Relooted introduces new members of the heist team every few levels, and makes sure that you feel the problems that they’ll solve for you. Trevor, who has the power to open and close doors, did not initially impress me during his tutorial mission. He’s a little slow to activate, he can only keep doors open before the alarm goes off, and he seemed to self-consciously embellish his unimpressive skill by announcing his self-given epithet “The Locksmith!” every time he was activated. I took Trevor for granted and failed to prepare him in the right position before my escape. I scrambled to call on him to open a door as the alarm blared and the timer ticked down, and he smugly highlighted my mistake: “It would have been faster if you had me ready!” I finished the heist in time, but Nomali had to bear the indignity of letting her chuuni little brother embarrass her.

That kind of clever narrative design kept exciting me throughout Relooted. Immediately after a level where an otherwise lightning-fast Nomali must break the momentum of her escape by slowly jogging up and down stairs, she echoed my thoughts in a cutscene: “We have to do something about those stairs.” Then came a tutorial sequence for the acrobat Ndedi, who swings and grapples Nomali across large vertical and horizontal gaps that would otherwise have to be cleared by taking stairs or pushing tables around. I smiled as I felt the dozens of seconds Ndedi was shaving off my run, precisely because Nyamakop made me use the stairs so much in the previous level.

So it is with additional team members Fred the Inventor, whose drone lets you case the joint, Cryptic the Hacker, who neutralizes robotic guards and turrets, and Luso the Muscle, who throws Nomali through glass barriers. Each of them facilitates one of the most fundamental satisfactions of video games: getting from point A to point B in as little time as possible. Even with a perfect plan, the escape sequences require technical execution from the player to maintain Nomali’s top speed, but Relooted never let me forget the value of each team member. Sometimes, a team member will be unavailable for a heist, and I always felt their absence while constructing my well-oiled platforming machine.

Higher difficulty settings decrease the time you have to escape, more severely limit the locations that team members can be assigned to during the prep phase, and reduce the amount of information that Fred’s drone Nunu shows you. The first two features demand even greater appreciation for your teammates and more careful planning, but I preferred to receive detailed information from Nunu, especially the recommended route which shows problem areas that need to be solved. Getting unsolicited advice from my team members made me feel more like part of a team, and not just an omniscient being that orders my pieces around. In real group projects I always cherish when someone takes care of a problem before I even notice it. Who wants to make every decision all the time?

The heists are organized by Nomali’s grandmother Professor Grace and her protégé Etienne, who provide information on what you are actually stealing: African artifacts (and some from other colonized regions) stolen by colonial powers long ago, and kept in museum basements and private collections to avoid an international treaty that demands the repatriation of any publicly displayed artifacts acquired illicitly. Loopholes like these have challenged the Professor’s decades-long campaign to repatriate this stolen cultural heritage with by-the-book methods, and she can’t bear to reach the end of her life having accomplished so little. Thus, she devises a plan to reloot stolen artifacts, and ultimately return them to their proper homes.

Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist who the most despicable character in Relooted compares himself to, once said “That belongs in a museum!” Complicating the claim of some reviewers that Relooted is opposed to that maxim, Relooted does believe in the value of the museum. More precisely, it believes in the value of The Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal. That is where the relooted artifacts get dropped off. Yes, the Museum of Black Civilizations will only hold the artifacts temporarily before sending them to their proper homes, but it is the Museum that is trusted to appropriately foster and distribute the cultural heritage of Africa.

In the case of the Akan Drum, its proper home is identified as an African-American History museum. But for the most part, Relooted carefully avoids the complicated question of where exactly the “proper homes” of these artifacts are, which does not necessarily have a straightforward answer in theory or in practice. That’s for the scholars and bureaucrats to figure out. The immediate victory is that those discussions happen in Africa, by Africans, without any conditions imposed by colonial museums. When 90% of the material cultural legacy of sub-Saharan Africa is found outside of the African continent, just getting 64 artifacts to Dakar is a triumph.

The movement to repatriate stolen African artifacts has seen momentum since Felwine Sarr and Bénédict Savoy’s 2018 report, as well as sympathy from popular culture. What sets Relooted apart from other pro-repatriation media is that the targets of your heists aren’t elven artifacts, they’re not from a fictional country, and they weren’t stolen by the Villains’ International League of Evil. Relooted is set in a sci-fi future with comicbooky characters, but the artifacts in the game are digital representations of real, physical objects that were really stolen from real human beings that really breathed air on this Earth. I’m emphasizing this point because it’s so rare to find a video game with a historical perspective that isn’t clouded by metaphor and artistic license. Assassin’s Creed will always bend history to fit its metaplot, Dragon Age will always flatten the complexities of political struggles to better suit a heroic narrative. Relooted’s Africanfuturist storyline is always anchored by real history, and might even spark you to look up more details than its quick art history lectures can give you.

Relooted takes a Pan-African perspective, but takes care to highlight the cultural diversity of Africa: the heist team is audibly multicultural, and artifacts are always traced not just to a general region but to a specific indigenous group. This is in contrast to games like Far Cry 2 and Resident Evil 5 that create fictional African nations as an excuse to deploy stereotypes of Africa as backwards, corrupt, and dangerous. As a bit of cheeky payback, Relooted refers to its late 21st century Europe as The Old World and the United States as The Shiny Place, except when recounting real historical details.

Nyamakop took a “thrones, not teacups” approach to selecting which real artifacts would be represented in Relooted: it’s not just that these artifacts happened to be objects made by African indigenous groups, but that they carry deep meaning to the people they were stolen from. It should be obvious why it’s unacceptable for funerary statues plucked from Mijikenda homes to exist in Andy Warhol’s house, or the skull of anticolonial leader Mangi Meli to sit somewhere in the archives of a German museum.

Despite the scope and cruelty of the colonial looting of Africa, Relooted takes a deliberately soft approach to the issue, and largely maintains a cheery atmosphere where the most destructive thing the heist team does is break a few windows. Without indulging in shocking depictions of violence, Relooted is still capable of clearly communicating colonial injustice and anti-colonial justice. Most importantly, Relooted can be enjoyed by all ages, and is particularly attractive to guardians who want their kid to learn puzzle-solving and history at the same time.

Nyamakop’s first release, Semblance, avoided distinctively African themes in order to appeal to Western markets. This is a common trend for South African games, even as developers elsewhere in the continent, such as Nigeria’s Maliyo Games, Ghana’s Leti Arts, and Cameroon’s Kiro’o Games consciously develop games that are immediately recognizable as African. As for why South African games tend to blend in with Western games, I’ll quote some members of Broforce’s developer Free Lives, from a 2016 Gamedeveloper.com interview:

“As white South Africans, our culture is Western,” says programmer Ruan Rothmann. “It’s not like we have a unique and segregated white South African culture that’s isolated from America or Europe. We watch the same movies, listen to the same music, speak the same language.” Most other South African indies are the same. “South African game development is something like 92 percent white male or something along those lines,” adds studio director Evan Greenwood.

In a 2024 Gamesindustry.biz interview, Nyamakop CEO Ben Myres affirmed the whiteness of the South African game development scene, and shared Nyamakop’s long-term goal of creating a more diverse generation of South African game developers:

“There are a lot of studios in South Africa [but] there are only really six major ones, and all of them are run and owned by white men. And I think that has a large knock-on effect of the inability to take that risk. I’m not going to tell their stories, but a lot of my ability to do Nyamakop is based purely on privilege and generational wealth, and the crazy safety net you have. I think the South African games industry, last time we did a survey, is like [80%] white men.”

Looking at South Africa’s 2022 census, Black Africans represented 81.4% of the population, followed by Coloureds at 8.2%, white people at 7.3%, and Indian/Asian people at 2.7%. The games industry in the country is in a sharp contrast with this reality.

Nyamakop is trying to bring some balance, with Myres estimating that around 80% of the studio is people of colour.

“Our leadership team is very diverse at least,” he says. “If you aren’t able to take the risk to start your own studio, how are we ever going to make the industry more diverse? And the only way you do that is by allowing stable employment for diverse folks to get into the industry. Because really, in the long term, where we need to be is PoC-owned-and-run studios. But if there’s no way for you to enter the industry stably and get good at making games, we can’t just jump there automatically.

“[When] a person of colour leaves Nyamakop to stay in the industry, that makes me happy. We haven’t really had anyone leave and not stay in the industry. It’s very sad to see them go, obviously, but the fact that they leave to stay in the industry means Nyamakop can become a place that’s stable, safe, and fun [for South African people of colour to enter the industry].”

Relooted is the largest single project by team scope, size and budget in Sub-Saharan Africa to date, perhaps only rivaled by Kiro’o Games’ ambitious 2016 RPG Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan. The African games industry is growing, and Relooted will likely be remembered as a milestone in future histories of the growth of African game development. The in-game heist team returns cultural heritage of the past to Africa, but the Nyamakop team is creating new African cultural heritage for the people of 2099 to remember. Perhaps more importantly than the status of Relooted as an individual artifact, it serves as the first project for a new generation of game developers who will go on to make something even better.

