Dates & Wires: The Original Design Document (Patreon)

It's been almost three weeks since we first made Dates & Wires available to our Patreon backers, and while there isn't much left to say about the game itself at this stage, I thought it'd be fun to give those of you who've played - and hopefully enjoyed - it a chance to compare the finished product to our original design doc from mid-February.

Bar a few changes, what released in May actually stuck pretty close to our initial vision, including the basic structure:

The only significant difference was the fact that we ditched the airport epilogue - once written, the Jack date turned out to be the better capper to the Dates & Wires experience by far. 

On a character level, the changes become a bit more noticeable: 

Dan, as the main character, was initially scheduled for two dates, one of which would have actually had him take you out to a nice meal... and then dine-and-dash at the first opportunity. Fun premise, but also a bit more extravagant than we could manage with the limited timeframe. Shitparade's shift from penny-special cinema (which would have featured stone-cold classics like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats) to Digital Serenity excursion came at Mary's suggestion; showing the salon wouldn't just give us an excuse to revisit some classic trips, but also add a bit of context to NoK00l's shameless boasting about the chain.  

Jack kinda-sorta ended up inheriting Dan's second date, with a few twists. My original plan was to have Jack drag Ashley off to Piazza de Venezia, where it would turn out that the curmudgeonly 80-something owner was one of Jack's childhood pals and let him eat there for free for old time's sake. When I couldn't get the script together in time, Mary took over and relocated the fancy dinner to the basement of the Icebox, bringing in a lot more of our favorite bartender's backstory in the process.

The list of required character art was written with an eye on keeping effort to a minimum. However, Mary felt that expressions were an important part of the otome experience, and created a heap of additional busts for each cast member as the script crystallized.

You'll notice 11, the third wheel/member of the Digital Serenity posse, was part of the game once upon a time - his role would have been a one-joke cameo, as he'd pop up after the end of the NoK00l date to try and get Ashley on the rebound... only to be brutally shot down. Creating a unique bust for a quick gag was judged to be too much effort, though - until we went and did it for another, more infamous character later in the development cycle.

Backgrounds, like character art, were chosen with an eye on efficiency - one of the main reasons there was no exterior for Abyss Coffee or Digital Serenity, though I did have an appropriate placeholder for the former in the earliest versions of the game's code:

The bar area and dance floor of the Icebox were also consolidated for that reason. 

For the soundtrack, the idea was to identify a few Ningen tracks that worked with the general feel of the game and ask for clearance on those. Instead, we got carte blanche to use his entire back catalogue - and in the end even had a bit of original music to work with. 

The one area things really blew up beyond the original scope was sound, as it quickly became obvious that a bit of well-placed FX could do a lot for the game's overall ambience. So while the design doc called for just three sound files, the finished game had 36 - including edited variations so things didn't sound too shoestring. 

All said, having a clear and achievable roadmap for the game at the outset made a big difference in being able to deliver a finished product (mostly) on schedule, and while we did get a bit more ambitious in the execution, things never veered too far from that first set of slides.