Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Estell Trevelyan

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Estell Trevelyan, check out their introduction post.

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At the beginning of the outline process, I knew I wanted a rebellious, firebrand sort of character who could serve as a foil to the PC. I was keen to distinguish this character from Max from Crème de la Crème, who is rebellious but not an activist in the same way, so I gave them a cause that they’re passionate about. Initially, that cause was purely anti-monarchy. They are mostly estranged from their mother, who lives abroad, but she is very pro-monarchy, and it was she who named them Estell. I suspect Trevelyan will change their first name in the future.

But as I continued planning, I realised I wanted the PC to be able to materially help Trevelyan with their cause if they wanted. They wouldn’t really be able to do that if it was solely anti-monarchy other than stepping down, and that wouldn’t make a difference to the system. I also wanted the PC to be able to stamp out Trevelyan’s goals if they wanted: as monarchy is so entrenched, it wouldn’t be very satisfying as it would be so easy.

So I thought about parliaments, as I’d established that there was a Prime Minister in Crème de la Crème, and how Westerlind aristocracy holds all the power and all the strings, and I thought about how early democratic societies worked, and how a lot of them work now to uphold an unjust status quo… So I settled on suffrage as an issue for Trevelyan to be passionate about.

(I greatly enjoyed that I had feedback that some players felt the game pushed them too hard to be anti-suffrage and there was no reason to speak in favour of the vote; others felt the game pushed them too hard to be pro-suffrage and there was no reason to speak against it.)

From there, some of the political plotlines fell into place, and I was able to maneuver the Zaledoan politics in to muddy the waters as well. Although the Queen is conflicted about whether she wants the PC to be directly involved with political matters or to remain sheltered, ultimately the PC will end up hearing about these current events. Some of that comes from adults like Clemence or Fabien; some of it comes through Trevelyan.

Trevelyan was always someone whom I wanted to take action that might go against the PC’s wishes, or inspire others to do so. A PC may staunchly support them, be wary, or outright despise them, and Trevelyan – and the plot – will respond to that. For me Trevelyan is someone with their own agenda and demands – perhaps the most of any of the major befriendable and romanceable characters.

At the same time, they’re very young and under a lot of pressure, both self-imposed and from the media. They’ve ended up becoming a public figure very quickly and although that’s very exciting, and they see that as a boon for their cause, it’s a lot to put on someone still in school. I like to think under some circumstances, Trevelyan will come to understand the PC as a fellow person living as a symbol, and they’ll have a shared perspective. But unlike other characters, Trevelyan is more inclined to entirely reject the PC and everything they stand for.

Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Javi del Quiros

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Javi del Quiros, check out their introduction post.

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Javi was someone who I absolutely wanted in the game from the start. I knew I wanted a royal for the Royal Affairs MC to bounce off, and I also wanted a more long-running friendship/romance with a rival type of character than Blaise in Creme de la Creme. It wasn’t until the outline stage, though, that I decided that they’d be Rosario’s sibling, which was what sparked off the concept of the tension and politics between Westerlin and Zaledo. It very much was a situation where I built the plot in response to figuring things out about the characters; I don’t always work that way, but it helped me keep the wider political plots relevant to Javi and other characters.

I knew Javi would be connected to one of the leadership classes, and I’d figured out the three classes; it was a question of matching the class to the character. I put Dominique into the Student Council (mostly because Beaumont seemed like the obvious choice), and I fancied making Javi a theatre kid rather than a sports jock. That helped form their glamorous, extroverted demeanour in my mind. Early on that I knew I wanted them to be asexual, also; initially, I’ll be honest, I was curious about writing a rivalry-romance-dynamic that didn’t rely on sexual tension – then, as I got further into writing them, I really enjoyed creating conversations about Javi’s asexuality, especially if the MC is also asexual. I feel very honoured indeed to have heard from asexual players who have said that Javi made them felt seen.

