Interview: A Near Dawn’s Leonid Pilchin
As a visual novel following Seattle-based attorney Sam Nichols, A Near Dawn drops players into a legal thriller packed with multinational corporate conspiracy. I chatted with dev Leonid Pilchin on his current Kickstarter campaign and the aesthetic genre challenges facing the project.
Erik Meyer: The game is a character-driven psychological thriller point-and-click visual novel, and to put it succinctly, we’ve come a long way from the choose your own adventure paperback books of the ’80s. To my view, the visual novel genre is still emerging and growing as a way to engage readers and gamers, so can you speak to the common conventions that work well within projects like yours, and additionally, where you’re blazing a trail, in terms of user experience, menus, and visual elements?
Leonid Pilchin: I know, the description of my game is a mouthful isn’t it? Visual Novels really bridge the gap between people who enjoy reading books or graphic novels and playing video games. You can now play a graphic novel and as you say choose-your-own adventure. So it is very appealing and has been a rapidly growing genre over the past few years, with some of the biggest YouTubers regularly playing Visual Novels. Also, there are now quite a few scripting programs and communities dedicated to helping beginners create their own VNs. Without getting into the history of VNs, what fundamentally makes a Visual Novel is your ability to interface with characters or make decisions about where you will go or who you will spend time with, so it is an interactive story (ones that are not are called Kinetic Novels). A big part of VNs is romance and dating simulation which actually often crosses into 18+ territory. There is also a demand that things look and feel anime (VNs originated in Japan) and it can actually be very difficult for projects that don’t stick to this doctrine to the letter to be noticed or recognized by the community, not unlike my own that embraces a good number of influences besides anime. Having said all that, one key aspect to VNs is having different outcomes – a ‘good ending’ or a ‘bad ending’ based on your choices, and sometimes you can have a dozen or more endings. However, there are now so many genres of VNs, as pretty much anyone can make one now if they are determined enough, and I believe this will only keep growing and motivating people to tell their stories the way they want to, rather than what may be expected of the genre.
For A Near Dawn, I use the Visual Novel interface, because it suits me very well for my purposes. My game actually got started as Text-based Adventure. Imagine a piece of parchment with the entirety of my story’s text written out in bits as you select hyperlinks to ‘look at’ or ‘talk to’ people and move the story along. It was essentially a webpage. I always wanted to make an adventure game, because I’ve loved them all my life, but the idea of doing all the animations and technical-heavy programming (not my forte) seemed tremendously daunting. So when I decided to upgrade my project to a graphical interface, my concept was to take a classic adventure like Broken Sword and strip it of the characters walking around and physically exploring the scene – instead, I would have the same type of background you might find in Adventure games filled with characters, and in much the same way, you will ‘point and click’ on objects and people to interact with them, whether to look at or to speak with, opening up conversation options. This is not at all typical in VNs, but very typical in adventure games. I think that is one of the main things that sets my project apart from most Visual Novels.
I also have a great degree of confidence in my animation. I worked as an animator for nearly a decade on TV shows like Ugly Americans. The way I imagine a scene is very cinematic, and I hope you can especially see that in the opening sequence of A Near Dawn. The most important element for me, however, was full interactivity. Visual Novels can take you on a ride and you can be following along on extended conversations, having to click through it bit by bit – some can go on for a very long time before you actually have a choice to make. There is no such thing in A Near Dawn; first of all, there is no such thing in Adventure games, because the story is always player-directed. If you are speaking to someone and saying what you are saying, it is because you chose that person to speak with in that moment and that exact thing to say, more or less. That is the founding principle of Adventure games, and Adventure gamers have told me they wish my opening segment was shorter, because they can’t wait to get to the interactive part. And I completely understand them, but I also wanted a nice cinematic intro. 🙂
EM: In your blog, you speak to a theory of eccentricity and weirdness and the resulting ability to grant a performance or a work of art staying power in the mind of an audience. Regarding your own work, what is it that leaves a gamer haunted, perplexed, and ever-curious? At a time in which lots of indie studios are searching for the perfect hook or a unique world to draw players in, why do quirky characters remain so elusive?
