Technical Post - Old Memories: Designing a Past for the LAK Veterans (Patreon)

Hi there! I’m Rachel, the director of Lock and Key: A Magical Girl Mystery. As I’m sure you already know from the demo (you have played the demo, haven’t you?), this Magical Girl story follows a couple that has been together for more than ten years. That means the game has a lot of ground to cover; their Magical Girl days especially need at least some degree of summary. As much as I love talking about their backstories (I have far too many pages of lore written for all of them), we can’t have the game be one long exposition-fest!

That’s where art and writing come together and make things much more efficient; thanks to milkgrrl’s incredible art, we’re able to tell you a lot about how every character used to be with a single photo! Specifically, this photo right here:

We’ll be seeing this amazing bit of art a few times throughout the game, and the amount of information that can be gleaned from it shows how necessary that is. Sherri and Kealey are very different here than they ended up becoming as adults! At 16 years old, Kealey is much more shy and reserved than the kind and outgoing woman we meet in 2019. Still newly open about being a trans woman, Kealey faces a lot of struggles in high school. Thankfully, her brand new girlfriend is there to keep her safe and provide her with constant love and support.

Sherri hasn’t changed as much as Kealey, but we can definitely see a level of youthful energy and optimism that she seems to lack by the time we’re introduced to her in the present. Her outfit also reveals her background in sports, an element of her character that is only mentioned briefly in the text of the game proper. There’s a whole story about her realizing that Kealey had a crush on her by the fact that she came to every one of her soccer games, but that sort of thing is mostly restricted to backstory/lore that’ll mostly be confined to this here patreon (so look forward to it!) or data entries.

Nina’s incredible 2000s fashion tells us that she’s always had a love for bright colors and bold attire. Nothing says bold like that top, after all. While she seems the most unchanged compared to how she is as an adult, the truth is that maintaining an attitude like that as you grow up requires its own kind of change. There’s beauty in the consistency, but isn’t growth necessary for a healthy life? Whatever you believe, there’s still no denying that she lived up to that shirt!

And then there’s Elle. Oh, Elle. Although she passed away not too long after this picture was taken, we wanted to make sure the audience got to see her at least once. We’re not going to show you every classmate they mention throughout the game, Elle is far too important to them to remain a text-only character. I supplied fewer details for her than the other girls in order to give milkgrrl much more space to get creative! As you can see, the result was excellent. She really is a sweet young girl. It’s a shame what happened.

As I said, we’ll be learning more about their past than just what this picture shows. However, this particular image gave me a lot more freedom to put in the pieces of backstory I most wanted to explore without feeling obligated to cover a lot of baseline information for them. A picture is worth way more than 1000 words in this case! There’s nothing quite like the feeling of seeing your work as part of a larger whole, and I’m blessed to have the opportunity to see mine mixed with amazing art and stellar music. Visual novels are greater than the sum of their parts for a reason!

This is far from the only time I’ll be talking about Lock and Key lore on here, but hopefully this serves as a little taste of what’s to come and a little bit of advice for those of you who might be working on collaborative projects of your own! Just remember that no piece is more important than the other, and you’ll end up with the most efficient and enjoyable result. I can’t wait to show you just how much we all took that belief to heart when Lock and Key releases in full!

Much love (as always),

Rachel