pitch for CdlC:

As a young socialite, you should have nothing to worry about but riding skills and the correct way to address an earl. But your family’s political disgrace makes for a more complicated set of obligations. Your parents have enrolled you in an exclusive finishing school to polish you into an eligible beau or debutante and regain the family’s good name. College life is as unforgiving as it is glamorous, and rumours of occult secret societies bubble beneath the surface. Will you maintain convention or throw yourself into scandal? Will you delve into the dark secrets of the college, plunge into scholarly pursuits, or navigate the political spheres? Will you set your cap at a crown prince or princess, have a love affair with an unsuitable but passionate townie, or leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake? Build your reputation amidst the murky waters of cults, backstabbing and political diplomacy in this sparkling, brittle world of high society.

The game ended up less focused on cults and occultism, but otherwise the pitch sums up what the final game became pretty well! When it was picked, I was very excited – it was my favourite of the concepts I pitched. At some point around this time, I scribbled down some ideas:

 

I rejected most of these! I was obviously going for some horror overtones with overt supernatural elements – I think based on the references to cults in the pitch. Those who have played will have encountered some light references to the supernatural, but in practice it’s very ambiguous and is nowhere near as major as “dealing with a terrible supernatural calamity!”.

 

Low violence, high stakes

Part of the shift was that CdlC became a way of responding to having made such a fantastical, violent game in Blood Money. In Blood Money, players can stab or murder their way through many situations and I was curious about dialling that right back but keeping the tension high. I wanted to keep the player on their toes, reminding them that their character’s future depends on minutiae like how to address a baron at lunchtime as opposed to afternoon tea. I thought a lot about how Jane Austen’s novels take place with a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and how the characters are insulated from that but still affected by it. It was also a challenge to myself to keep physical peril and especially violence to a minimum. Partly to keep the focus on social tension, and partly to make it extra dramatic when those things reared their head.

A funny interaction I had when exhibiting Blood Money: I was chatting with someone about my plans for CdlC and they said “so in Blood Money you’re the aristocracy literally bloodsucking for power, and in this new game it’s the same, just metaphorical”.

Which I enjoy a lot.

 

Gender and sexuality

CdlC was the first game I wrote where major characters could be gender-selectable. I hadn’t always been keen on the idea of gender-selectable romanceable characters, but I’d enjoyed Wakefield from Choice of the Deathless, and playing Heart of the House and Tally Ho really inspired me with their vivid, distinct characters. So I thought I’d give it a go, and allow for characters using they/them pronouns as well as he/him and she/her. (Some players found it weird that Gallatin has co-ed sleeping arrangements, or that you could be someone of one gender with a bunch of classmates who were another, but I was happy with not paying that element much attention ingame.)

In Noblesse Oblige and the upcoming Royal Affairs, I’ve developed it further, giving players more options for their own pronouns, and have had positive feedback about it. I don’t have a blanket rule for exploring characters’ genders – characters in CdlC don’t really talk about it – but this is a way I’ve enjoyed doing it. I also always like to include people in gay and bisexual relationships without fanfare to show that as unpleasant and classist as Westerlin is, a princess can marry a princess and no one gets weird about it. Various characters have two mothers or two fathers Max and Freddie both have two mothers, Florin has two fathers, and it’s not considered an oddity.

 

Romance and friendship

Blood Money has romance in it – and I added more romantic scenes in 2020 – but with the family politics, backstabbing, and dealing with magical phenomena, it isn’t the focus. I wanted Gallatin College to be explicitly concerned with marrying up. Though there are plenty of other ways to succeed through the game, I wanted this goal to be pushed at the player from the beginning. I also wanted friendship to feel as important as, or more than, romance for these characters.

I made a lot of romanceable and befriendable characters. Not all of them have equal amounts of screentime – one has very little – but it did become overwhelming at times. I sometimes wonder which character or characters I’d cut if I was doing it again, but they all feel important… Anyway, it was a lot. I’d do things like writing Festival of the Birds interactions backwards from the bottom of the file to trick myself into thinking there was less to do.

It wasn’t easy. I sometimes lost track of what had been discussed in earlier conversations (I used a more structured method to track this in Royal Affairs and make the relationships feel more organic over time – more of that when I eventually do a retrospective for that game!). Some of the characters’ endings are hard to achieve because they’re not very clear; there aren’t many opportunities to influence characters romancing each other, if the player wants to. I also reached a point of fatigue in sections like the final couple of chapters, where there could be 10+ separate finale interactions with a lot of branching based on your previous actions.

That’s why in Royal Affairs there are six major characters – I wanted more room for defining royal family relationships, more space to give characters more chances to interact with the storyline if the player brings them onboard, and more ensemble moments and screentime for everyone – as well as ways for the player to influence things.

That said, I did love having a big cast! It was fun thinking about how their relationships develop and shift over the game, and seeing different ways in which they interact. It was a huge challenge compared to Blood Money, in which most of the characters you have close relationships with are more separate. And I really learned from the experience about giving a variety of characters moments to shine.

 

Stat Framework

With Blood Money I went for fairly broad-sounding skillset, which made sense for a potentially hyperviolent adult member of a crime syndicate with magical powers. With CdlC I named each stat in a more considered way to evoke politeness, etiquette, social grace, always thinking about how the school would frame these qualities, and how they would look from the outside.

When I came up with the characters and their cliques, some of the seeds of which you can see in those handwritten notes, I slotted them in with the stats. In Chapter 2 you get tutored by a character based on your lowest stat; that stat corresponds with what would be the character’s highest stat if they had them. So you have:

  • Delacroix – Intrigue – Children of Hecate (occult enthusiasts)
  • Freddie – Wit – Birchmeier Society (study club)
  • Gonzalez – Spirit – Lacrosse Team
  • Hartmann – Poise – Prefect Team
  • Max – Flair – Starlings (rebel clique)

In practice as I established the characters’ personalities, the stats didn’t map perfectly. But it was enough to be a jumping-off point and give me options for the tutoring – and, later, during exam season you can tutor a character to improve their weak spots.

In an early outline draft I had another stat called Candor – honesty, sincerity – which would have corresponded with Karson. Being tutored in Candor would have involved helping around the grounds and increased Virtue. In the end, though, I realised that it overlapped too much with Spirit, and besides, the school doesn’t really care about those qualities.

Speaking of overlap, I learned a lot from the opposed personality stats. Although I wanted to cover lots of traits, the way I wrote it, it’s not always clear whether a choice tests Intrigue or Manipulative if you’re lying to someone; Spirit and Domineering sometimes overlap; there are others where it’s hard to tell what stat you’re using.

That’s why in Royal Affairs, your skills are only about persuading others and your opposed stats are never about that. Eloquent is about impressing someone with your smarts; Planner is about using your smarts to plan out your next course of action. In Noblesse Oblige, I streamlined it even more: choices only test qualities. Opposed stats like Introverted/Extroverted don’t get mechanically tested, but frequently change characters’ responses or the lines of dialogue the player character says.

 

The Other Place

In school stories there’s often another school – somewhere physically separate from the base of operations, often a rival, often glamorous or tantalising in some way. That’s what I wanted from Archambault Academy – a place representing the ultimate prize for Gallatin students, aristocrats from the very families that Gallatin students wanted to marry into. Rosario and Auguste represent tickets out of the player’s tricky situation, but they’re harder to get engaged to. Florin is a red herring with regard to social approval: being with them will open doors, but it’s not quite proper.

I wanted to make the Archambault students tempting as options, but they’re less easily accessible than the Gallatin classmates. Florin is scandalous (and has done things to hurt other characters, who the player may have befriended); Auguste is a snob, is in demand from other students, and is the child of Lady Renaldt, whom the player may have antagonised; Rosario is restricted in who they can openly romance, and a player may not want the obligations of marrying into royalty anyway.

I was pleased with setting aside time for the Archambault students, especially in the Winter Ball, the Festival of the Birds, and having dinner in the penultimate chapter, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with how much screentime they got in comparison to the Gallatin classmates. So in Royal Affairs I made sure Hyacinthe and Trevelyan got more proportional time to shine even though they’re not studying at Archambault.

 

Writing Process

I always plan a chapter before doing anything else, sometimes scene by scene. Then I code it with placeholder text, using automated tools to test and balance, and then write. At each stage I might swap things around or rethink if it doesn’t feel right. For CdlC I have a file of unused stuff that’s 10600 words long. But in general because of how I organise things, I rarely end up cutting large sections of written text – it’s mostly placeholder things like:

Which was something I planned where you could stay at Gallatin for Hearthlight; I ended up moving that sequence later to Verdancy.

 

The cutting room and additions

Some things got cut from the original outline, after the handwritten “supernatural disease” and “MC has a twin” notes. I considered a parents’ day section; I also planned some points where your Clique was more involved with the plot. I cut the former for pacing reasons and the latter for scope, because there was so much branching in the late-game plot already. Very early on I considered a rivalry-romance matchmaking plot between Hartmann and Max, but when I decided to have a Max/Delacroix and and Max/Delacroix/MC romances, I realised it was too complicated.

In general, though, I added much more than I cut. Before beta testing started, I added a very large branch in the late-game plot to give players another option in dealing with it. During beta, I added scenes and options throughout. The largest thing I remember was lacrosse-team-specific scenes during Sports Day; the lacrosse team has a very different chapter. Which, once I received that feedback, makes complete sense!

 

Discussion and reception

I didn’t put much out there about Blood Money before it was done and I knew I wanted to post more about CdlC. At that time, most CoG authors didn’t have forum threads or get much feedback and I wanted to see how it worked. I was also a little nervous about the big tonal shift from Blood Money to CdlC and was curious what the forum audience would think of the concept.

It was wildly successful! I had really helpful discussion from it, it felt great to share, and I think posting more about it contributed to its later success. For Noblesse Oblige and Royal Affairs I did the same and again, it’s been immensely helpful. I’d generally advise sharing work early and often – I noticed after CdlC that other CoG authors have put up demos and discussion threads too, and was excited to see it!

When it was released it was more successful than I could have ever hoped. I’m so grateful for those who believed in the game while it was in progress, those who supported me when I posted through a bizarrely long flight delay while writing, everyone who gave feedback, those who voted for it to win its XYZZY awards, and just everyone who has played and enjoyed it. I never thought people would still be playing three years on and I’m so fortunate to be able to keep writing!

To finish, here is a paraphrased excerpt from my favourite negative review: “everyone is gay, rich people bad”.

Well, yes.