LP: Thank you for reading my blog! Now I know at least one person did. Absolutely, again this is a theory of mine, but there is no question in my mind that you need something for a character to stay with your audience. Everyone knows that instinctively, if they think about their favorite characters – I mention Peter Lorre from The Maltese Falcon in my post, but I can just as easily talk about Jack Sparrow, an immensely beloved character. And probably eccentricity is not the perfect word, but definitely personality. You would not remember these characters if they didn’t have such unique personalities. A lot of writers think what you need for personality is a gimmick – make your character be obsessed with an obscure hobby and have them always talk about that; that’s good for a couple of gags, but that’s not personality. Personality is very deep – I might have an idea, but my characters didn’t have personality until I really got to know and understand them. Much the same way, I’m sure Peter Lorre’s character didn’t really have personality until he auditioned for that role. I actually just saw the creators of Stranger Things say the exact same thing about some of their characters, that they were just placeholders until the actors stepped in to fill the roles.
My story is a humorous psychological thriller. People are usually intrigued when they hear that, but they wonder about how that works. It must not be that funny or it must not be that intense. I personally think it can be very funny, and it can be very intense, and that was one of my goals for this project. So, I would hope that a player would find the casual humor amusing, again greatly inspired by classic adventure games. But to switch to the psychological thriller portion of A Near Dawn: we know that Sam actually has a dissociative personality disorder (I never identify it in the story, mostly because Sam himself appears to be in denial about it) – we have the curious, charming and intelligent Sam we know and love on the one hand, and on the other we have this sinister fiend who takes pleasure in the suffering of others. So, playing as Sam, this affects the options you have in interacting with other people. Sam on his own I hope you will agree is a very fleshed-out character as you can tell from his thoughts and interactions with other people, and he can be a joker and he can be a jerk, but usually he is very empathetic and well-meaning. However, you can also occasionally choose to unleash this darker side of him, forcing him to behave in a manner he will likely regret. This is one of his main struggles, that he can feel weak and like he can’t even control his own actions at times. This is a duality as well as a kind of irony to Sam’s character. He tries so hard to in his own way fight the wrong in the world, but his biggest enemy may be himself. I can’t tell you if I have created a memorable character, but I’m sure he will leave an impact on you. Hopefully some of the other ones will, too!
I forgot we were talking about quirkiness (my Kid character is pretty quirky?). I think in indie games, everybody knows that your character needs to stand out visually. That’s why so many designs are simply adorable!
EM: I find the color palette and button-look very much reminds me of early ’90s adventure games, which is an interesting contrast to the dark path the player character confronts in the game’s plot. Can you speak to the feel of the game, the art style, and other touches (such as highlighting selectable characters and objects) and how the playing experience reinforces the narrative thrust?
LP: Thank you! It was totally planned out and expertly researched. I have all the books on ‘90s Adventure and— it was actually all kind of improvised! Like I mentioned, this game began as a text-based adventure, so when I decided to have a little bit of art in it, that was a novelty. And at first I thought it would be very stylized (you can see in some places I posted my earlier version of the backgrounds, it was even more colorful and cartoony). One thing I knew the art style wasn’t going to be was dark or gothic, it is just not me. I don’t like to use black in anything, I have 4 years or Fine Arts training, not to mention years working on cartoons – I like color! And like you say, especially since I was so drawn to the adventure games that inspired me to make this project in the first place, the art style could not vastly stray from that. As far as the character art goes, you can take a look at some of the characters that don’t appear in the Prologue, something isn’t quite consistent about them. They’re actually not finished yet! Since my artwork evolved and improved greatly working on this project, I will have to go back and finalize those designs with the higher standards I now have.
It’s good you bring up the contrast between the sometimes dark content of the story and the colorful art style. It wasn’t intentional, but it wasn’t unintentional, either. I think that the fact the art style is on the calm and pleasant side (though it does get dark, as you can see from the intro) lends a layer of unpredictability to the story. And when this darker side comes out of Sam, I have seen people be shocked. You wouldn’t expect it, because you thought you were playing a comedy for the last twenty minutes and forgot that it was also a psychological thriller. I could have no idea how effective that can be ahead of time, so for me it really was a successful experiment.