The post Relooted Review — Reclaiming the Future appeared first on Gamesline.

John chats with the Brian and Bug, writer and artist of nth Circle Studios, about their breakout mystery visual novel of the Devil. Find out where the inspiration for both Morgan and the world she prowls in came from, how Homestuck caused all of this (as usual), and how real Umineko truly is.

nth Circle’s games can be found on their Linktree here.

of the Devil is available on Steam. You can wishlist Episode 3 here!

Full transcript below

John 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Starlight Car Gamesline Interview Podcast. My name is John. I’m the host of the regular podcast as well as the editor in chief of the website. And joining me this time are Bug and Brian from nth Circle Games, the artist and writer, respectively. They have done quite a few pieces of visual novel work, including such hits as Marchen Line and Model Employee, but their breakout hit of the Devil will be releasing episode three soonish. They did not give me a release date, if that’s what you’re hoping to hear. 

But they did give me plenty of other very insightful, very fun answers to queries that both I and the community wrote. So, if you’re one of those folks who sent in a question, I’m fairly certain that your question was answered. And otherwise, I think this is a very lovely chat that I had with those folks. They are very, very nice, and I had a great time, and I hope that you can tell that we all had fun on this recording. 

So please go ahead and listen. Let us know how what you think, and check out of the Devil. I’m not just saying this as someone who was like, “Ooh, they’re very nice, and chatted to me.” No, I love this game, and I think if you enjoy mystery visual novels, you’ll love this game too. So thank you very much for your time, and let’s get right into it. 

Hello, all, and welcome to Starlight Car. This is Gamesline’s very irregular video game interview podcast. I’m John. I am editor in chief and general host of Gamesline, and this time I will be speaking to two folks who have done irreparable damage to the minds of many a mystery fan. Now, really, I think that you all have done have instead of been irreparably damaging anybody, you’ve been repairing our hopes and dreams in the indie mystery writing space. With me today are Brian and Bug from nth Circle Games, thank you both for joining me. How are you today, both of you?

Brian 

Thanks for having us. Doing pretty good. Happy to be here and thank you for the high praise. There’s a lot of really exciting indie VNs coming out right now, and just happy to get more eyes on them because people are putting their heart and soul into them.

John 

Yeah, like something that I’ve noticed from you all too is that you all are a real like rising tides kind of group where you know you get your stuff out there and you want to make– there is a lot of ‘hey I played this and I loved it too’, and just from y’all from like your social media and everything, and that is really commendable. I guess I’ll start off with asking about you know since you mentioned a lot of indie VNs are out there, you know I’ll start off by asking about both of your, you know, history with the genre, and maybe if you want to go into a little bit about how nth Circle came to be, for folks that wouldn’t know, please just hit us with the origin story.

Brian 

Well, I guess for me, my first VN was appropriately enough Apollo Justice for the DS. I played a web-based demo that Capcom put out when it first came to the U.S.

John 

God, yeah, they did that. That was that was wild.

Brian 

Pretty smart to put out the first free case of your mystery VN as a demo.

Brian 

I guess getting into Ace Attorney kind of late, relatively speaking, because the original trilogy had been out by then, and you know, at this point, the fandom there is pretty heavily divided between original trilogy and Apollo Justice trilogy and Apollo going down to the backstory vendor and maybe I’m not the most diehard Ace Attorney fan, but I owe a lot to it in all kinds of ways, not just inspiration for the series, but for getting me into VNs in general. Well, I was on Tumblr in 2013, so I probably would have gotten swept up into Danganronpa no matter what. But definitely, I would not have had that gateway drug to it. And I think Danganronpa is our big connective tissue mainspo.

Bug 

For sure. A friend of mine in high school had actually lent me the Apollo Justice games, and I had never had experience with Ace Attorney outside of like the cultural osmosis of like , everyone knows the objection soundbite, and that was kind of the extent of my knowledge. And I gotta, as someone that had not experienced it before, Apollo Justice kind of bounced right off of me. So that was kind of like a rough start with visual novels for me. But yeah, in the same kind of like 2013 wave of Danganronpa fever, I got swept up. And yeah, I mean that’s definitely, like I would say probably where me and Brian’s like strongest shared interest in like specifically like a mystery of a visual novel is. Yeah, I was there for like the like Something Awful let’s plays, and then by the time the second one had actually come to the states I’d already like, you know, let’s played the whole thing.

John 

Oh wow!

Bug 

So it’s kind of a weird history of visual novels for me.

John 

So then, how did enjoying the Ace Attorneys and Danganronpas of the world. How did that lead to creating something in that vein? What sparked your journey towards where we are now?

Brian 

Well, like all great indie games, it starts with a web comic called Homestuck. Our old friend group was into during the aughts and through Homestuck meetups and cosplay and stuff and you know Bug were doing artist alley for a while at that point we met each other through cons and so we had that shared background shared fandoms. I don’t know if we ever did [Danganronpa] v3 cosplay at the same time. I was Rantaro. 

Bug 

Oh yeah, I was Shuichi when we did that.

Brian 

You broke your pants.

Bug 

I was like the only one that did not break my pants. There was like this weird curse on that convention where at least like two or three people had cartoon like ass seam of the pants, just completely failed. Whatever technology they were using to make those back in the day.

John 

Yeah, I mean, do you think it just like people were using the same or buying the same like– I was gonna say model of pants, but I guess you know like the same. I guess. I mean, I don’t know. I would imagine people are just going like Shuichi pants on Google and grabbing something. 

Bug 

Yes, The first one. It’s one of those things that I forget. Isn’t like a universal. Like, there’s no point in Danganronpa where busted pants like comes in. Like, that’s like the one thing. Like, that isn’t touched on at any point in Kodaka’s writing.

John 

That’s true.

Brian 

Starting in v3, there’s a lot of sprites that turn to the side, so we might have been posing.

Bug 

Yeah, a little more aggressively.

Brian 

Yeah.

Bug 

They got that third dimensions.

John 

That does make sense. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I could think of, like with seeing someone’s underwear, would be like in 2 with like Mikan, right? That’s kind of it, yeah. Huh? That seems like such a classic bit, right? I don’t know, does anyone get a pie to the face in Danganronpa?

Bug 

They do in Hundred Line.

Brian 

Yeah, that’s a important Hundred Line subplot along the comedy route.

John 

Man, yeah, I still haven’t gotten Hundred Line. I know that I need to get to it, I know. I just haven’t gotten around to it. But you know, I have, I have weird opinions about Danganronpa. I don’t know if we want to get into it. That’s not why people are listening.

Bug 

For all my like otaku passion for Danganronpa, I would say like beyond my opinion on the quality of the story, I like Hundred Line quite a bit. Beyond my opinion of the story, it’s a amazing feat that it was made and it came out, and to my knowledge. Nobody died in the dev process. There’s just so much shit in that game. Sorry if I’m cussing.

John 

No, you cuss away. You’re fine. 

Brian 

Someone might have got into like zero brain activity level writing box of blessings route, but…

Bug 

Yes, yeah.

Brian 

For the most part, people were non-vegetative. For nth Circle, we really started after and during the pandemic. I was aimless, and I gave writing a chance. And then after I tried it for like a week, I then spent the majority of COVID just writing my own visual novel, I wrote the original script for all of of the Devil within that year, which is as crazy or as sane as it sounds to you, the listener. I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not.

That came into existence. So I had like the full script, and from there I could come to people like my good friend Bug and say, “Hey, this is not just I want to do, for example, a Fanganronpa with you and let’s start designing characters.” It was, “hey, I have a story I want to tell, and in fact, you can read it right now. You can play this demo I made in Renpy, and I want some friends to work on this with me, and it’s real and it exists this much. However much a barebone script matters to you, that that’s all out there. That all exists.” Fortunately for me and for everybody who enjoys of the Devil, Bug found it interesting.

Bug 

I was actually one of the like second wave of people in our friend group that actually took the time to read it after Brian’s opining to read the short story. So like I was kind of like guiltily reading it, and I was like, “Damn, this shit’s pretty good.” And then I think it took a little time from there for Brian to be talking about, like you know, I’d love to like pursue it a little further, but like you know, can’t draw. You know, who do I know that you know can draw? At first requirement: can draw. Second requirement: it takes a lot of trust and humility to ask for like for that.

Because at that point we weren’t even really– of course we all want to make our hopes and dreams come true, you know, get us the super yacht or whatever the fuck but you know. You can’t like promise someone cash that you don’t have. Sometime after reading it I was like you know here’s my pitch for why you should let me draw for it, and yeah, from there it was just making it.

Brian 

I think you sent me a drawing of Morgan.

Bug 

I did. It was that one sketch. There’s that one like design history that we did. It’s in the concept gallery in of the Devil. Yeah, ponytail Morgan with the pencil skirt. That was my pitch document. 

Bug 

Simpler times.

John 

I do really like that you kept stuff like that and made it like public. You know, like, I don’t recall if you like labeled like ‘this was the first drawing of Morgan’ or whatever, but like the fact that you had it. You know, that’s really cool.

Bug 

Yeah, no, I mean one of my favorite things with stuff like—I have the Danganronpa art books or whatever. I love looking at that stuff where it’s like, okay, how did we get to this character design choice? And like, even if I, you know, I have the Japanese language understanding of like a three-year-old, I can look and see like, okay, this is how we got from initial like, okay, they were pitching this idea to the final product. It’s really interesting to me, so I like sharing it.

John 

Yeah, I personally am someone who does not, you know– I don’t become one of those lost media people that are like “they threw away a napkin that had a sketch on it,” but also like, you know, when they have all that stuff for when it was Distrust instead of Danganronpa, that stuff’s really cool to look at, right? Like I think it’s neat to see the progression, but also, you know, I feel like when people are like, “We need every build of Minecraft’, I’m like, alright, come on.

Bug 

What are you gonna do with it? 

John 

Yeah, what are we doing with this? 

Brian 

We’re not quite ready to divide fans between the premium and vanilla of the Devil servers, but if people keep asking for it, we’ll consider it.

John 

I was gonna say, yeah, you’re gonna like release special hidden versions of the game with like, you know like one dialog option different, make everyone start arguing, you know.

Bug 

What’s the true canon experience for this linear visual novel?

John 

So something that I thought about while I was thinking about things to ask you all was because I noticed how you all have your roles in nth circle, and that all is you know pretty apparent. But I also notice that, it doesn’t seem like it’s something that happens all the time, but just from picking things up on social media, it does seem like you all do sort of reach back and forth into each other’s you know, like cooking areas, as it were, to be like, “oh, you know, here’s an idea I have for this character”, or you know, maybe you designed this character a certain way, Bug, or you read something that was written and then was like, oh, you know, now this will tell me how they’re designed. Like, how does how does that work for you all? Like, how sequestered are you in your development? How communal is it as well?

Brian 

I think that Bug is like a really good actor, and I give Bug characters, and the characters have defined roles and beats they need to hit, but you know sometimes the actor will improv, and it’s really good, and we’ll just keep it in there. In a murder mystery, especially people have roles they need to fulfill, and they have specific lines they need to drop at specific points. 

I’m trying to think what character went through like the biggest left turn. Aidey, but that was a collaborative process because the original adjutant concept was just a robot, essentially. Like if the judge from Ace Attorney was a robot, and they would just like speak up to proceed the court cases along. After we put out the new and improved version of Episode Zero, that had Swag and Class and JoJo coloring and stuff. We just needed way more sauce in the courtroom than that, and so Bug and I spent a long time concocting Homestuckian magics and Kodakaisms and Oda One Piece body types, and we combined that all into Aidey.

Bug 

Distilling it.

John 

And bless you for it.

Brian 

And in getting back to that actor analogy. Like Aidey just has a lot of funny faces, and so if I just had the entire script and I went down and Aidey only did exactly what the original script said, you wouldn’t see those faces so much, but I want to see those faces. They make me laugh, so I will throw in more lines to get to see particular sprites that Bug drew that I like or are funny, or I’ll add an aside or a little something muttered under a person’s breath. I mean, even Morgan is more sassy than she was in the original scripts because Bug draws great side eyes and sarcastic faces and stuff, and Bug does all the bringing to life.

John 

You’re mentioning like Morgan being sassy and all that, like I think a big part of her character, like something that is like essential to her, is that is when she’s not necessarily backed in a corner, but when she just gets in this space where she’s like, I just need to do something to sort of throw the other person off, like that that sprite where she’s like giving that like fake smile, like that upside down A with her mouth, and she’s just like, “Oh, of course!” And she’s like playing a little dumb.

That is like essential to that character, and like just from what you’re saying, like I could tell that it’s like the art and the writing went together to form this entire layered character, instead of it just being like, yeah, you know, she could just be moving from place to place and you know figuring things out and trying to get away with what she needs to get away with, but there’s this extra bit to the character of being like, well, I need to also throw them off and I need to make them think that I’m not as on top of things as I am, and all that, like it’s just– it’s just good. It’s just good writing, good character development. 

I don’t mean to be like kissing y’all’s ass. Like, listen. I know that this is supposed to be the professional game journalist talking to you all, but genuinely, I do just really love this game. Like, I have recommended this to tons of people. I’m not just doing this to be like, you know, kissing ass. I do just genuinely think that this is an all timer.

Bug 

I hope so. We’ll see.

John 

You all, you know, you all are working on of the Devil. Your chapter three is on the way. One thing that you all have also done is you have released other smaller titles, mostly for game jams and the like. Does swapping to other projects help keep you fresh, or is it something that you just need to be like—“I just need to not look at of the Devil for a little bit”, or is it even a purposeful choice? You just like well, this game jam came up and we’re doing it now. You know, like what’s the thought process behind that?

Bug 

We haven’t done a game jam in the past while partially because like now we’re working on of the Devil and it’s like a thing that we’re like, you know, we’re selling a product, we don’t want to leave people hanging on an episode longer than they have to be but those times that we were doing it for me it felt like getting like an extra like… 

Brian 

It’s good exercise.

Bug 

Yeah, you’re about to run a 10k or whatever. You need to start, you know, going extra hard, doing laps and stuff. So we, especially with like a game like Marchen Line, which is just like a ton of content, it was kind of like okay, like let’s see how like big and clean, we can get something in a set amount of time. It’ll be done when it’s done. You know we have a deadline. It’s not going to be like an eternal like side quest thing.

Yeah, for me it’s just like, what can we do? Because before we made model employee, we had gotten like a super bare bones alpha version of of the Devil out on Itch.io, and it was kind of like okay, that’s the we’re adding all this other stuff. We’re adding all like the JoJo cinematography. We’re adding like extra gameplay mechanics and stuff. Let’s like let’s flex those muscles before we like really put that extra power into of the Devil.

Brian 

And you’ve done a bit of stuff with EbiCon since Marchen Line came out, right?

Bug 

Yeah, we got something cooking. And I was definitely like on the sidebar for Butterfly Effect, the first of the EbiCon titles. But yeah, for me I think the non nth Circle endeavors are definitely like, okay. I want to like expand my repertoire a little bit, see what else I’m doing. But again, it’s that balancing act of like of the Devil‘s got to be my number one.

John 

How has introducing the business side of things, how has that influenced the art, as it were? Like you know, like how does that pressure change things for you?

Bug 

I feel like it definitely ups the pressure. I feel the expectation is a little harder. 

Brian 

Yeah, we feel more expectation than financial pressure. You know, we have like a lot of people looking forward to the stories we’re telling.

Bug 

Right, like, I never want to get to the point where we’re like conscientiously like we got to change this major thing that we want to hit because you know someone might get mad at us or whatever. We’re gonna get flamed hardcore style, but yeah, it’s like I feel like a greater like responsibility to like do it right, do it good.

Brian 

More responsibility to other devs. I get guilty about not upping enough people’s games, or I’m a bad critic. I’m a bad word of mouth guy. I wish I was playing more indie games and boosting them on our account and stuff.

Bug 

It’s tough because it’s like, I’m so busy making games. I have so bare time to like play anything. If I’m playing like some big AAA thing, I’m like, why bother when I could be playing my friend’s shit?

John 

Another thing that you all mentioned relatively frequently are your influences. You all wear your influences very openly, and that is something that you know. Sometimes that can be in in in a lot of other pieces of media, it could be a little eye rolling. But so far I’ve found of the Devil just to be like, yeah, you know what? We’ve got we’ve got jokes, we know we know where we come from, and it’s felt more like that. So, how do you amass your inspirations into something new without it feeling like epic Funko Pop two things T-shirts?

Bug 

They said the thing!

John 

I’m sorry, haha.

Brian 

I wonder if the setting helps?

Bug 

Yeah.

Brian 

of the Devil‘s a pretty serious world, a pretty detailed world, and so if we cut away to do like a JoJo line drop, or we have a little Danganronpa reference sprite or whatever, it’s relieves some tension and it’s comedic, but  it’s like one line in a very large, intricate thing. We aren’t borrowing too heavily from any of our inspirations in terms of the plot or the overarching story. You know?

John 

Sure. I mean, yeah, that that that does make sense. What drove you to want to write a story, not just about murder and court cases and all that, but about this specific kind of world, this cyberpunk world that is, you know, not just the flash and the cool kind of Cyberpunk 2077 style stuff. 

Another thing that I do really like about this game is how, like, real it feels. You know, I don’t know if this will this will be how it turns out in however many years, but it’s still very believable throughout. So, like, what brought you to that?

Brian 

Around the time I was writing the early scripts, I believe, was when the Golden State Killer had been caught, famously because some like distant cousin gave their DNA to Ancestry.com or whatever, and so the Golden State Killer himself had never been arrested, or his DNA wasn’t in the system, but he had left DNA behind at crime scenes, and so because some distant relative of him of his put their DNA into a big global database, they were able to from there get back to him. Of course, this all being 30 years later, 40 years later, decades of justice too late.

It got me thinking about future-proofed crimes, or if the sort of big serial killer boom of the 80s and 70s and 90s, where you had sort of like these big cities for the first time, but the technology wasn’t quite there. This fearmongering, changing politics and stuff, and sort of maybe the conditions for serial killers will never be like that again. But what will it look like 60 years from now? Technology is going to keep getting better. The databases are going to keep getting bigger. What kind of personality would you have to have to be a successful serial killer 60 years in the future? You can’t have a big ego. You can’t be writing in letters to the cops in in code. You can’t have a record. You can’t make any mistakes. You have to be perfect, and that sort of was the driving influence behind it. I wanted to see what that sort of character would be like, and I think that’s where Morgan initially came from.

Bug 

Because Morgan’s so perfect~

Brian 

She gets less perfect all the time, and more interesting.

John 

I mean that that does make sense. You approached it from a character angle where it was like here’s the kind of person that would exist in this world, and then you sort of mold the world around her sensibilities and her eccentricities, as it were. That makes a lot of sense.

Brian 

And Bug made her hot.

Bug 

Yeah, that’s right!

Brian 

Now it makes no sense that she could get away with crime.

John 

Yeah, because she’s trying to escape, and everyone’s just– their eyeballs are popping out. They’re you know turning into smokestacks.

Bug 

A lot of foghorns in the city.

Brian 

But it’s better for her.

John 

So visual novels. We love them. But I would like to ask though, for maybe the future or maybe just in general, is there another kind of game that you could imagine your team making, or is there something where it’s like we could take something similar to of the Devil and turn it into a different kind of game, and it would still be interesting? Is that something that you all are interested in in touching on? Or are you just like nah, this is VN Central?

Bug 

of the Devil Kart. of the Devil dancing rhythm game. of the Devil rail shooter? Okay, sorry.

Brian 

To me, rather than thinking about like what genres we would or wouldn’t go into, or like saying we would never make a platformer, we would never make an RPG. I think our sensibilities put us in the 2D, 2.5D space. Not really interested in big open worlds. Definitely interested in heavy focus on story.

I guess if we’re just talking about dreams, or you know, like what is of the Devil lacking? I’ve always kind of wanted to make one of those games that you could just pick up and play on a demo floor, you know, like a Balatro or something. I love of the Devil, but you sit down and you play it for like 15 minutes or an hour or 10 hours, but you don’t play it for 30 seconds at a time on your phone. I think it would be interesting to make a game like that, but it’s not what we are right now.

John 

Okay! All right. And my last question that I have down here is: Are there any specific VNs or just other projects out there that you would like to give a shout out to, like of that that are your contemporaries, or even just hey, I think you should check this out if you like of the Devil or any of your other work.

Brian 

You know, Kodaka would cry if we didn’t bump Rain Detective Archive. He wants everybody to play that ahead of 2×2.

Bug 

Ah… Raincode.

John 

(That’s one I really don’t like.)

Brian 

I really look forward to what’s next in Deltarune. I really look forward to what’s next in Your Turn to Die.

Bug 

I would love to know what happens next in Your Turn to Die. As far as a smaller stuff goes, I’d be remiss not to plug Fairy Chess, which is a short game jam entry and Toxic Yuri VN Jam, which also there’s a ton of really good stuff there. I’m still working through a lot of the log there. Obviously, you know, read all the tags and stuff before you go into anything on that because it can get pretty heavy, pretty quick. 

But if you like the like cinematography angle, the more like movie-like aspects in of the Devil, there’s some really amazing shots in that visual novel. Another smaller one I’ll plug is a WHODUNNIT, which is a furry mystery game on Steam.

It’s just a demo for now. I’m very excited for the full release. They do some really insane stuff in Renpy. Both of those games are Renpy games that made me be like, I had no idea you could do that format. So if you want to be wowed by some crazy UI, WHODUNNIT is very promising.

Brian 

insertdisc5’s up upcoming VN… the name escapes me.

Bug 

Truth Scrapper!

Brian 

Thank you, Truth Scrapper.

Bug 

Yay! Very excited. A lot of exciting stuff out and coming up.

Brian 

It’s a very good time to be playing games. Just not working at AAA studios.

Bug 

Yeah.

John 

Yyyyyeah. Yeah.

Well, your fan base did send in some questions as well. I put out the call. We got a good amount of stuff here. I’m just gonna pick and choose a little bit because you know I don’t wanna keep you here for 300 years.

So thank you all for sending in your questions and thank you all for the support too. You know like t the of the Devil fandom is very kind to me. These past few days, just thank you all for sending in questions. 

First off, we have we have some from one Bran who asks for Bug: When you’re outfitting characters, what kind of things do you have in mind? Are there specific fashion trends or brands within the Devilverse that you try to be mindful of? 

Bug 

Oh man, are there brands? I have a couple recurring visual tropes I like. If I give another character two belts, I need someone to stop me. I’m addicted to two belts. 

So yeah, there’s a couple things I consider. I look at a ton of clothes. I follow a ton of fashion photo collectors, both of like old stuff and like current releasing like fashion house stuff. I follow a lot of streetwear stuff. I go thrifting a lot just to like look at stuff and like I have a folder on my phone that’s just like here’s a cool shoe I saw at like five different angles so that I can draw it later. 

So yeah I have a pretty wide breadth of like inspirations. I do try to try to consider like okay like this is like a fashion like thread that I’m like keeping consistent over a few characters I know with like Creek’s pod I pulled a lot of like Drain Gang concert photos just of like the crowd and like people lining up.

So like I’ll like look at like specific like music scenes and kind of like pull on that. I’m pulling on episode two because it’s the thing that’s freshest in my mind. Because I was just backing up my files recently, and I was like, “Oh, I drew a lot of shit.” A lot of like workwear, a lot of like futuristic-looking old stuff, if that makes sense. There’s a lot of like revival fashion stuff out right now, so it’s mostly I’m looking at like real stuff and like trying to keep it that way.

I sew as a hobby. I mentioned that I used to do cosplay and stuff, so like clothing construction is really interesting to me. So that’s something I’m pretty conscientious of, and yeah, I do a couple like similar visual gags too. Maid Man on Creek’s shirt is like a joke that got out of hand from Model Employee, one of our jam games. So there’s a couple things like that, but they’re mostly kind of like jokes to myself.

Brian 

Have we ever talked about the original concept for Creek’s gang’s fashion?

Bug 

Oh yeah, that was one of the only times that I’ve been like, I cannot I can’t deliver what’s being asked of me. I won’t do it. Brian was like…

Brian 

The concept was a cyberpunk Bancho gang.

Bug 

Yeah, yeah, with like gakurons and like some like bright colors going on there, and I was like… I try to keep it grounded to stuff that I have like some kind of like connection to, just so that I’m not like, I would hate to do that kind of thing, dirty, and it’s like I immediately I pulled out like a doc and I like pasted a bunch of the like Drainer fashion and like old like Euro trash rave culture shots, and I was like, we’re doing this. Ichi the Killer was on there too. It’s like one of the best costumings in cinema, so I was just like, we’re taking it this direction. Brian was like, we’re good, okay.

Brian 

It would have been very messy if we hadn’t changed course, because then you have two rival Japanese-coded gangs going at it

Bug 

Got to right the ship sometimes. That’s some of the collaboration that happens behind the scenes.

Brian 

(Plus, I knew they all died anyway.)

Bug 

MCF was like, we shouldn’t even be like drawing these guys. These guys should be like NPCs or whatever. We have like those little like shadowy guys in the background. And I was like, if these guys aren’t cute, it’s not gonna matter that they get—spoilers! They get their shit rocked.

John 

It makes it so much more of a like an impact because you know you don’t get to know them intimately. I mean, there’s that extra bit that you that you get at the end and all that, but it does hit way harder that they have you know faces and designs, and you can not just like tell a little bit about them from what they say to you, and what what Morgan says to them, but like their designs. They are full fledged people, and I mean Morgan stops that from happening. So you know it’s very good. It’s very interesting. 

I’ll keep with you though. What has been the biggest challenge working on these illustrations? And are there specific characters or assets that have pushed you the furthest out of your comfort zone?

Bug 

I was never someone that drew robots before, so things like Aidey, some of our other AD Android characters.

Brian 

And maybe some things in the future~

Bug 

Yeah. I think I did pretty good on one that’s coming up.

Brian 

Yes.

Bug 

Really stretch my capabilities there. But like I just don’t really fuck with robots. They’re like cool. I have like a ton of respect for it, and like it’s not. I’ve never been the like when people like take commissions or whatever, and they’re like, oh, I don’t draw mechs. I’ve never been that kind of person, but it’s kind of like oh, like I have to like, I do really like organic shapes and stuff. My lines are really loose, so it’s just kind of hard to like when you’re drawing a robot. Like the arm has to look, you have to think very 3D, and I’m very loose with it, so it’s that’s been a challenge for sure.

But I think I’ve adapted. Aidey was like was a good like bridging point of like, okay, I’m starting to think about how like metal and plastic parts can come together, but I’m keeping it in like a humanoid shape, and then I kind of expanded out from there. Thank you, Brian, for writing mostly human-shaped robots.

John 

Now I have one for Brian here. If you could see of the Devil adapted to another form of media, TV, movie, stage play, etc. what would it be and why?

Brian 

Like a really good meaty HBO show. You can have an after the episode interview with the character, which, by the way, is my personal vote for how Umineko should be adapted, because then the first Tea Party would be presented to the audience as if though it’s just an after episode interview, but then it slowly trans– Ah, I got to save that for later.

Bug 

Don’t steal. Do not steal.

Brian 

No, but I think episodic is already a good fit, and you know the 2000s have shown us that you can tell some really amazing, again meaty, well developed stories on TV. A character like Tony Soprano or Walter White, if they were in a movie, it would be more of a morality tale or just the fall from grace, or whatever. But in TV, you really get to marinate with these characters and get into their psychology. So that would excite me.

Bug 

Yeah, I feel like with episodic, I’ve had like other devs be like, “Oh, should I do like the episodic thing?” Like, and it’s like it really depends because it’s like I feel like it’s a story like of the Devil like is built on that kind of like legacy of episodic like crime-dramas you know drama-dramas stuff like that that where you can kind of do that like building overarching story type of thing so that makes a lot of sense. of the Devil on HBO, let’s go.

John 

Are we gonna get any dream castings here, or is that…?

Bug 

I’d have to think about that one.

Brian 

I mean, there’s definitely actors that would excite me, but then I got to think about actually matching the characters’ races, and then I start running out of ideas.

John 

Well, yeah, then that’ll just be up to the casting director. You know. It’s out of your hands. 

Bug 

Leave it to the pros once we’ve got our HBO budget.

John 

Next one is from J, who says in the episodes we currently have now, there isn’t a whole lot that signifies or displays accent, dialect, or language. Some of the few examples that currently exist are some local slang such as mist or copper, Farah using an Indonesian swear in episode one, and vocabulary used by either poorer or wealthier denizens. Will we see any variety in accent, dialects, or even language as a signifier of class or ethnicity?

Brian 

So as people generally notice when they play the game, part of the setting of the Devil is that it’s kind of localization agnostic? I’m not sure what you want to call that? I avoid talking about dollars, U.S. dollars, or I don’t get specific numbers for how much something costs. I won’t say this guy’s speaking Japanese, in walks a Mexican man, because part of the thrust of the story of of the Devil is that the world presented here is a convergence point between state and corporation, and it’s all irrespective of boundaries. With the internet, with the technology, it is not important so much where you’re located geographically, and so there are still countries, but they’re very-they all pretty much look like this.

Bug 

I feel like this comes up in many cyberpunk things, just because it’s the thrust of capitalism or whatever, where there’s this kind of like monoculturalization, flattening.

Brian 

So the characters all have real world races. It’s part of their character. It informs their design, or their name, or how they’re written. I just don’t see many opportunities to bring it up in a way that feels natural and is good writing, you know?

And just like it doesn’t come up much that you introduce yourself to somebody and you talk about my mom is X and my dad is Y and…

Bug 

But I grew up over here…

Brian 

You know, maybe I just lack the confidence, or I have the fear of being like that one famous Klance fanfic. I think it’s Keith accidentally swears in Mexican.

Bug 

Mexican?

Brian 

I probably got that wrong.

Bug 

It’s tough because, like I think one of of the Devil‘s strengths is the fact that like the cast is diverse, like both in like gender composition, racial composition, skin tone, background, etc. But like I feel like kind of like– I don’t want to say cheapens because that’s not what I mean. It’s hard to like talk about it intelligently. 

Like I don’t want I don’t want to present it as like oh this is a diverse story or whatever because one that would be kind of disingenuous, we’re pretty homogeneously made team, and two like it kind of just feels like that’s how it should be. We’re presenting like a you know future metropolitan city like that’s going to look you know like it does.

John 

I was I was gonna say, like you know, you talked about the, you know, the sort of makeup of the environment where, like, it just feels like this is a place where, yeah, a lot of people ended up either on purpose or on accident, and that is reflected by the vast variety of people that you interact with in the story.

Bug 

Totally, totally.

Brian 

So to answer the original question, I guess I’d say this story, this world is more about examining class or politics or economics or power. Race still exists in this world. I wouldn’t call it like a post-racist society or anything like that. Again, I’m trying to make a realistic world 60 years from now.

John 

Okay, we got some we got some slightly sillier ones.

Bug 

I like silly!

John 

We have question from Olivia here who asks, has Serra canonically played Umineko, and does Umineko exist in the of the Devil universe?

Brian 

Well, it’s our fictional setting, and so we get to make a lot of choices. I’ve decided, for example, that like some of the extinct Kemono Friends are still alive 60 years from now, just because I need a little joy in my life. 

Bug 

Right, you’re driving the car. 

Brian 

I absolutely believe that 60 years from now, Umineko will be taught in schools and shit. So yeah, definitely. I do hesitate to give characters the same hobbies as me. All my characters end up sharing my interests in one way or another, or you know they’re all coming from my head, obviously.

But I don’t like putting in a bunch of characters who stay at home all day and play video games and play visual novels because I get enough of that in my daily life, so I don’t know that Serra a hardcore gamer. She might be more interested in Umineko as a literary work.

John 

I like that, honestly. I like that concept where it’s just like, this is a good piece of literature, not just you know, Serra got opinions about the Tsukihime remake versus the original. You know?

Brian 

60 years from now, the Tsukihime remake might be done!

John 

I don’t know about that. This might be too general but people’d like to know, but do y’all have any like big favorites for who you’ve written and/or drawn for? Is there anything that you want to shout out and say like, damn, I’m really proud that I that I that I wrote that character or I that I designed this character real good.

Bug 

Oh man, I got a lot of bangers coming up in episode three.

John 

I remember you talking up, you know, Creek’s gang.

Bug 

Yeah, so maybe I shouldn’t lay a curse on these guys…

John 

No, I mean I was just gonna say like you talked to them up, and I feel like you delivered that like people were pretty immediately. These are my new blorbos now, even though they got eviscerated.

Bug 

Totally, I feel like they’re a good like they were like a good like tone setting for episode two for sure. They were some of the first that got designed just because we knew that we needed them quick so we could you know start showing them off. Creek’s pod, definitely Han. I’m very proud of that. That was one of the times that like I basically got the design in one. Brian said she needs to look like this, and I said, yes, sir, and she was done.

Brian 

Probably Penny for me.

Bug 

Penny is awesome.

Brian 

Penny just because Penny’s short and sweet and self-contained, and you know Morgan’s the narrator. She’s always talking and/or thinking. So, you know, Penny is quiet sometimes, and I think we were able to do a lot with that character and that game and relatively limited dialog.

Bug 

And she’s like a solved problem.

John 

Yeah, Penny from Model Employee? Am I right?

Bug 

Yeah.

John 

Yeah, just making sure. I was like, wait a second, is there a Penny I forgot in of the Devil?

Brian 

There is one fun fact… At one point, you know, London’s a character who has nicknames for people, and he his nickname for Serra was Penny. But then we made Model Employee, and Penny was just a better name for Penny. So that’s one thing that Serra had stolen from her, and that’s why they’ll have beef when they meet in Nth Cross Fighters.

John 

Yes! They’re gonna have such a great like intro dialog, like PlayStation All Stars, you know? They’re gonna have the rivalry cutscene. 

Brian 

NetherRealm styled. But one of them’s DLC, so it doesn’t quite match up with what the other says. 

Bug 

Right. Right. 

Brian 

“Who are you???”

John 

Yeah. Only one of them reacts. …I’m showing my ass to all the of the Devil fans here listening to this by bringing up fucking PlayStation All Stars.

Bug 

That’s fine. That’s fine. 

John 

People are gonna be like, what the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Bug 

That’s just one of those, you know, amazing character moments where you get the little bit of backstory.

John 

All right. I got a question just about like pronunciation. Is that something that you all like think about when you create words or like, you know, like places or companies, as it were, because like someone in the Discord here, Nocebo Effect asked what the intended pronunciation of the pharmaceutical company is. Is it Renegen (Ren-Eh-Gen)?

Bug 

I thought it was Ren-Eh-Jen?

Brian 

I always read it as Ren-Eh-Jen, sort of a reference to InGen from Jurassic Park.

John 

Okay!

Brian 

Yeah, we know how like we pronounce characters’ names and the in-game glossary and stuff. More complicated stuff like people ask us like, what are the characters for Makoto’s name? And none of us are fluent in Japanese, so leave that to the, fingers crossed, localization team. And in the meanwhile, encourage our fans to try it for themselves. I guess.

John 

And then I we have one more sort of for Bug here. That might be influences a little bit more. Boxman asks: Was the design of the court shooter in episode two in any way influenced by Gaku from Hundred Line?

Bug 

Absolutely not. No way. We did get a couple comments just because I think the episode two launch window was like lining up when like I was like making a lot of like fan art or whatever, talking about Hundred Line a lot. All of the episode two characters were a done deal before I got the Hundred Line, if I recall correctly.

Brian 

Well, that was a CG only character. I think some Gaku DNA possibly could have leaked in there.

Bug 

I don’t know. I don’t know about that… What about him?

Brian 

He’s got a hat.

Bug 

Ah, hat. Listen. If it warms your heart, maybe I was subconsciously influenced by Gaku particles.

John 

We all are, you know, even if we don’t know it. It’s worldwide.

Bug 

Yeah, yeah, worldwide sensation. Gaku Maruko.

John 

Total global saturation!

I think that does it. I think those are the questions that we got, and that’s what I have. Thank you so much for your time, for real. This is a real treat.

Brian 

Thanks for talking to us.

John 

I don’t know if there’s anything that I mean– I’m not gonna say like, “tell everybody when everything’s coming out!”

Bug 

Release date drops now. We didn’t tell anybody else, including the other two nth Circle guys.

John 

Exactly, exactly. But I mean, you know, if there’s anything that you want to let folks know, I guess now would be the time to say in audio. You know, what do you want to say to the listeners at hand right now to end it off?

Brian 

Thanks. For starters.

Bug 

 Thanks for playing!

Brian 

Thank you. Thank you for witnessing our dream.

Bug 

Yeah. Our of the Devil.

Brian 

We hear you about the merch, and you’re going to be very pleased.

Bug 

Something amazing is going to happen to you.

John 

I’m rubbing my hands together.

Brian 

 You have been waiting for it for an amazing reason.

John 

Excellent, excellent. One of the co-writers here, I think some of y’all might have met him, Maverick? I sent him to pick me up whatever things you had, he still hasn’t sent it to me. I’m so mad. I’m waiting for those keychains. I’m so mad. I’m publicly shaming him. 

Bug 

They’re a precious commodity. We know. We know. We’re working on it.

Brian 

Bit of a chicken and the egg with the phone charms because the first thing we did was make we made the phone 3D.

Bug 

Yes.

Brian 

Then Bug just likes to draw the characters on Post-it notes.

Bug 

Really tiny and fat and cute. 

Brian 

That’s where the first Chibi Morgan came from, and so we started experimenting with phone customization. Give you something to bop.

John 

It’s something that you know isn’t anything too wild and out there, but it’s this nice little bit of flavor where it’s like, yeah, here’s a little keychain doodad. Especially like when you have the characters in their little costumes and stuff too, where it’s just like, yeah, here’s something that wouldn’t quote unquote happen in the game, but also here’s you know Serra in the like poker dealer outfit and all that. 

Bug 

The theater of the mind.

John 

Exactly. So where can people find you online? And also, where are your games available?

Brian 

Well, you want to head over to X the Everything app.

Bug 

Oh yeah, oh yeah. You and I give it your banking information. Yeah, SSN, face scan, pin code.

Brian 

You can find us at nthcircle.studio, which is our website.

Bug 

I don’t think we’ve done the fancy URL yet. Oh, that is our website. Yes.

Brian 

Yes. Of course, you can find us on BlueSky, which is…

Bug 

Nthcircle.bsky.social.

Brian 

Thank you.

Brian 

We are on Tumblr as ofthedevil and ofthedevil2. I reserved that just in case.

Bug 

So don’t think about it.

Brian 

And you can find us on on Itch as well as nth Circle, but mainly, what you want to do is type in “of the Devil” into Google, and it will take you to the Steam page, and you can play our game for free starting right now.

John 

Right, that’s right. Yeah, that whole chapter zero is free, and yeah, I you know again not to kiss too much ass too much, but I just remember playing through that and being like, “Damn, they didn’t charge for this shit? They’re crazy.” But then I was like, no, I got to get chapter one, and that you know, it sold chapter one to me easily. So yeah, y’all knew what you were doing somehow. All part of the plan.

Bug 

It was kind of a crazy idea, but I think it’s worked out pretty nicely.

John 

For sure.

Brian 

Eternally grateful to anybody who’s given their time.

Bug 

Yes, yes!

John 

And do you have your like personal accounts that you would like that you want to share or nah?

Brian 

I stopped using Twitter, I deleted my Facebook. I haven’t updated my Tumblr homepage. But I’m on Bluesky.

Bug 

But you’ve got a pretty good, pretty good Deltarune live play thread going.

John 

That’s so true. You do.

Brian 

I stopped threading it because I’m bad person.

Bug

Dude…

Brian 

brianNth Circleat Bluesky. You can follow me there.

Bug 

And I am evillittlebug on Bluesky. Don’t follow me other places. I don’t want to use more social media. Don’t make me use Instagram, please. I don’t want to.

John 

God, I’ve been debating with myself to ask this dumb joke question, but now I do it. Where’s the big bug?

Bug 

The big bug?

Brian 

You’re evil little bug.

Bug 

Yeah, yeah.

John 

If there’s an evil little bug, is there an evil big bug or good big bug?

Bug 

of the Devil has seen some big bugs.

Brian 

Oh, of the Devil has had some big bugs at times.

Bug 

Yeah, never forget the floating fish.

Brian 

Floating fish in the Ikariya Gardens. The original version that we put out on Itch was searching for the camera on every frame in order to adjust the character’s shadow.

Bug 

Makes it run really good.

Brian 

That was good. The biggest bug is the amount of space that evillittlebug takes up in our hearts.

John 

Aww.

Bug 

Aww. And in your storage space, those sprites are big. 

Brian 

Ah, the storage space. It’s all sprites everybody, all right?

Bug 

It’s my fault. It’s my fault. I did it.

Brian 

Textures take up space, and it’s all sprites.

Bug 

Wait, yeah. Blame it on the ones that aren’t here. It’s the 3D guys’ fault.

Brian 

3D guys. Every time we put in an optimization, they put more underneath the map. There’s just a bunch of mirrors looking at each other.

Bug 

And rippling water.

Brian 

Rippling water and high detail shadows.

Bug 

All that good stuff. 

John 

The official announcement from nth Circle is: we want to just make your computer run so so hot with our indie visual novel. 

Just in case you want to continue to follow us on Gamesline, we are Gamesline.net on the internet as well as on BlueSky. The average following stuff, we got our Discord server and all that stuff. You can find that on the website. And if you think if you thought I was cool, you can follow me on BlueSky at john.gamesline.net. That would be nice.

Bug 

Gamesline is cool. 

John 

Aw, thank you.

Brian 

If you’re in games journalism that isn’t just how to find the Tonberry in FF7 Remake— which is important work, but…

Bug 

You guys were one of the first to write about of the Devil, so if you’re interested in finding more cool shit like of the Devil, should be reading Gamesline.

John 

Thank you, honestly, seriously. That means a lot.

Yes, thank you for your time, and thank you all for listening. We will try to do more interviews soon, and I’m extremely, extremely excited for more from your team and for the rest of the Devil.

Bug 

Ooh, me too!

Brian 

Thank you. Excited to get it out there.

Edited and hosted by John, transcript by Bran

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It’s another week and another episode of The Gamesline Podcast. This week, John is joined by both Crystal and Lorelai to talk about everything they can. When he’s not playing Hell Maiden John’s been going for those Retro Achievements in Okage: Shadow King and Mega Man Legends while Lorelai played a little more Moonlight Peaks alongside clowning around in the new Final Fantasy XIV content that dropped. Crystal joined friends to play through Kathy Rain, a bunch of DLE’s, Splatoon Raiders, and she completed the base campaign of Final Fantasy XI. In the news, we talk more about Sony and the elimination of discs.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, Crystal and Lorelai

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 100: Shadow Kings and Lords appeared first on Gamesline.

There wasn’t a ton of gaming this week with it being a massive weekend for Conventions. You had SDCC, Offkai, Fanfest, and the Classic Gaming Convention all happening at the same time so you know there was a little bit of news for John and Lorelai to talk about. John went to the Classic Game Fest while Lorelai sat at home rebuilding her computer repeatedly while she watched Fanfest Berlin and got updates from SDCC. John grabbed himself a copy of Choro Q, Monster Rancher 3, and Devil Survivor Overclocked so look forward to some retro discussion while Lorelai’s only gaming was the new Uma Musume scenario.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Lorelai

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 99: Convention Weekend appeared first on Gamesline.

I’m not going to say “back again at last” or anything like that.

The crew finally had time to get back on the mic and looked at the ever enjoyable seasonal charts of upcoming anime! Will you follow the “Insipid Prince”? “The Villager of 999”? Or will you finally realize that “Oh Boy, Was I Wrong About Her”?

Our theme song is by Kirsten Carey, who can be found at @kircarey.bsky.social!

Send questions to podcast@gamesline.net, with a subject denoting it’s for URW!

The post Unlimited Rail Works Episode 140: Summer Season 2026 appeared first on Gamesline.

It was John’s Birthday this week and he decided to spend it moving and chatting with Lorelai about the week in Games. John’s been playing more Mariomon and Digimon Up while Lorelai’s been playing Uma Musume, Darkest Dungeon 2, and Moonlight Peaks. In the news they chat a bit about GDQ ending an SNK sponsored event mid stream and showing how you handle moments like this.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Lorelai

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 98: Birthday Moves appeared first on Gamesline.

On the list of archaic platitudes I’ve heard since childhood, that is the one that bothers me the most. A lot of life lessons can be truncated or adapted for comprehension by even the smallest child, leaving nuances or more complex concepts on the shelf for “when they’re older.” You do not have to look far or wide to see the material harm wrought by this adage at all levels of human society. Words have an exceptional capacity for infliction and damage, and they should not be underestimated or dismissed.

The goal of this proverb is to teach kids to avoid becoming disproportionately upset when another child mocks them, typically through ignoring the problem. It idolizes a very “stiff upper lip” mentality, and in some cases it’s a valuable approach and a worthy skill to teach kids. However, that’s not true in all cases. I’m sure we’ve all heard revisions or corrections to sayings like this in the past, with one example being “blood is thicker than water” being extrapolated out of “the blood of the pact is thicker than the water of the womb,” which flips the meaning of the shortened form entirely. Yet, I’ve never heard a revised variation for my least-favorite of these old sayings, so I shall endeavor to rectify this now:

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but bones can heal just fine. Words written with hate and scorn will scar me time after time.”

———————

As a gacha game, Limbus Company regularly adds new units to its roster for players to pull for via random draw banners. One such unit was added toward the end of June; a unit anticipated by the playerbase for roughly half a year. I’m going to call this unit “Thumb Rodion.” Her full label is The House of Spiders: The Thumb Nursefather Rodion if you’re curious, but all you need to know is her name is Rodion and as this unit, she is a member of The Thumb, one of the five big-shot criminal syndicates in the game’s setting.

Limbus Company does a lot of unusual things that separate it from other gacha titles, and one of these deviations is in how it conceptualizes its units. Normally, a gacha game will field a roster of various characters, but in Limbus Company, players only have access to the same cast of 12 characters. Instead of gaining new characters outright, players gain alternate versions or “Identities” of those 12 characters, typically from alternate realities where they’ve taken the place of other characters in the story, or became members of the myriad factions in the setting. Imagine a hypothetical Legend of Zelda gacha game where you build a team out of Zelda, Link, and Ganondorf, and instead of getting new characters like Midna or Tingle, you unlock versions of the trio such as Happy Mask Saleswoman Zelda, Zora Link, and Lon Lon Ranch Owner Ganondorf. That’s more or less how Limbus Company works.

As Thumb Rodion, Rodion takes on the role of Valencina, a major antagonist in the game’s 9th chapter, “Canto IX: The Unsevering.” Valencina is a Nursefather of the House of Spiders. To truncate a lot of details, the House of Spiders is a dead-end facility where the Five Fingers have dumped powerful once-members of their syndicates who have fallen from grace for one reason or another. They’re called Nursefathers as they’re effectively nurturing a special sort of person for a specific goal in order to prove they still have some value to the Fingers.

In Valencina’s case, she was promoted to a high position within The Thumb, a mafia-styled faction with strict rules and decorum, and despite her family name, was demoted and disowned after three days. When a war breaks out, she’s called into service as a formidable combatant, and though Valencina seeks to regain her lost glory and status, successfully fighting tooth and nail as a war hero of sorts, she is denied reinstatement. She’s abrasive, alcoholic, and aggressive. She treats two separate characters as items to be used and discarded, literally calling them “Textbook” and “Ticket” instead of their actual names. She’s the epitome of a prodigy being cast out for a single mistake, spiraling down into the depths of every bottle, and erupting into curse-laden diatribes at anyone who so much as looks at her funny.

Valencina (or more accurately, Thumb Rodion) had been a long-awaited unit, since Canto IX launched back in December, as she’s one of the first characters introduced in that chapter. This makes it all the more disappointing that in the English translation for Thumb Rodion, one of her dialogue lines features a slur.

When you unlock units in Limbus Company, and upgrade them to a certain point, you unlock a story vignette. These provide some additional background information; glimpses into the life of that character in this new context as they take on the role of another character, or work under another faction. As Limbus Company is a Korean game, its contents must be translated into English, and one line in Thumb Rodion’s Identity Story reads as follows:

“*puff* All right, then. Never thought that stuttering ****** with her E.G.O and the clankin’ tin-girl could stop ya, anyway.”

I’ve censored the slur, as it has no place here. Truthfully, I was hoping this would be a simple error of judgment, where those responsible either weren’t aware of the charged nature of the term or didn’t think it would be as big of a deal as it insidiously is, and the community at large would request its alteration. After all, regardless of what Korean term was used, the translation team would be savvy enough to know not to heedlessly implement a slur in the official translation, right? Surely it would be patched out and remedied within a week or two, right?

That does not seem to be the case, as we’re now weeks from the unit’s launch and there have been no changes to this line. This particular slur has gained more and more usage in online spaces over the last couple of years. I personally have seen it used in social media posts and replies the most, but there has been one instance last year where someone I was in a Discord call with said it out loud as a self-admonishment. One thing that’s clear to me is that this slur has become a lingual crutch for a decent number of English speakers online. I don’t want to simply dismiss this as the “erosion of morals among younger generations” because while I do tend to see its usage more often among younger people, it’s not like people my age and older unilaterally stopped saying the word, and the recent spread of its usage has permeated throughout the age strata. I’m mentioning younger people here because they tie into a hypothesis of mine regarding this slur’s use in Limbus Company.

If I had to guess, I’d say the slur’s application in Thumb Rodion’s Identity Story is a thoughtless inclusion banking on the “social credentials” of using current-era slang. Consider a unit released much earlier in the year: The House of Spiders: The Middle Apprentice Ishmael. Much like how Thumb Rodion is based on Valencina, Middle Apprentice Ishmael is based on Kira. I bring this up because Kira is written as the sort of person who says things like “aurafarming” which make her stand out as a more youthful character, and her language reflects that (Middle Apprentice Ishmael also uses this style of language.) Had Limbus Company been released a few years earlier, Kira would be written with different slang terms and phrases, to match the ones in use by youths at the time; she’s exactly the sort of character you’d write to say things like “sus” and “pog” since she’s also a gamer. My reasoning is that since they wrote Kira in that specific way, and Limbus Company‘s translation has a tendency to keep up with modern English language trends, the translation personnel were aware of the rise in usage of this slur and thought it would be okay to insert it into this vignette. That’s the extent of thought that went into using it.

I could make the case that by not saying which slur it is, it makes it more difficult for “proponents” of its usage to vie for it. Because it’s a slur they deem acceptable to use, and it’s one that’s unfortunately in vogue in the cultural zeitgeist of today’s lexicon, they’ll impishly claim that it’s “actually fitting for the character,” or that it “makes sense in context”.

Bullshit.

Would they make these arguments if it were a different slur? I suppose that depends on the individual, and I have no doubt some who bristle at that question would defiantly claim that they’d still make those arguments, when they know full well that using such terms in public and professional contexts would and will have consequences. The fact remains however, that Valencina never says the slur once in all of her dialogue. She was already written with a more fitting form of dehumanizing speech with her calling people objects and denying them their names, so such a vulgar term was unnecessary. Its inclusion here is even worse then, as while Valencina never says the term, Rodion in Valencina’s place does. Rodion is a complex character, but not the sort of person you’d expect to sling any kind of slur given her history and general demeanor. Now, it’s not strange at all for these characters to adopt different personas and attitudes as they use these Identities. Hong Lu often retains his upbeat joviality across his Identities, but this can be extinguished outright or twisted to juxtapose against the violence he commits depending on the context of the Identity. The normally uptight and strict Outis can be seen in more mellow or casual hues in a likewise manner, and this applies to the full main cast of Limbus Company. But never has there been a situation where a slur was involved in the localization, either in the narrative or in these little vignettes, and in such a callous and careless manner at that.

The language we use matters. For five years, I worked with children with learning disabilities, from kindergartners to fifth-graders. I’ve worked with people who have ADHD, ODD, autism, Down Syndrome, etc. You name it, I’ve probably worked with somebody who had it. One afternoon, during the after-school program, outside on the playground, I overheard a student say this exact slur. I called him over, and had him sit on one of the picnic tables for a timeout. I do not remember what I said to him exactly, but I remember being very clear and stern about the fact that such a term is not to be used. It wasn’t a term he specifically was disallowed from saying; none of us should be saying it. It’s not a term one should want to say, and if any other student said it, they’d be in the same situation he was in now. I told him that his mother, a coworker of mine at the school who worked with many of the same students I did, would be very unhappy if she knew he had said such a term. I told him that I wouldn’t mention this to his mother as he was already taking a timeout, and it was a singular mistake, but he needed to make sure he left the word unsaid.

He never said it again, at least in my presence. I would like to hope he left it behind, as I did in middle school. Because that’s what it sounds like to me whenever I hear it. There are two kinds of people who use this slur: middle-schoolers who are wont to make as many mistakes as humanly possible as they grapple with entering the tumultuous period of life where you’re not quite a child and not quite an adult and your pituitary glands are wreaking havoc all over; and people who were eligible to vote in 1980, who have given up growing as people in favor of living within the small confined worlds they’ve built up around themselves. Apart from this resurgence where I cannot go a week without reading that slur in a comments section or thread, that anecdote with that student was the most recent time I can recall hearing it; a snapshot from an afternoon almost ten years ago.

It may sound silly to stipulate on a singular slur in a video game where the setting is such that every horrible cyberpunk dystopian thing you can think of is somehow a million times worse. Where an entire district has legalized cannibalism, public transportation is a certifiably incomprehensible nightmare (and in the game too,) and you can be teleport-murdered for having a clone of yourself be alive for too long. Surely some people in this setting use slurs and pejorative terms for one another. But I’m not arguing about the slur’s suitability for the setting or the plausibility of its usage by this or that character.

I’m arguing that the slur has no value here, and only serves to tarnish the image of Limbus Company and the reputation of Project Moon along with it. This is a term with an extremely compromised and gruesome history; it should not be used without due consideration and an explicit, deliberate purpose. One must ask: “What was the objective in its usage here?” Is it being used in an academic context for a linguistic study or dissection? No. Is it being recorded as a matter of historical authenticity, accurately reflecting decades-old documentation or interview transcripts so that we maintain a complete understanding of a particular time and place, eschewing the desire to paint the past with a rosy tint? No. Is it being leveraged by a person who has been scarred by the slur as a means of connecting their experience to others through writing or song or poetry or some other medium? No.

When you work with people the term has historically been weaponized against, in order to demonize them and divest them of their humanity and rights, you will never want to stop seeing it, hearing it, witnessing it being used so flippantly, not just in creative works like video games, but in everyday life as well. There are other, less intense words that can be used in its place in virtually all contexts. But those who regularly employ it in their casual vocabulary know precisely why it “hits” just a little bit more when they use that word instead. The difference is in the measurable, tangible cruelty that laces the word, the history behind why it’s even considered a slur in the first place, and the knowledge that it is a slur and it is taboo to say it, which makes saying it or using it “exciting.” Just because people are mindlessly parroting it more often these days, feeding into its increased usage as they do, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a harmful, awful thing to say.

The truth is that it has no artistic merit in the context of a game like Limbus Company. It doesn’t do anything with the slur aside from drop it in one line for one backstory that isn’t even critical to the primary narrative, for what I can only surmise is shock value. It is flavor text.

And that flavor is rancid.

The post Sticks & Stones: The One Where They Put a Slur in a Video Game and Now I Have to Write about Why It’s Bad. appeared first on Gamesline.

Sometimes you want to play something short and sweet; sometimes, you just want to shoot a high-powered, double-barrel shotgun. Sweet relief washed over me as I received the notification I had been hoping for: The Steam Summer Sale.

I acquired a few things and, unfortunately for my future self, that also included yet more games too long for my own good(it’s probably fine, she and I haven’t been on speaking terms lately), but for the most part, I did what I set out to do. I purchased a mercifully short game which had caught my eye: Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation.

Yet again, I found myself drawn into a GZDoom-powered first person shooter.

My first impression was positive. Compared to the literal mountain of demon-killing Doomlikes, it instead goes for an aesthetic which I can only describe as early 2000’s flash animation pirates. Typically, the aesthetic of the humble buccaneer is not something I enjoy; forgive me, I’ve never been much of a pirate person. Having said that, there is an immense amount of charm in the art style. I’ve seen quite a few GZDoom games utilizing the painterly, latex-model-like sprites of classic Doom, so it’s refreshing to see something so cartoony. The enemy sprites, for instance, provide a great amount of visual interest while also being readable and contrast well with the polygonal environments. 

Presentation is one of Captain Wayne’s strongest points, between its eclectic, overdriven music, art direction, and general bawdy tone. You’re not picking up health kits; you’re munching on fish guts and doing shots of rye whiskey. Electric guitars blare as the good Captain blasts a double barrel into—in his own words—a “dumb motherfucker.”

Captain Wayne isn’t exactly trying for something perfectly refined and, for me, such a thing oozes personality and intention. Cutscenes often have an intentionally rough look with limited animation, voice actors often have varying qualities to their microphones, their acting is delightfully strange in a way only something trying to be so intentionally goofy can be. You got me the moment you introduced a detective doing literally every single detective stereotype at once.

Much like a cartoon, the comedy centers around a lot of intentional farce, silly characters, and visual gags. One standout example is pushing a switch which, most of the time, opens a door; instead, it explodes, pushing you backward and leaving a perfectly Captain Wayne shaped hole in the wall. Wonderful, very silly.

On the gameplay front, this is a standard Doom-like. In a world where Hedon and Selaco exist, this may sound like an insult, but Doom is still Doom; we all know that Doom is good. You hunt for keys, you clear rooms, what is here is still good even if it doesn’t break new ground doing it.

Even the weapon selection is standard in this respect, albeit tied to Captain Wayne’s mechanical arm. Instead of holding a shotgun, your arm is a shotgun, minigun, lighter, plasma gun, immersion blender, etc. Even if it’s only on a technicality, we can throw him in the limited pantheon of left-handed shooters. The weapons are all satisfying to use, with handy alt-fires, but you’ve seen this loadout before in many games.

What makes your kit shine is the level design. Every stage is an interesting pirate-themed romp which avoids many of the more tired genre trappings, or at least freshens them up enough that you won’t be bothered. Sure, there are ancient ruins, but it’s also doing a fun non-Euclidean infinite stair trick with Eldritch nightmare monsters. Unique terrain, varying levels of elevation, cover, set pieces; it’s all very wonderful. It’s also worth noting the game’s smooth sense of pacing and guidance. I never got lost, and always had a clear idea of where I should be moving. It’s easy to forget design intent is a cultivated skill and the devs had a deft hand at making it seem effortless.

Enemies are also a big standout. I have seen games with four times this length with half as many enemies. You have your standard grunts, Mike Tyson-esque boxers, seagulls with grenades strapped to them, shoggoths, sentient oil barrels, and more. Each one mixes up the engagements and multiplies complexity. This cast, within the game’s eight levels and nine wave-based horde maps, are a recipe for a diverse set of experiences

The only thing I have to give a non-committal shrug to is the story. Captain Wayne himself is an archetypal shooter protagonist of the early 90s; someone stole his things, he would rather them not do that, there are several homicides about it, The End. I can’t stress enough though that this is hardly worth mentioning. In a genre where many games barely even articulate this much, it’s not bad. It’s the barest conceit to have an action game happen. That’s fine! More than fine even, I’m glad the story is completely out of my way for the most part.

Captain Wayne is the vacation I needed in a sea of lengthy games. I know that’s a bit like complaining that my meal is too rich and decadent, but I’m a simple woman. The gameplay is not breaking new ground but more than anything, I cannot stress enough the level of craft on display. I have to give a hat tip to any game willing to give multiple reload animations to a double barrel depending on how many shells are in it. Captain Wayne’s own hat is visible on screen at all moments of gameplay! That’s hilarious! I can easily love something where the creators clearly had as good a time making it as I had playing it.

Admittedly, it is on the easy side for a boomer shooter—ignoring the fact I’m a freak doing nothing but playing Ultrakill’s Cybergrind all day. However, I do think Captain Wayne is great for people who want an introduction into the genre with a fun presentation. Here is a game, lovingly crafted, brief, and will give you every tool you need to succeed. An easy recommendation.

Now, I fall back into an abyss of RPGs and games meant to break my spirit and hurt my heart.

The post Fistful of Fishblood — Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation Review appeared first on Gamesline.

John and Rose are back to talk about the week in gaming. This week, John’s been playing Touhou: Mystia’s Izakaya and Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate. Rose continues to play Mina The Hollower alongside Wuthering Waves, Zero Parades for Dead Spies, and the Elden Ring Convergence mod. In the news they go over the chaos around Love and Deepspace‘s new character drop and the Sony disc manufacturing situation.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Rose.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 97: The Mega Powers Unite appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s a special guest episode this week as John and Lorelai are joined by Xyros, a variety VTuber and the leader of the Xybatsu. John’s been playing Deltarune Chapter 5 and a little more Marathon while Lorelai’s gotten deeper into The Adventures of Elliot: The Millenium Tales and Fuck’s Quest II between sessions of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. Our special guest Xyros has been playing Alien Isolation, Tormented Souls 2, Romancing SaGa 2, and Mina the Hollower. In the news, they go over all the potential studio closures coming from Microsoft, some EVO shenanigans, and Team Ninja clearly not understanding why Dead Or Alive 6 didn’t work and making everyone even angrier with the release of Dead or Alive 6: Last Round.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, Lorelai, and Xyros. You can also find Xyros on his TikTok, Twitch, and Youtube channels.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited and Video Production by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 96: Boning Up with Xyros appeared first on Gamesline.