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
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
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
we love you john games