As for the selection highlights, they just need to be there. You need to know you have the option of exploring or investigating something. If it weren’t highlights, it might be the tooltips you see in Adventure games. But like I mentioned earlier, the ability to decide to explore an object or a person (or not to) is incredibly immersive, because you are not being driven, you are driving the story.
EM: You’ve already taken a few projects to fruition with Put A Sock In It! and Ghosts Are Good Hosts; as unique settings for games go, sock puppet entertainment and ghost dinner parties certainly go to a different place than Call of Duty or Resident Evil, so let’s talk about this drive to create. Do you begin with a text story, add visual elements, and then apply tools and medium as feels right, or is it even more free-flowing than that (I note A Near Dawn started on Twine)? What do you take with you from your earlier works?
LP: Ha ha, it’s been a while since I’ve spoken about Ghosts Are Good Hosts and Put A Sock In It! Both of those games were experiments in their own way. Particularly Put A Sock In It! asked for probably a little more patience from a player than may be reasonable. I knew I had to post an official walkthrough for it, so hopefully some people didn’t outright rage quit and at least tried to finish it that way.
That’s exactly right. A Near Dawn was the project I began working on first, and it was just very massive and overwhelming in scope when I started thinking about making it graphical. I wanted proof that a) I could complete a project independently, and b) I could create something worth playing. So Ghosts Are Good Hosts was a little detour I took for a Halloween Game Jam, then I would return to A Near Dawn, get overwhelmed thinking about how it would all fit together again, and I took another longer detour with Put A Sock In It!, which was my first planned graphical adventure. It showed me that I could actually make a graphical Adventure game (at least a choose-your-own) and I got a really great response for it. So, having proven to myself that I can finish a project and said project might be worth playing, I was very motivated to jump back onto A Near Dawn, and I have been on course ever since.
No matter what type of story you are making, you always start with the writing. A text-based adventure isn’t much different from a script to your Adventure game, except it even stores all the important variables and lets you follow along from conversation to conversation, room to room. So, my text-based prototype was just a really advanced script for what my game was going to become. As for my drive to create, I was always passionate about stories and have quite a few of my own (I believe) nice and original tales to tell. The thought that they might only exist in my mind or as a disorganized mess of notes and scribbles is soul-crushing to me, so this is me doing what I can to try and tell my stories.
EM: Narrative and dialogue choices across a range of good and evil follow from hands reaching through mirrors to strangle the protagonist and similar devices. To this end, what do you see the game bringing to the psychological thriller that will surprise an audience, and regarding the freedom to make truly good or terrifyingly nasty decisions, what lines do you feel are drawn in the sand? What do you see as pushing the envelope, and where will people not want to go?
LP: I showed this game a few months ago at a gaming convention, the CNE Gaming Garage in Toronto, and the first thing that struck me was that nobody wanted to be mean to Ally! How can that be? Not that I’m encouraging you to be mean, and you can finish the game always being kind (that doesn’t mean everyone will be kind to you), but this is a fundamental part of the character, and if you don’t try it at least once, you won’t know how far this can go and how cruel Sam can be. Having said that, he is still a character with strengths and weaknesses, primary motivations, and you won’t have the option to completely go out of bounds and for example start hitting people for no reason. There is always a very clear and rational explanation for the darkness that you can explore – if you choose not to forgive Ally, Sam has a very good and plausible reason for it, it is not an arbitrary decision you made just for the heck of it. All the decisions that you can make will always stay true to the plot and allow you to take different turns within the context of the story. Of course, there are also many interactions, like with the Kid or telling Ally that you are a hero, that are there largely for entertainment purposes.
EM: You have a Kickstarter campaign under way with lots of rewards, descriptions of characters, explanations of game elements, and so on. In terms of research, pre-launch hype, and other ways to engage the public (like the demo), what is different about putting a game out into the world than when you started as a dev? What do you see as the balance between giving prospective supporters enough information versus inundating them with text?
