Lock and Key - A Letter from the Director (Patreon)

Hey everyone, Rachel here! As you may have heard, I’m going to be directing our newly announced game, Lock and Key. As such, I wanted to take a minute to talk about why we decided to go with magical girls and the significance of the genre to yours truly.

I’ve wanted to explore the magical girl genre for years, and even had the basic concepts for Lock and Key established before HotW’s release. Together with my co-writer, we pretty much had the entire framework ready to roll within a few months of HotW coming out. But why the excitement? To put it simply, magical girls are in part why I am the person I am today.

When I was a kid, I had this collection of Hello Kitty VHS tapes that my folks would let me and my siblings watch whenever they went out for a bit (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise). One of them was quite special to me, for a very specific reason: before the video began, there was a trailer for the one and only Sailor Moon. That trailer, showcasing the powerful femininity of the Sailor Senshi, was one of the most inspirational bits of animation I’d ever seen. As soon as I was old enough, I started watching every episode of the series I could get my hands on (yes, even with the terrible english dub) and falling in love with every aspect of the series. The message of the power of young girls really resonated with me, and gave me strength to power through some of the hardest times of my life. The magical girl genre has undergone a lot of changes since then, but I’ll never forget the power that series had as I grew up.

Like pretty much everyone else out there, I’ve gone through some really rough times in my life. During the worst of them, there were moments where I felt betrayed by those themes I clung to in my childhood. I felt like life didn’t really work the way Sailor Moon convinced me it did. But even if I didn’t believe it then, there’s no denying that the strength it gave me as a child still saw me through the worst of it. In many ways, those moments and the fact that I ultimately returned to enjoying Sailor Moon truly shaped Lock and Key. The world can be hard and cruel, especially for women, but that doesn’t mean we should leave behind that love and hope we felt when we were younger. If we abandon that, what else do we have? Sherri and Kealey have endured hard times, too, and their connection to their magical past is a huge part of Lock and Key. That said, we don’t want to rely on fetishizing tragedy to build the game’s story. Bad things can happen to good people, but you don’t have to let those things define you.

Plenty of other magical girl shows have influenced me as I’ve grown (heck, Homura and Madoka in PMMM helped me figure out I was a lesbian), but I owe a special debt to the joy and strength of 90s magical girl shows. Lock and Key is meant to be a love letter to that era; from the themes of female empowerment to the moving lesbian relationship explored by Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, we want to bring those vibes to the present day. Sherri and Kealey especially were heavily influenced by Haruka and Michiru’s deep romantic bond that inspired an entire generation of WLW, albeit with a more modern and domestic take on it given the length of their relationship and married status.

That said, we don’t want to keep the game fully entrenched in the past; the genre has changed, and we want to give you the opportunity to explore other forms of the genre through player choices. Lock and Key is a game about growing up, and growing up means choosing what parts of your past to bring with you as you move forward. I know what I want to bring with me as i grow older, but what I want to bring isn’t the only thing you can bring. Sherri and Kealey can bring what you think is truly important, and use those choices to help shape a new generation of magical girls. Just be aware that no matter what you choose, there will always be consequences.

Last, but definitely not least, is the way Lock and Key was shaped by my own experiences with love. I currently live with my long-term partner and fiancee who I’ve been with for over 6 years. The healing love, domestic tranquility, and powerful cooperation between us is what gave me the strength to work as hard as I did on Heart of the Woods, and in many ways Sherri and Kealey will serve as a tribute to the ideals of the love we’ve shared for all these years. They definitely aren’t us in their entirety, of course: Sherri and Kealey are their own people that bear little to no similarities to us, and their love is ultimately their own, but I know it wouldn’t have been possible to design it without my own experience. I dedicated my part of Heart of the Woods to her, and now I’m going to be dedicating this entire game to her. Just like Sailor Moon, Lock and Key wouldn’t exist without her. I hope that every other person that plays Lock and Key can connect with that same healing love Sherri and Kealey are meant to express.

Lock and Key is the culmination of over a decade’s worth of love for magical girls, and I can’t wait to share it all with you. Please look forward to it!

Much love (as always),

Rachel