Writing Javi’s development was quite a journey. When I first started writing, the concept was more of a character with a long-running sabotage strategy against the MC in which the MC and Javi would battle it out over the course of the game. In the end, I shifted away from that – I think part of it was wanting to avoid repetition, and part of it was that when it got to a certain point of rival intensity, it didn’t feel like I could justify the dynamic ending with friendship or romance. There was enough going on elsewhere in the game that it felt like there wasn’t enough breathing room; it also didn’t quite feel right to have such an intense rivalry-to-lovers dynamic for the school setting.

Either way, I shifted things to general antagonism with the potential for growing close, rather than major enmity. It felt right that way. (Darcy from Professor of Magical Studies is one of the best rivalries I’ve encountered in a Choice of Games title; I recommend it if you want a truly intense rivalry dynamic.)

All that said, I did very much enjoy writing some of Javi’s lines, and the opportunities for the MC to annoy them. Even when Javi has a better relationship with the MC, they’re still rather acerbic in personality, and are still very reluctant to look or feel foolish. Similarly to Hyacinthe, it did take a little time for me to get to know Javi. They’re not a character who everyone will like – none of the characters are intended to be – but figuring out where some of their attitudes and rough edges come from helped me see things from their perspective as well as how the MC sees them.

Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Hyacinthe van Clare

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Hyacinthe van Clare, check out their introduction post.

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Like Asher and Trevelyan, Hyacinthe is one of the disapproved-of major characters, though they’re not as much of a firebrand as Trevelyan. When planning, I knew I wanted to show a Gallatin student from the Archambault perspective, and to show someone who represents several of the virtues that Gallatin espouses in Creme de la Creme. There were no particularly artistic or performing-related characters in Creme de la Creme, so it felt natural to include someone with that interest in Royal Affairs.

When I wrote Hyacinthe, it was always important to me to think about the gap between what they express and what’s going on in their head. Not only are they a little intimidated by the Royal Affairs MC and the gulf of power difference between them, they’ve also very much been educated into artifice. As a result, it’s hard for them to relax in general, and especially around the MC.

In Royal Affairs, Gallatin is sometimes different in tone to the way it is in Creme de la Creme, but trappings of the culture remain. So much of Gallatin’s education – certainly under some Headteachers – is about constructing a charming, gentle, unassuming persona that bends around others’ wishes. Obviously not every character buys into that, but with Hyacinthe I wanted to show someone who has made a great deal of effort to do this in a habitual way, and how it feels from the other side for the MC. A lot of their relationship with the MC is about Hyacinthe learning to treat them more like a peer, and although it doesn’t come naturally to them – they have a fairly shy, considered personality even without the education – their facade does slip from time to time, and they may slowly become more comfortable with informality.

Where for other characters I slipped into their storyline and tone with more ease, it took a little longer to feel out Hyacinthe. Because of the walls they put up in the ways they interact with others, it was almost as though they had a wall between themselves and me, in a strange way. (As a side note, this experience led me to put a lot more front-loaded work into future characters who have such a gap between how they behave and their internal life – I wanted to make sure I was really into characters’ heads before even starting to write.) It wasn’t until a scene in Chapter 9 that I felt I had a truly strong handle on them, and I ended up going back and retro-engineering a bunch of scenes in the light of that.

Related to that, writing Hyacinthe was an interesting experience; they’re one of the characters whom I added the most to after the first draft. Several testers mentioned that they didn’t feel they’d gotten to know Hyacinthe on an emotional level, and so I needed to take some careful, critical looks at how the Hyacinthe friendship and romance came across. I incorporated more emotional conversations, delved further into Hyacinthe’s personal ambitions, and allowed them – and pushed them to allow themselves – to be direct and honest in ways they hadn’t before. In doing that, I got to know the character much better, and enabled the MC to do the same.

Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Dominique de Saint Martel

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Dominique de Saint Martel, check out their introduction post.

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Dominique was the second of the “approved” potential friendships or romances. With them I wanted to show someone whose family is very embedded in the socialite sphere, and demonstrate the sorts of problems Westerlind aristocrats might typically face.

Dominique’s parents are classic rich people living beyond their means, and Dominique has inherited their blase attitude to life because they’ve never been in a position where they have to think about such things. They’re someone who doesn’t necessarily know exactly who they are or where they’re going at the start of Royal Affairs; in some cases and from some perspectives they might figure that out, though often they might not.

For me Dominique is a character who has got by on charm, a hapless affect, and a sparkling family reputation for most of their life, and in Royal Affairs they’re starting to realise that that isn’t going to work forever. It’s a hard transition to make, especially as they find it hard to focus (the Crème de la Crème setting doesn’t have classifications like ADHD, but some neurodivergent players have seen aspects of themselves in Dominique, which brings me great joy) and there are points where they’re struggling to reconcile their fancy-free childhood and more serious concerns as they grow older.

They represent the carefree side of Westerlind aristocracy, who are content with how things are and don’t think much about how their lives and the system they live in impact others. I also wanted to have a student who simply isn’t suited to the expected Archambault -> leadership pipeline. Dominique isn’t all that sure what they want to do with their life, which is eminently normal for an eighteen-year-old, but the Archambault system expects young people to jump into and excel at whatever life path has been given them.

Dominique was tremendously fun to write. I particularly enjoyed their irrepressible interactions with other characters and the PC. Their romantic interactions with the PC are straightforward and easygoing; they aren’t a possessive character, and for them, knowing that they and the PC like each other is a simple matter. They’re eager to throw themselves into closeness, and to enjoy their quality time together.

I don’t know exactly where Dominique will end up after Royal Affairs – there are several different paths they can go down – but they’re someone who I believe might blossom after leaving school. They might well explore their talents and interests and come to realise more about themselves. With all the characters I wanted to leave a sense of openness about what’s coming in their futures – they’re only eighteen, after all, and who knows what might change in their lives and personalities even in the next couple of years? – but I think Dominique exemplifies this. Dominique truly finding their footing is yet to come.

Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Laurie Beaumont

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Laurie Beaumont, check out their introduction post.

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I knew I wanted at least one “approved” potential romantic interest as a fellow Archambault student, and I wanted to show someone whose background is pretty typical for people at Archambault. Being from a very wealthy financially-focused family puts Beaumont at an advantage compared to other characters in terms of how much the Queen is likely to be happy about the PC spending time with them.

I knew I wanted Beaumont to be extremely rich; I knew I wanted them to be very focused and hard-working; as I figured those out, I wanted a pinch of additional vulnerability, so I brought in their orphan background and things clicked for me.

Beaumont is the most angst-heavy of the Royal Affairs characters by a fair distance. They’re also the most restrained and withdrawn: maybe they’d have been different if their backstory had gone differently but I think they were likely never much of an emotionally-open or enthusiastic person separate to that. Either way, I loved writing them with their pet, Patch: with their pet, they feel less self-conscious and more able to be openly emotional.

The way they treat the PC was something that needed some care. In early drafts, they ended up sometimes responding so poorly to seemingly innocuous interactions that playtesters were concerned that Beaumont despised them – which wasn’t my intention at all! That said, I did want to show that there’s a gap between Beaumont’s internal life and how they physically behave or what they say. They don’t deliberately show a lot of energy in general; nor do they care much for Westerlind aristocracy’s social niceties. Nor, really, do they find it easy to project a lot of energy if it’s asked of them.

Beaumont is a very determined character, and they have a strong core of conviction about what they value. Although they don’t particularly care about universal suffrage, they may sometimes come to care about Estell Trevelyan, for various reasons, and act protectively of them as a result. They’re a character who can cause problems for the PC under some circumstances, thanks to that determination; under others, they can be a powerful ally. 

Beaumont may be brusque and sometimes prickly, and I had a lot of fun writing some of their more blunt dialogue. But they have a lot going on in their head too. Some of their storyline is about them opening up to vulnerability. They take a lot of pride in being self-sufficient and dealing with things on their own terms, but that isn’t healthy for anyone to do all the time, of course. Westerlin has a culture that rewards stiff upper lips, pushing through difficulties, and being an exceptional achiever. It also has a rudimentary understanding of mental illness or wellbeing. Beaumont (and indeed other characters from the Creme de la Creme series) is a product of that culture, but perhaps they can reach a better state of mind by the end of Royal Affairs.

The hothouse school environment is ideal for showing characters dealing with – or struggling with – the current pressures of adolescence and the looming ones of adulthood. Which is all part of why I return to these rarified settings.

Writing Royal Affairs Characters: Asher Garnett

Note: this post contains character spoilers for Royal Affairs. For a less in-depth introduction to Asher Garnett, check out their introduction post.

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Asher was a character who came about very early on, back when I was first coming up with the game’s concept. They even got a specific shoutout in the pitch: “Or might you even form a scandalous attachment with your bodyguard?”

I knew I wanted a bodyguard romance for the Royal Affairs PC, and I knew this would be a good way to demonstrate the pressures on the PC’s personal life that come from their high standing. Because Asher’s romance would be socially complicated and controversial in the game, I wanted to make their personality appealing and easy to like (for players who are into that kind of thing!). This was the same logic of making Rosario in Creme de la Creme fairly easygoing and friendly; there are social barriers to getting together with them, so I didn’t want too many personal ones. I also knew at this point that there was going to be a more antagonistic major character, Javi, so Asher served to balance that out.

I had a pretty strong sense of what I wanted Asher to be from the start: loyal, sweet, dutiful. When I wrote them, I thought a lot about what it would feel like to have your identity and goals bound up so strongly with another person and institution from a young age. Because of their proximity to the royal family they’re in the position of seeing their weak moments while also putting them on a pedestal.

In a lot of ways Asher sees the royal family as their family too, though they’re in this strange position where they’re subordinate at the same time. Their birth family, the Garnetts, traditionally guard the royal family so are also very much part of that institution; Tristan and Raimund, Asher’s parents, aren’t very emotionally warm or affectionate people. Growing up with that along with the Queen as a boss/almost-parental-figure gives Asher an extremely stable, solid  foundation and sense of their place in the world… which is extremely unusual at the same time.

A lot of Asher’s friendship or romance journey through the game is learning to see the Royal Affairs PC as a person as well as a symbolic figure. The shape of their romance has elements of “we mustn’t!” and there are social hurdles around it too, but as Asher’s personal feelings develop, it also becomes about relating to each other in a way they never have before.

With their friendship or romance with the PC, or their relationship with another character, Asher isn’t used to wanting something for its own sake, for themselves: this may help them recognise that feeling, and do something about it. Asher doesn’t really realise how young they are and what potential they have ahead, because they’re so used to focusing on the here-and-now and what their training tells them. In some paths through the game – whether they go against their training, or double down on it – what they’ve experienced may lead them to think more deeply about whatever the future holds.

Play Royal Affairs – Out Now!

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As the middle child of the Queen of Westerlin, you’ve led a sheltered life in the palace, but now you must spread your wings and prepare for your royal responsibilities with a year at the exclusive Archambault Academy.

Everyone knows your name, everyone has an opinion on what you do, and everyone views you as the face of the new generation of royalty. Your every move is reported in the press, a word from you could make or break a teacher’s career–or the fate of the school itself. You’re being courted by every club and social group on campus; and there are countless students who would love to be in your orbit.

In luxurious armchairs behind ivy-covered walls, you and your fellow students debate political theory—but outside, real trouble simmers across the realm. There are activists fighting to open voting rights beyond the aristocracy, and you can use your influence to sway the government’s decision in either direction. Relations are growing increasingly uneasy with your country’s neighbors, and there are conspiracies around every corner. Why is your mother whispering behind closed doors with the Prime Minister? Have the leaders of the protests really disappeared? Which allies can you trust? There are some secrets that only your royal authority can uncover.

Will you honor centuries of royal tradition and follow the path that your mother the Queen has laid out for you? Or will you be a force of change, leading your country in a new direction as you break free of a lifetime of expectations?

Oh, and speaking of expectations—there’s also the foreign royal that your mother wants you to marry. Who is in your class. And who happens to hate you.

  • Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, or bisexual; monogamous or polyamorous; asexual and/or aromantic.
  • Find love and/or friendship with your free-spirited childhood companion, a firebrand radical, a dreamy dancer, a financier haunted by tragedy, your devoted bodyguard, or a rival foreign royal.
  • Cuddle and train your pet: a horse, dog, or bird of prey.
  • Put on a lavish play, become a sports star, or run Student Council; and represent Archambault Academy against its rival Gallatin.
  • Become your classmates’ confidante and help them solve their problems—or make those problems worse.
  • Embrace your royal responsibility and carry on your mother’s tradition—and perhaps even take your sister’s place as heir to the throne.
  • Forge a path to the future by supporting revolutionaries’ calls for change, or stamp out the movement with scheming and deceit.

When this tumultuous year ends, will you be Archambault Academy’s crowning glory?

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Royal Affairs Out March 30 – Demo and Interview!

In Royal Affairs, return to the exclusive boarding schools of Crème de la Crème—this time as a royal! Work hard, study hard, and play hard as a royal in training at the exclusive Archambault Academy. Will you rule the roost, or be a royal disaster?

  • Play demo in your browser
  • Play Steam demo
  • Learn more about the characters and setting
  • Read my author interview to hear more about the journey to making Royal Affairs happen, and learn some juicy gossip about my next game!

    • cover art: Adrien Valdes

    Noblesse Oblige retrospective: 6 months on

    My Crème de la Crème retrospective was three years in the making, so I wanted to do a retrospective for Noblesse Oblige sooner! Noblesse Oblige wasn’t part of my original plan, but it turned out to be the best creative decision I could have made.

    Starting off

    In 2021 – having made less progress than I’d hoped thanks to an intense day job, the pandemic, and life issues – I was about halfway through writing Royal Affairs, the sequel to Crème de la Crème. I tried to keep a level head and be proud of what I’d made so far but it had been an uphill struggle and often involved stops and starts, and after some major overhauling of the plot since the outline, it was hard to see the wood for the trees. I harboured a lot of self-criticism about Royal Affairs and how it hung together, but I kept chipping away at it, hoping that it would be finished soon.

    Then in summer 2021 I and most of the others at my day job were laid off. Suddenly I had a lot more time on my hands to work on my projects. In theory. In practice, I spent several months in a horrible mental space, burning out on job applications. (There is a happy ending to this part of the story – I spent 13 months working on King of the Castle, which I loved – it’s out March 2!)

    In the middle of all that, my editor at Choice of Games (also the author of Heroes of Myth and Stars Arisen) reached out having seen that I was looking for work and asked if I’d be interested in making a shorter companion game set in the Crème de la Crème universe. This piqued my interest! Royal Affairs felt sprawling and out of my control, and the idea of writing something smaller and self-contained appealed to me a great deal. So I happily said yes.

    The other pitches I put forward were more action-orientated, and I think it was the right decision to go for this one which is set in a very restricted environment – it would have been even harder to keep it shorter when accounting for desert adventures or icy voyaging, which were the other ideas I had.

    Themes and Mood

    I wanted to depart from the lighter tone of Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs while keeping some thematic threads. It was a chance to explore what a gothic story might look like in this setting. Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs both have very dark elements but here I wanted to twiddle the “foreboding” and “glamorous” dials and turn the sinister undertones into overtones. Before making Crème de la Crème I wrote Blood Money, a gloriously violent game, and a lot of gloomy interactive fiction. This represented a return to my roots that I didn’t realise I needed, and it felt very natural to do so when Crème de la Crème in particular has a lot of darkness lurking beneath the surface.

    I spent some time watching and reading a variety of media when preparing to write. The Jane Eyre connection is clear and deliberate – I briefly considered making the Iravan character romanceable before realising that four love romances was too many – and I watched a couple of different adaptations. Among other things I reread Rebecca and We Have Always Lived in the Castle and watched the Picnic at Hanging Rock series, Stoker, the We Have Always Lived in the Castle movie (I… very much recommend the book rather than that adaptation) and Crimson Peak. The influence of The Secret History shadows the game (as it does, less directly, in a lot of the Crème de la Crème series). I used elements of gothic fiction liberally and was inspired by Stoker’s almost-but-not-quite-supernatural menace.

    I knew I wanted the MC to feel adrift in life, that the MC achieved something impressive but then lost it, and for Teteriuk to be both a new horizon and a constraint. The MC is not only a fish out of water, they have also been a fish out of water for years. I loved the contrast between the glamour of Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs to the faded grandeur of Teteriuk. Also, after having spent a couple of years writing about people in swimwear in hot weather, it was a literal breath of fresh air to write loving descriptions of people in knitwear.

    Stats

    In Noblesse Oblige the stats are less of a concern than in my other games; rather than an array of secondary stats, the focus is more on the relationship scores. The standard in Choice of Games is to have a percentage bar showing how well you’re getting along with a character, but because I needed more detail, I included more information about the characters’ feelings on the stat page. This also meant more granular accounting for possibilities in which the player may have completely alienated someone. The player characters’s stats are very broad; I used World of Darkness’s Power/Finesse/Resistance structure as a starting point, and started with a selection of personality traits based broadly on the Big 5. I didn’t bother with anything related to language skill or teaching: the character is always skilled enough to have landed the job. Unlike in other games, I didn’t use personality traits in challenges, but instead used them to inform MC’s dialogue lines and behaviour.

    I enjoyed the way I used the opposed stats for flavouring the text, and I felt that I had more of a handle on the MC’s personality – while also giving players the opportunity to roleplay and shift their character’s personality without penalising them. I did find that having four unidirectional stats (Drive, Resilience, Insight, and Finesse) were a little broad and it wasn’t always easy to make it clear to players what they were used for in practice. So for my next game, I’m going for a less broad approach with more granularity.

    Plot Structure

    Because the game was shorter, I was keen to make replays illuminate more aspects of the plot. I did this by having fairly discrete routes for each character, inspired by some visual novel structures where getting close with one character provides a very different experience. I really liked showing different elements from other angles, and I got a lot of feedback saying that players enjoyed the process of discovery. The flipside of this was making sure that a single playthrough would still feel complete and satisfying. It meant a lot of additions later in the writing process – and also relies on players wanting to replay. If they didn’t feel something was complete, why would they go back and try again? Still, it was a different structure than I’d done before, and I liked giving players pretty different sets of information depending on who they’d connected with.

    With that in mind, because it was a shorter game I needed to entwine the plot more tightly with the characters rather than having an external plot on top of them. That meant making the major characters more of a direct problem for the MC than in other games I made; Pascha and Rys are directly antagonistic on the other’s route, and their actions can cause a lot of trouble for players on Danelak’s route. Following that, it meant that I wanted to set up characters who had the capability to be antagonistic for various reasons and under some circumstances. That was where I gambled a little: combining characters with some hefty flaws and secrets with a short playthrough time could make players feel rushed or that they just didn’t like the characters at all.

    That gamble paid off sometimes, but in other cases not so much. I had wildly differing feedback, from “Pascha/Rys is an awful person and I don’t know why anyone would want to spend time with them” to “I love Pascha/Rys and I don’t want to play the game on another route”. Which is great! I love when characters provide intense feelings for players – but sometimes players were turned off altogether. The lesson I took was not to hold back from making flawed characters, but to give them more room to breathe and for players to get to know them before the characters dive into such intense conversations (I maintain that the Noblesse Oblige characters have good reason to be so intense; but it’s a lot to ask players to buy into).

    Gender and Sexuality

    This was the first time I released a game where you could input your own pronouns. I was pleased to have done it and I recommend that other ChoiceScript authors give it a go.

    As with my other CoG games, Jezhan is a queernormative society without gender or sexuality-based discrimination. People do all manner of other horrible things but not that. The society in Jezhan has legal marriages for more than two people, and I did some thinking behind the scenes about how that affects culture; not a lot of that ended up onscreen, but I liked showing a few families outside the nuclear-family structure.

    Relationship-wise, I went into a bit more depth with MCs talking about asexuality and aromanticism with characters. I also allowed more flexibility for MCs to express that they want a connection with less physical and/or romantic intensity – I mostly implemented it for grey-ace and/or grey-aro MCs, but allosexual and alloromantic MCs can use it too – and I enjoyed showing different nuances in how characters behave based on what the MC has said on that subject.

    The cutting room and additions

    As with Crème de la Crème, there wasn’t much fully-written text that got cut. I did plan some large branching scenes in Chapter 5 during the storm section, but they would have bulked things out far too much. I also originally planned more interactions on the beach in Chapter 6, but it slowed down the pace and I wanted to keep tension high. Something I would also have liked to do but couldn’t quite work out where to put it was more discussion about the MC’s university situation.

    Mostly, though, I made additions, especially in the final chapter. There was also a lot of adding to earlier chapters to get to know characters before asking players whether they want to start romances, and expanding the MC’s earlier life and connections with their family. The other major thing was adding different ways to navigate the later-game plot, allowing players more chances to betray people, change their mind, shift plans, and so on. Because of the short length of the game, it was extra important for the final chapter to round things off, and to allow flexibility in handling the game events.

    Discussion and reception

    The game attracted some discussion during writing, though not as much as Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs. It was lovely to hear people’s thoughts on it and see how excited they were about exploring a different part of the world!

    During beta I was really fascinated at how many testers hadn’t played Crème de la Crème and weren’t sure about the setting. It was great because when drafting, I’d assumed that most people would have played it so I didn’t go into a lot of detail on some things – so it really pushed me to describe Westerlin and the MC’s place in it in more depth, which made the game a lot richer. The descriptions of the MC’s parents’ home, and their life situation, came out of that. I remain interested in whether people playing Noblesse Oblige have played Crème de la Crème, and vice versa.

    Noblesse Oblige sometimes gets compared unfavourably to CdlC thanks to its smaller scope. That doesn’t alarm me too much: if players want more time in a game that’s a good thing, Noblesse Oblige was always framed as a novella to CdlC’s novel, and it would be a very different game if it was longer. That said, the process of making it and seeing its reception helped me develop my pacing skills and I understand better how elements other than wordcount make a game feel longer or shorter for players.

    I wasn’t sure what to expect in the first few months after Noblesse Oblige was released. It’s a shorter game, even though it’s a similar length to a lot of popular older CoG games; it departs from the school setting that was so popular in CdlC; the themes and mood are very different, and in some ways have more in common with Blood Money; the characters are more heavily flawed. It’s also free to play, and by the time the release date came around, I pretty much convinced myself that everyone would play for free or not play at all.

    Delightfully, that didn’t turn out to be true. Although it hasn’t been as commercially successful as Creme de la Creme – which, realistically, would have been silly to expect – it’s sold far better than I hoped, and I’m immensely grateful for that. The feedback I had during beta testing helped me improve it hugely, and I’m certain that without it, it wouldn’t have sold as well as it has.

    But at the same time, it mattered less to me how it sold. In a very real way it helped me fall back in love with writing and this setting. Royal Affairs wouldn’t be as good as it is, and also wouldn’t have come out any earlier, if I hadn’t taken time to make Noblesse Oblige. I’d lost touch with what I wanted to write about – and digging into that for this project, making something smaller and more manageable, completing a first draft in nine months rather than years, was exactly what I needed. It helped me recover creative joy amid tumultuous world and personal events and burnout, and for that reason Noblesse Oblige will always be close to my heart.

    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.