LP: I wish I had done more research into what goes into running the campaign and the attention it really must have immediately from the onset. This is my first Kickstarter, and it has been very educational for me. I actually have a lot of confidence in the look of the campaign itself (perhaps it is a lot of text, but I also have a lot of art, music, and videos), I studied many different ones to put mine together, and I talk about all the things you would want to know about my project – what is the story about, what does it look like, who are the characters, what sets it apart from others, who are the creators, what are my goals, what sorts of rewards our supporters will get, and I have a playable demo and a personal video talking about the project (that a good friend of mine helped me with). The campaign itself is solid, what’s been tough is getting the word out about it, because I’m quite new on the scene. But there are so many things you can do to reach out to people – press, forums, blogs, Reddit, now Discord, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr (by the time you read this there might be five new social platforms). It’s an enormous amount to manage, really, but it’s interesting and I have had to step into a very different role from what I am used to.
EM: The game involves lawyer Sam Nichols discovering a conspiracy involving a multinational corporation, but the game also has a host of unusual characters, so describe your writing philosophy; do you center things around plot twists, location, or individual encounters, as a starting point for interactions? In terms of pacing, how do you push us forward without us feeling the push?
LP: Well, first of all, I don’t push you at all (at least not at first). You push yourself, that’s how Adventure games should work – the character has a purpose, and they are motivated. Sam will just be sitting there staring at Harry all day, if you let him. You have to talk to him to get the story moving, and if at any point you wind up in a hole, the chances are you dug it yourself based on the decisions you made. Having said that, I will reveal that there is only one true ending to the story, which means that more or less the big decisions you make along the way in reality go down only one way – this is for the purposes of hopefully continuing the story in the future.
As for my creative process in developing the plot, I start with a rough outline so I know more or less where the story is supposed to go. And at every point along the way, I flesh it out with a) what the story needs – it needs a mentor for you to care about; it needs coworkers, because you work in an office; it needs a waitress, because you are at a diner, and then b) what I want to see in the story – I want to have a character you can interact with purely for amusement, so I have a Kid; I want someone you can call on the phone and talk to, even though you don’t have to, so I have Don Juan. And I keep fleshing it out, and soon every character has a history and their own reasons for being where they are that have nothing to do with you. This is very important in my writing, that everyone has a story and you are a part of theirs as much as they are a part of yours. And after a while, what you have is these threads that you can keep tugging at – so Sam has a darkness inside of him, where does it come from? What if there was another darker personality inside him? What would that look like and how would it work? What if Don Juan wasn’t just someone you could call on the phone but actually became an important character on your quest? You keep exploring, and you keep building up onto what you have, but the direction you were going in doesn’t change – or it may, that’s also the beauty of writing – but now you can also take some interesting detours along the way.
EM: Describe your day and how you manage the pipeline with a project like A Near Dawn, given your small studio. When working long hours as a dev, what remains key to keeping perspective, and how do you know when you’ve lost sight of things? What keeps the ship sailing towards the promised land?
LP: There is always an endless queue of things that I have to do in my mind, and I will work on one until it is done, check it off and go on to the next. I am managing this project completely on my own, so communication is very important with my collaborators. Say, I know that the things that I personally have to do myself – the writing, character art, programming, user interface – will take me a certain number of months, I can relax with my background artist and composer and tell them to take their time completing their work and do it right. Some months later, if I’m still waiting on work to come in, I have to be more insistent.
I learned a lot working on A Near Dawn, also because this was my first time working with voice actors, and I wanted my project to be fully voiced. That is very ambitious for a production like this, and to do it I really had to juggle working very closely with the actors, then going back to my artwork and programming, listening to their recordings, editing them if necessary, requesting retakes, and all of it simultaneously. There really is no other way to do it – if you are relying on other people to put your project together, you can’t have them waiting on you. You have to have everything ready for them to go as soon as you get them involved. Especially in the indie scene, people have other projects to work on, other commitments, so if you need them give them everything you can to make their lives easier (and yours as well). In my case, when it came to working with the voice actors, and especially since I had a very specific vision in mind for all of my characters, we would start with a voice coaching session on Skype and I would help them capture the voice and attitude I was looking for. After, especially with some of the more key scenes in the story, I would record a reading of the lines trying to capture the pacing and delivery I was looking for (with my voice), and send that in to my actors for reference. I think that probably saved us a lot of time in not having to go back and do as many retakes, which I would hope was also a lot less annoying for the actors.
In case you missed it, here’s the trailer:
