471. Romance Games and Interactive Fiction with Laura Nash of The Short Game Podcast

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 471 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest today is Laura Nash of The Short Game podcast. Laura is going to talk about all of the romance in short games, games that you can play in eight to twelve hours. We are going to cover dating sims, interactive fiction, and she’s going to rank her preference of the Dream Daddies. Laura also shares some upcoming and extremely brand-new games she is hecking excited about.

I will have links to every game we talk about, never fear, in the show notes, and I will have links to where you can find Laura and The Short Game podcast at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Thank you, as always, to the Patreon community, who helps us transcribe every episode. I have a compliment in this episode.

To Frederick S.: Your personality is so great that it looks like you’re glowing. This is why you cannot take a bad selfie; it’s just impossible.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, have a look at our Patreon community at patreon.com/SmartBitches. The community is a wonderful group of humans, and they keep the show going every week. Thank you again for your support and for making this transcript possible.

This episode is brought to you in part by Acorn TV. If you are feeling like you have watched everything, possibly twice, and would like some new weekly shows and brand-new binge-worthy treats, you have to get Acorn TV. Acorn TV is the largest commercial-free British streaming service that features compelling stories, exclusive premieres, and originals you will not find anywhere else. You get thousands of hours of new content on Acorn TV for a fraction of the cost compared to most streaming services: Acorn is just $5.99 a month. And heads up, Xena fans: did you know Lucy Lawless has a really cool mystery show on Acorn? It’s called My Life Is Murder. It is an Australian detective drama with a retired investigator who is constantly being asked to solve cold cases and – maybe you saw this on the internet – Renee O’Connor, who played Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess, recently guest starred! I love it! There are so many gorgeous shows on Acorn TV that are from overseas that I never would have seen without it. If you are ready for a streaming service that offers new stories, new characters, and breathtaking sceneries every week, do what I did: get Acorn TV. Try Acorn TV free for thirty days by going to acorn.tv and use my promo code sarah, but you have to enter the code in all lower-case letters. That’s Acorn, A-C-O-R-N, dot TV, code sarah: get your first thirty days for free. And if you’ve got Acorn and you have recs, please share them with me. I would love to hear them.

This episode is brought to you in part by Gainful. There is nothing more personal than your health, so when it comes to finding the right nutrition supplements to meet your fitness goals, you need a personalized approach. Thankfully, now there’s Gainful, a personalized nutrition system that’s formulated for your body and your goals. Gainful gives you peace of mind that your protein, hydration, and pre-workout supplements contain the finest ingredients specifically for you. I love when there’s a quiz, and this quiz is wonderful. I started by taking the five-minute Gainful quiz, which considers my dietary needs, my fitness and health goals, and my unique physiology to personalize my formula. Then I received a follow-up email from a registered dietitian, who was checking in that what I had received was working for me. Gainful delivers my supplements with no shipping charge every month, I can cancel anytime or adapt my plan as needed, but this is my favorite part: the supplement is flavorless, and I receive different flavor boosts so I can customize how I want my supplement to taste! Chocolate and peanut butter? Matcha green tea? It’s up to me! I have options, and I’m not stuck with a giant tub of one flavor that I’m going to get tired of. It’s a total win. Start your personalized fitness journey today with Gainful. Get twenty dollars off your personalized supplements by going to gainful.com/SARAH. That’s gainful.com/SARAH for twenty dollars off. Gainful: personalized nutrition made for your tastes.

Since you’re listening to this show, I think it’s safe to say you love listening to podcasts, right? Well, you will find a ton of binge-worthy podcasts, including this one, on Amazon Music! Amazon Music has more than ten million free podcast episodes to listen to, but Amazon Music isn’t just for listening to podcasts. They have thousands of music stations and top playlists to stream for free, and no matter what you’re listening to, you can go hands-free with Alexa. If you’re like me and want your music on demand and ad-free, try Amazon Music Unlimited. That gives you unlimited access to over seventy-five million songs, as well as podcasts, music videos, and more! With Amazon Music Unlimited, you can listen to any song anywhere, offline, with unlimited skips! I love turning on some of their stations and collections when I’m working or cooking. My favorite this week is Breezy Summer Classics; it has Beach Boys, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Katrina and the Waves, and The Drifters. I love The Drifters; it’s one of my favorite summer sounds. If you’ve never tried Amazon Music Unlimited, now is a great time. For a limited time, new customers can try Amazon Music Unlimited free for thirty days, no credit card required. Just go to amazon.com/TRASHYBOOKS. That’s amazon.com/TRASHYBOOKS to try Amazon Music Unlimited free for thirty days. Amazon.com/TRASHYBOOKS renews automatically, cancel anytime, terms apply.

Heads up to my fellow menstruating humans: I have some frank body talk and a nifty new thing to tell you about. This episode is brought to you in part by Flex Fit, a better way to have a period. If you want a period product that looks out for your body, your lifestyle, and the planet, you’ve got to try Flex. Flex is innovating period care with products that are body safe, made for comfort, and made to keep you moving, and they have options. There’s the Flex Disc, which is a one-time use menstrual disc that fits perfectly inside your body. One Flex Disc can be worn for up to twelve hours and holds as much as three super tampons. It’s not a cup, and it’s better than a tampon. It is unlike any period product you’ve ever seen before. And if you want to go zero waste and have the planet love you even more, pick up the Flex Cup, which is a reusable menstrual cup that Cosmo rated number one. The patented pull tab makes the Flex Cup the only cup on the market that removes like a tampon. It’s so easy; you already know how to use it. My favorite part of the Flex-perience is the helpful videos, in-depth diagrams, GIF sets, and Flexperts available to walk you through the entire process. You will never go back to products from the past once you try Flex, so say good-bye to cramps and lend Mother Nature a hand: go to flexfits.com/SARAH and use code SARAH for twenty percent off Flex Disc starter kits or ten percent off your first Flex Cup, plus free US shipping. That’s code SARAH, S-A-R-A-H, at flex, F-L-E-X, fits dot com slash SARAH.

And now, on to the podcast.

[music]

Laura Nash: I am Laura Nash. I am a co-host of a podcast called The Short Game. So in my day life I am a user experience designer, but over the last seven years I’ve been playing about forty games a year, which is astonishing to me – [laughs] – because we like covering videogames that are eight hours or fewer. Sometimes they’ll stretch up to twelve.

Sarah: So you are the, the novella reader or the short story reader –

Laura: Of games.

Sarah: – of romance, of games.

Laura: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It just isn’t romance; you get a lot more experimental stuff.

Sarah: Yep.

Laura: You get a lot of first-time authors. You get a lot of weirdness, and you get a lot of things that are “not sustainable” for big games. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: But in the cheap stuff, you also get the innovation. Recently, over the last two or three years, there’s also been some big breakout hits; like, Hades is probably about a twelve-hour game –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – that suddenly everyone is talking about? It’s winning games against the hundred-twenty-hour games, and it’s like, yes!

Sarah: Yep. And the thing about Hades is that fundamentally it is a really good balance between images, story, and mechanics.

Laura: Absolutely, and man, the shippers have gone crazy on that too, which you have to. I mean, every god is somebody who you, you want to write a whole story about.

Sarah: Right. It’s like all of the best parts of inspiring fanfic. Like, we’re going to give you the, the major notes, and you can fill in everything in between them.

Laura: Yes. You can fight them, you can friend them, you can –

Sarah: Both. How ‘bout both?

Laura: You don’t – yeah, you can, or both. Why not?

Sarah: Yeah. You reached out to me to talk about romance in short games –

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: – which I love. And then you sent me an outline, which is, like, the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Laura: [Laughs]

Sarah: Your brain works like mine, so I’m like, this is so great! We were destined to meet.

Laura: Wonderful.

Sarah: And the, the complete serendipity of this is that you emailed me about this after I had put into post production an episode where Amanda and I were talking about romance in videogames, although we focused mostly on the eighty-plus-hour –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – multiple characters, your romances influence the storyline – yes, I am still playing this game, and yes, it is five years later. Yes, still, same game, same one, same character; still here. Yep, slowly.

Laura: Yep.

Sarah: This is more about the shorter games that you specialize in. Completely coincidentally, you emailed me like, let’s talk about this! Yes, let’s talk about this!

Laura: Absolutely, because I think this is where a lot of movement’s happening. There is, you know, romance in big AAA mature games. [Laughs] So I say romance and sex, because they’re not always the same. And they come with the big dialogue scenes; they come with cut scenes. Usually there’s maybe three different people to romance. So once you get into the weird, short, indie games, suddenly there’s, choose the gender of all your characters! And you can be poly, and you can be asexual, and you can do anything, because the game is four hours –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – and they can – just endless iteration. So it’s fun to see movement on both fronts –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – but it’s a lot easier to feel like you have breadth when all the games are under eight hours.

Sarah: And you have more to choose from and more to do.

Laura: More to choose from, more to do, and you can replay, because the thing that I miss in big games is the opportunity cost: you make one decision, and you know the next eighty hours are going to be dictated by that one first-off decision.

Sarah: Yeah. I, I ran into that with one of my early playthroughs of Inquisition, of Dragon Age: Inquisition –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – where I kept trying to get through this scene, and I’m, I am way into this game, and I couldn’t get the result I wanted, and I realized it was all tied back to a choice that I’d made early on when I didn’t know what I was doing! And I’m like, well, crap.

Laura: Yeah, and if you do that, you can go, great! Okay, that’s this run. To me, it’s almost like a TV versus movie, because –

Sarah: Oh, that’s a good way of looking at it, yeah!

Laura: Yeah, it’s the investment, right? Like –

Sarah: Totally. So you have divided up the games that we’re going to talk about into two main categories. You have –

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: – dating simulators, and you have interactive fiction, which are two very subtly different things. What are the differences there?

Laura: Mm-hmm. So dating simulator is a very specific genre where they often call them visual novels, but they’re not always the same. So dating sims, you go on a series of dates; you get to choose between a lot of different romance partners –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – and you woo them, and you get little profiles of their likes and dislikes, and they’re usually extremely trope-y. There are multiple endings. It’s designed to replay, so if you pick one person to romance this time, the next time you might do your bad boy run or your preppy run, and you change who you are to make sure that you’re the right fit for them. The other thing about this genre is it’s always accompanied by visuals. So there are –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – people standing in poses; there are – you’re expected to know what the people you date look like. You’re supposed to get a sense of their personality, not just through text. They feel very much the same mechanically. Like, you always can rely on going on two to three dates per person, and then you choose.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. And in that, in that category, you are also getting to try on different characters yourself. You’re almost dating – not only are you dating all the characters in the game, but you’re also dating the character creation mechanic. Like, you can try on different characters yourself.

Laura: Absolutely. You make, usually you make some kind of avatar or person at the beginning of the game, but it’s almost more important that you become a person who should date –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – your dream character. Like, you want to match them. If they’re athletic, you want to go to a rowing club meeting. If they are an octopus, you want to go to the swimming pool. These are both real. [Laughs] But it’s about matching up and being the right person, object, pigeon that your partner will like.

Sarah: I tried so hard not to laugh! [Laughs]

Laura: I know, but dating sims are silly! That’s the fun thing about them is they are seriously romantic –

Sarah: It’s very silly!

Laura: – and seriously silly.

Sarah: Which is really my catnip. Like, that is the intersection where you will find me: romantic and silly. Yeah, that’s –

Laura: Oh, absolutely!

Sarah: – that’s my favorite subgenre. So let’s start with the, the grand high wonderfulness of, of this particular genre.

[Dream Daddy theme music]

Laura: Ah. It’s the sound –

Sarah: Even the music is relaxing.

Laura: It, it puts me on a different plane.

Sarah: This is the kind of tone you’re getting, right?

Laura: It’s, it is all like boy band pure crush. Man, I love Dream Daddy. It just puts me in a good mood.

Sarah: So Dream Daddy, we have talked about on the site. Amanda’s played it; I’ve played it. Basically, you’re dating some dreamy daddies. Does –

Laura: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – what it says on the tin. But even, even the music is just sort of like, oh, okay, I’m going to relax now.

Laura: It’s a fantasy cul-de-sac. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, and I live on one. Mine is not like that.

Laura: No!

Sarah: I like my neighbors, but it is not the same thing.

Laura: There are, it’s not full of seven dreamy daddies for you to date?

Sarah: No! Not in the least. A lot of dreamy dogs! We have great dogs on my street, but this is a whole other universe. So, for anyone who isn’t familiar, give a, give a quick, you know, quick capsule summary of, of, of Dream Daddy. Do you need me –

Laura: Sure!

Sarah: – to put the music back on?

Laura: Oh – I don’t need you to, but I think it would make everyone happy, so just –

Sarah: Okay, so I’ll just, I’ll just put it up a little bit. There we go.

[Dream Daddy theme music]

Laura: Little underscoring.

Sarah: Yeah, a little bit.

Laura: So you are a single dad who’s just moved to a new cul-de-sac, and you get to date all of the dads in said cul-de-sac, and also, your daughter’s about to go to college. So this is a game about your relationship with your daughter Amanda, but also who of all of these dreamy daddies are you going to settle down with?

Sarah: And you can, and like you said, this is a game where you’re meant to play it over and over and over and create your character!

Laura: Absolutely. I have made my blue-haired, wizard-browed character Jock Swift. I played this game first for the podcast with my three straight male co-hosts, who were so in. They made, like, versions of Gomez Addams; they made – [laughs] – like, they made big, burly dudes. They just wanted to have the dreamiest daddy experience. I think almost anyone can enjoy these beautiful daddies getting together.

Sarah: And the way in which the character choice mechanic, the, the, the character development mechanic works –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you can be trans, you can – you have all of these options to –

Laura: Yeah!

Sarah: – be exactly the character you want to be.

Laura: Yeah, you can choose belly size, you can wear a binder, you can be as hipster as normcore; you can be basically anything you want. It’s a very good avatar. They call it the dad soda. Yeah.

Sarah: So let’s go over the dateable characters.

Laura: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: This is my favorite part.

Laura: My lowest is Joseph, the married youth pastor, because –

Sarah: Yeah, right! No, mm-mm.

Laura: – you can’t get a Happy Ever After with him – spoiler. Nice! Move on from Joseph.

Sarah: You don’t want your happy ending to cause the unhappiness of another character.

Laura: Absolutely, and –

Sarah: I mean, that’s, that – ugh, I can’t get on board with that one either; I agree.

Laura: Moving on: Damien, the Goth Dad. Which, I know, controversial, but I have him at six. Some people have Damien as number, number one with a bullet, but I find him more entertaining than smoochable, personally. He looks like Dracula.

Sarah: If you’re going to go for the very Goth dude –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – this’ll work. Yeah.

Laura: Oh yeah. You go to a movie theater, I believe, on one of the dates, and you go see some kind of old fright fest movie.

Moving on to five: Robert.

Sarah: Oh, tough one!

Laura: I know!

Sarah: So tough! So tough!

Laura: He is the problematic fave.

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: He has a leather jacket, and let’s be honest, Robert’s very hot.

Sarah: He is, but he looks very not-well.

Laura: You, if you like fixing people –

Sarah: That’s, that’s his mechanic.

Laura: That’s his, that’s his thing, and also –

Sarah: Yep.

Laura: – he gives you the opportunity to sleep with him right away. Don’t do that if you want your Happily Ever After, because he wants someone who wants him for life, and not just for his body, but he’ll also –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – try to romance you by a dumpster full of trash.

Sarah: Yeah, mostly if you don’t want your happy ending to create someone else’s unhappiness, you also don’t, you don’t necessarily need your happy ending to create a lot of nonstop, everlasting work and labor for yourself.

So let’s get to your top four.

Laura: Mm-hmm. So now you’re just choosing your trope.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Laura: Yay! So Brian, the redheaded burly dad, has this gorgeous beard, this big stomach, and he just loves bragging about his kid.

Sarah: So sweet!

Laura: So sweet. Brian’s pretty dreamy. He’s got a corgi. I think for me it’s mostly, like, I don’t like competition in my relationships? Otherwise, Brian’s a dreamboat. If you go with Brian, you’re going to have a wonderful life. He will take you camping.

Sarah: Mm!

Laura: Yeah. So three is Hugo, the English teacher, who is smoking. He’s the professor of your dreams. He has, like, he literally will, like, make you a cheese plate and ask you if you like havarti. He wants to read you a book. His secret shame is he likes wrestling.

Sarah: He wears a waistcoat.

Laura: Ah, Brian! A little weird that he’s your kid’s English teacher, but other than that, like, I really, my top three are almost all interchangeable. Give me, you know, who did I play last?

Two is Mat, the coffee shop music dad. Hipster, loves Indian music. He’ll take you to a concert and smooch you. He’ll make you a mix tape. This is heavily influenced by the fact that my husband made me a mix tape for our six-month anniversary. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, okay!

Laura: And, and when he proposed, he proposed with a mix tape, so, like, I married Mat, the coffee shop music dad.

Sarah: This, this is, this is your catnip.

Laura: This is my catnip right here.

Sarah: This is precisely your catnip, right, absolutely.

Laura: Yeah. But I did list Craig, the bro dad, as number one because I love a friends-to-lovers.

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: And Craig is someone who you were bros with back in the day and you’ve reconnected with, and although I do not go by the, you know, the fitness thing, like, take or leave, he’s got a baby strapped to his chest, he’s incredibly hot, and he just keeps talking about how, like, your friendship has grown and enriched over time, and that is just – he also, every time he comes on stage to, on screen to say hi to you, he goes, BRO!

[Laughter]

Laura: And I find him funny and endearing.

Sarah: Aw!

Laura: Honestly, all of the daddies, except for problematic Joseph – don’t date him – will give you some good times, some very interesting dates, and a Happily Ever After option, should you win the game, but –

Sarah: Right!

Laura: – but honestly, Craig and Mat, I would be happy if I just played those two and been like, great! I’m done! [Laughs]

Sarah: And this is the type of game, because of the characters and the mechanics, you can play this over and over and over. It’s not like you –

Laura: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – invest and you’re done. Like, okay, I’ve played it –

Laura: No.

Sarah: – I’m never going to play this game again. You, you in-, you buy this game and it’s the same mechanic with different characters and different story paths within a certain number of hours. That is deeply satisfying.

Laura: Yeah. At least you can do seven playthroughs to get an ending with every dad if you want –

Sarah: Right, yeah!

Laura: – but you can play beyond that, if you like. I mean, honestly, just turning on that theme song is a big blast of serotonin.

Sarah: Not only do you get this gorgeous – [sighs] – but it’s like fifteen bucks!

Laura: It’s fifteen bucks, and honestly, it’s like reading a bunch of trope-y romances.

Sarah: This was made for us in mind.

Laura: Oh yes.

Sarah: Yeah, this was, mm-hmm, yeah, we understand. This was, thank you. Like, when I watched Bridgerton I had a lot of, I had a lot of things to, to say about Bridgerton. I had a lot of issues with it, but there was a moment –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – in just about every episode where I was thinking to myself, wow, so this is what it’s like when people take my thing seriously and throw a bucket of money at it.

Laura: Yeah!

Sarah: Wow! That’s pretty great! This is what it’s like when developers are like, all right, romance.

Laura: Yeah!

Sarah: We’re going to get it super, super right, and we’re going to get it super right a whole bunch of times and have fun.

Laura: Absolutely. You know, and Bridgerton, I just wanted to be, I was like, free the boobs! Free the boobs! There’s problematic issues! Also, man, I want Vitamin String Quartet to just underscore everything and have these luscious balls! I was just like, yes! Thank you. Thank you for seeing us. There are millions of us.

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: Throw money at us, please.

Sarah: This what it’s, this is what it’s like when you throw money, resources, and attention at something that I really, really love? Wow! Wow! Well, that was pretty great; let’s do more of that.

Laura: Yeah.

Sarah: Let’s have some more of that.

Laura: So do you want to hear what, if you want to go past Dream Daddy, you want to hear some recs?

Sarah: All the recs. Let’s do it.

Laura: Okay, so if you like Dream Daddy, may I suggest Monster Prom?

Sarah: Yes, yes, you may. Please suggest Monster Prom.

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: Oh, my God.

Laura: So Monster Prom not only is which of these cute, dateable monsters do you want to take to prom? Inherently great. It’s also multiplayer. It’s designed so you and friends can gather round or gather online and play together and all date different people, and you can watch each others’ dates and comment. So it is taking the dating sim and making it social. It’s fantastic. What could top that is that monsters don’t like boys or girls; they like monsters. “In Monster Prom the game experience is unaffected by gender or sexual orientation, since finding love is already hard enough.”

Sarah: Oh!

Laura: That’s what could top that.

Sarah: I love it! There’s also a bundle of Monster Prom and Monster Camp.

Laura: Absolutely! It’s taking Monster Prom and then sending you to a sleepaway camp, the expansion.

Sarah: I, this could not be more tailor-made for me. Oh. My. Gosh. I love it. Yes!

Laura: And if you ever wanted to date Teen Wolf, this might be the game for you. His name is Scott. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, and he’s like a big, burly, lumberjack-looking dude!

Laura: He’s got, he’s got that flannel? He’s got the tight –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – tight pants?

Sarah: And his, his, his suspenders, his braces are down around his hips like he just took them off so he’s like, it’s like the lumberjack version of a historical romance hero with his shirt unbuttoned –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but still tucked in. He’s got the flannel on, but the suspenders are off. Oh yeah.

Laura: Yeah, and that shoulder-to-hip ratio?

Sarah: Is, yeah, it’s, mm-hmm! I’m listening!

Laura: Yes. And choose to make your prom for whatever age makes you feel less creeped out. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! And also, this is the same mechanic: it’s dating.

Laura: Mm-hmm! It’s dating, so a huge lot of the game is who do you sit by in the cafeteria? You go on little dates. Eventually you’re supposed to get that rating meter of how much people like you up high enough that you can ask ‘em out to prom. And they are difficulty; there is a mean girl. The Medusa character is a bit of a mean girl, and she might be the hardest one to woo, but she’s definitely worth it.

Sarah: And then there’s a girl who looks to be part cephalopod.

Laura: Mm-hmm! And a demon –

Sarah: Yep.

Laura: – and there’s some kind of nerdy elf named Liam. I think that the robot is one of my favorites too.

Sarah: Calculester?

Laura: Yeah. Calculest. Mm-hmm, Calculester.

Sarah: Love it!

Laura: This game also, I believe, has a moment where you are playing the game and you end up reading some, like, fanfiction in the game. Like, there’s a book you can have of, like, kids in the game writing fanfiction about each other.

Sarah: It’s like they know us!

Laura: They know what we want, and what we want –

Sarah: [Squees]

Laura: – is social, collaborative –

Sarah: Dating –

Laura: – beautiful dating games.

Sarah: With fanfic on board, yeah.

Laura: And if you want to – I mentioned some of the weird ones up front, so someone’s going to bring up Hatoful Boyfriend if you’re talking about dating sims –

Sarah: Of course.

Laura: – because it’s a pigeon dating simulator.

Sarah: As you do.

Laura: As you do! Someone wrote a very pitch-perfect, but actually fun-to-play dating sim where all of the characters are birds. Some kind of weird apocalypse. And you’re a human, but you go to a school for all birds, and the thing is, you’re talking to a character, and you can see their bird in the front, and in the back you see the, like, anime illustration of what that bird would look like if it were a human.

Sarah: So it’s a like a weird merge of Equestria Girls –

Laura: Yes!

Sarah: – where My Little Ponies become human, kind of sort of.

Laura: Kind of sort of, where you, it’s like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – you’re putting on some glasses and you can see, like, ah! This –

Sarah: I see.

Laura: – type of pigeon actually is an aristocratic boy with fine-boned features.

Sarah: Ahhh! More waistcoats.

Laura: More waistcoats, exactly. So –

Sarah: I’m a big fan of waistcoats on characters; I don’t know why. [Laughs]

Laura: Yeah. I don’t think Hatoful Boyfriend should be your first dating sim, but if you like the genre and you want to see some weirdness and have fun with it –

Sarah: Yep.

Laura: – it is a very fun way to play, and the mechanics are super sound. It could have just, they could have phoned this in once they made a pigeon dating sim.

Sarah: Right. Like, you could have stopped at pigeon dating sim and it would have been fine, but then they added more.

Laura: But then you added really good art!

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: And then you added a pretty balanced dating mechanic! Like, ‘kay!

Sarah: Win!

Laura: Okay, Hatoful Boyfriend.

Sarah: Well played!

[Laughter]

Sarah: No pun intended.

Laura: Well played, yes.

So there, I’m very excited because there are two dating sims coming out this year that I cannot wait to show up, and one is Boyfriend Dungeon: Date Your Weapons.

Sarah: Boyfriend Dungeon: Date Your Weapons.

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: Somebody, somebody listening to this has just passed out.

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Laura: They have made a dungeon crawler where the reward for getting a new weapon is that you can date the weapon, and the better your relationship with that weapon, the stronger your attacks.

Sarah: It’s like they know us!

Laura: And they have known us so well, they added a K-pop idol that is your laser saber.

Sarah: Of course he is!

Laura: His name is Seven.

Sarah: Seven, yeah, mm-hmm?

Laura: He, he likes chilling, playing guitar, horror movies; dislikes shallowness and fan clubs; and he is an electric blue laser sword.

Sarah: Of course he is!

Laura: Of course! Wonderful.

Sarah: Oh. My gosh.

Laura: Yes. So I – this game is not out yet. I Kickstarted it, which means I’ve been getting little bits of the art as they’ve been writing it, and I’m so excited for it.

Sarah: You must be vibrating in your chair!

Laura: I’m, I’m, I’m very mad that it’s just like out 2021. I’m like, please, just let me –

Sarah: It’s, it’s August! It’s August now!

Laura: It’s August! Let me calibrate my love.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Laura: I want to titrate my joy so that it –

Sarah: Yes.

Laura: – I don’t get too excited. But every time –

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: – I get that email from Kickstarter I’m like, is this, this the moment? I can play Boyfriend Dungeon? No.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Laura: No.

Sarah: So what else are you excited about?

Laura: So Mask of the Rose is also coming out, and Fallen London is a game I’ve been playing for like ten years. It’s a browser-based, big, interactive fiction game, which I won’t go into, but the world is incredible. It’s if Victorian London fell underground, and now you live underground with, like, demons and urchins and all of this weird Victoriana. Fallen London has had a couple spinoffs: Sunless Skies, no, Sunless Sea and Starless Skies? Messing up the words, but they’re putting out a romantic visual novel.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Laura: And the writers behind the game put a lot of little bits of romance into the main game, so seeing what happens when the game is just around the theme of love? They’re going to go absolutely crazy.

Sarah: That’s going to be amazing.

Laura: Yeah, and you don’t have to play any of the back stuff. They’ve, they’ve got a huge world to play in. It’s a prequel of the – London has just fallen, and you’re one of its first residents, and you are basically going to try to hook up with the other new residents! [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, so when these are out –

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: – would you be interested in coming back on the show and telling us what you think?

Laura: Absolutely.

Sarah: I would love that so much, because this sounds incredible. And it’s going to be a different experience if you’ve never played in the world –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – versus if you’re fluent in the world.

Laura: Absolutely, and this is one that I’m, I’m, I’m too fluent in the world? But – [laughs] –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – but I, I, I think that they’ve made a, they’re very good about having that kind of teaser language, where there –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – you know, there’s lore, but you don’t have to know the lore to feel –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – get the benefit of it. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: So one of the best things I’m excited about in the teaser language is you can play matchmaker as an option, so if you don’t personally want to be doing romance, you can just match-make –

Sarah: This is made for me.

Laura: – everybody else in the game.

Sarah: This is made for me. Like I said when I was talking about Dragon Age: Inquisition and Stardew –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I love how you and I play Stardew the same way!

Laura: I know; I’m such a –

Sarah: I want to, I want everyone –

Laura: – a trash person in Stardew. [Laughs]

Sarah: I romance everybody, and I walk around with that super-phallic protective rabbit’s foot so no one gets mad at me for being at ten hearts with everybody, and I just can’t make a decision?

Laura: Well, how dare they? If the only way to get more information about these characters I’m falling in love with is to romance them, and the only way to get their full story is to romance them all the way, I’m going to –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – I’m going to romance everybody until they get to all ten hearts.

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: If you don’t want me to play that game, don’t, don’t make me play like that.

Sarah: Well, I mean, clearly they saw us coming, ‘cause they’re like, and if you carry a rabbit’s foot, no one will get angry at you for this terrible, terrible flirtation problem you have.

Laura: No! And you also have a really nice time walking around when everyone’s in love with you, because everyone’s very nice to you in the town when –

Sarah: Yeah! They’re like, oh, hello! And, and even, even the one who negs you all the time –

Laura: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – she stops! Bless her. [Laughs]

Laura: She stops and says hello, and you give her a flower!

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: It’s wonderful.

Sarah: Yeah! And with, even with Dragon Age: Inquisition, I could never pick a person, because watching the other companions fall in love and getting their dialogue is delightful! So playing as a matchmaker is, is ideal for me.

Laura: Absolutely, and it also takes a little pressure off, right? You don’t have to shape –

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: – to fit your container. You can just –

Sarah: No.

Laura: – match everybody else up.

Sarah: I want you with you and you with you, and you guys should be together; everybody’s going to level up; it’s going to be wonderful.

Laura: I know it’s going to be incredibly replayable, too, because they write just oodles of words, so.

Sarah: Oh, that’s wonderful.

Laura: Yeah! And also, this is the only dating sim I’ve seen that is in a time period.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a whole historical world there.

Laura: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: All right. So let’s talk about interactive fiction. How is interactive fiction different from a dating simulator?

Laura: Two things: one, there is no set structure.

Sarah: Ooh!

Laura: So it’s not as if you go on three dates and the game ends. It’s all –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – these are literally interactive stories where you get to choose what happens next. Sometimes there are puzzle elements, like, you know, there’s two types. One of ‘em is where you make choices –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Laura: – like a Choose Your Own Adventure book –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – and the other is one where you’re typing commands and, like, go north, or like –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – look under the bed or something.

Sarah: And interactive, choose your own, choose your own direction is becoming more and more popular with interactive fiction, and also interactive audio –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is becoming more of a thing as well, so this is really interesting!

Laura: Yeah, and the really fun thing is, they’re not restricted by time of, like – audio, you’re restricted a little bit by how much you can record. A physical book, Choose Your Own Adventure book has to be pretty short, because the book has to get printed –

Sarah: Yep.

Laura: – but interactive fiction can be as big a world, and you can see as little of it as you need to each time you play it, so again with the replayability. They might be eight times the length of a normal book, but you’re still having a book-length experience –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – which I very much appreciate.

Sarah: So if people aren’t familiar with these, how do you play them? Are they downloadable apps specifically, or are they housed inside another app?

Laura: So it varies, but usually they are, you can play almost all of them in a web browser –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – but there are a couple that you can play in an app. So the first one I’m recommending, Crème de la Crème by Hannah Powell-Smith, is by a company called Choice of Games –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Laura: – and they have their own app, which has all of their games in it, and you just buy, like, the game, the books you want to read. It’s a bit of a one-off. You also can play it on the browser and buy it through the browser, so it’s, it’s –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – it’s kind of wherever you can read text on the internet, interactive fiction is available to you. Whether you play on your phone – you just need to be able to type or tap. There’s no images! That’s the other big thing – only words. There’s a great ad that one of the early interactive fiction put out that was like, we’ve got the best graphics in the entire universe, only limited by the power of your imagination!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Got it.

Laura: And I was like, ah, yes, that’s true! But it, like, this feels less like a game for people who are readers, so I think of this as a really good bridge if you are not a gamer, but you want –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Laura: – some of the decision-making, you want to make choices, you want to shape the narrative, interactive fixture, fiction is perfect for you.

Sarah: So tell me about Crème de la Crème.

Laura: So Crème de la Crème got on my radar because it won all of the awards. [Laughs] So –

Sarah: That’ll do!

Laura: Yeah – so there’s an interactive fiction award called the XYZZY Award. Choice of Games u-, like, sometimes get, they get nominated for Nebulas a lot, but they don’t necessarily break through to the main interactive fiction audience, but Crème de la Crème won Best Game, Best Writing, and Best Story. So I was like –

Sarah: [Whistles]

Laura: – okay!

Sarah: That’ll do!

Laura: That’ll do! And then I read the description, which is, “Climb to the very top of the class at your exclusive private school for socialites! Will you study hard, find a perfect match, or embrace scandal?” And I don’t think I’ve hit Buy quite as fast as when I read that description. [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow!

Laura: I was like, yes! Boarding school interactive fiction. Here’s the other thing: you can play three full chapters for free to see if you like it.

Sarah: Well, that’s just the sample at Costco now, isn’t it?

Laura: I know. That’s the issue; it’s the sample at Costco, and then you’re immediately eating a whole block of cheese, which is what I do.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. And all of a sudden you’re walking out with a forty-five-pound wheel of cheese like, yeah, I got a free sample; this was totally worth it.

Laura: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Mm-hmm! That’s, that’s how they get me.

Laura: Yes, and what I said about having a vast replayable world, this is 440,000 words.

Sarah: You’re not going to run out!

Laura: No. So you’re not going to run out. If you don’t like your choices, you can go back. Like, you can reverse your – just kind of like in Choose Your Own Adventure books where you’re like, I hate that; I’m going to go back?

Sarah: Go backwards?

Laura: You can do that, but you’re doing a boarding school narrative, and you’re also choosing who you want to date, and my favorite thing about this game is that when you are introduced to a character, the way you respond to them gives them their, their pronouns, so you can choose each time you meet a romanceable character what pronouns you would like to assign to them, and then the game will just remember.

Sarah: Oh wow!

Laura: That’s what you can do when you don’t have to make pictures of people!

Sarah: Right!

Laura: They can be whoever you want!

Sarah: Wow. So everyone in the game can be they/them.

Laura: Everyone could be they/them, mm-hmm.

Sarah: Wow!

Laura: Yeah, and there’s nine –

Sarah: So if you want to con-, if you want to construct a world where there is no gender, you can do that.

Laura: Absolutely!

Sarah: And with 440,000 words and all of these, you know, branching decision trees –

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you can play in this world for hours.

Laura: Hours and hours. I mean, a single playthrough will take you, depending on your reading speed, like maybe three to four hours? Which is –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – pretty sizable, but then you can keep changing the way you play it. You can go to different – it’s boarding school, so you can choose different clubs. You can – there are nine romances, ten possible marriages. It is very rare that a game is both this customizable and is winning writing awards, ‘cause usually you get one or the other, right. You get options –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – and you get quality: neither the twain shall meet. So –

Sarah: Wow!

Laura: – very impressed she pulled this off. She says most of the writ-, most of the words are all the options in the romances. Just, like, that’s ninety-nine percent of what I had to write were, like, all of the different ways you can romance people and change your mind.

Sarah: And you can play as a male, female, nonbinary, gay, straight, bi, pan, asexual, or aromantic person.

Laura: Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Sarah: My heart just grew like nine sizes! I love it!

Laura: That’s why I love interactive fiction as kind of a pushing the boundary, ‘cause you could never get away with this in Dragon Age! You have to render everything, right? [Laughs]

Sarah: Right! I can just hear my fan spinning now. Like, oh geeze! My computer starts making the noise –

Laura: Just the branching alone.

Sarah: Right! You, you, you can’t, it’s, wow.

Laura: But –

Sarah: That’s incredible!

Laura: But people like Hannah are figuring out this engine, like this branching, like, eventually it’s going to trickle off into the big studios, so I’m hoping that this kind of, this option, this branching, like, once it, you know, it, it’ll – it’s been established now. People can –

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: – use it; people can learn from it; people can take tricks from it and bring it up into a Dragon Age, a Mass Effect –

Sarah: Yeah. And, and it, and also, if – like, right now, there’s all this horrible news about Activision and Blizzard –

Laura: Oh, absolutely.

Sarah: – and as I said in our, in my episode with Amanda, you know, yes, I want the next game, but I also want the developers to sleep –

Laura: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – and eat meals and see their families and not be miserable so that I can play a videogame. Like, that’s not what I want. And having all of these smaller studios doing all of these innovative things, knowing that you’re supporting people more directly, is very lovely!

Laura: Yeah!

Sarah: I’m a big fan!

Laura: I mean, I said Choice of Games by, like, Hannah Powell-Smith. Like, that is a person who wrote this game, so if you like this kind of thing, again, there’s a free demo of three ga-, three chapters, so try that first, but if that ends up not being your cup of tea, congrats, interactive fiction is a huge, hidden world that you can discover. There’s also the Interactive Fiction Database, which, like, love a database. Love –

Sarah: Oh gosh, that’s almost as sexy as a spreadsheet!

Laura: I know! And here’s another thing: the interactive fiction community is almost as good as fanfiction at tagging their stuff, so you can get content warnings, you can get, like, the romance tag. There are reviews on all of the stories, and they’re very careful about spoilers. If you don’t want to go database diving, though, I’ve got a couple recs. So –

Sarah: Please, please-please.

Laura: Yes.

Sarah: I love a good rec. Let’s do it.

Laura: So in 2001, kind of my favorite author in interactive fiction space, Emily Short, did a mini-competition called SmoochieComp because she thought there wasn’t enough romance in interactive fiction, ‘cause it was, it started off being kind of a dude thing. So she was like, no –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Laura: – we need romance games. We need love! Like, let’s do this! And someone responded with a game called The Tale of the Kissing Bandit, and guess what, you are the bandit.

Sarah: ‘Kay, I’m on! Let’s do it. Mm-hmm.

Laura: Yep!

Sarah: Yep! [Laughs]

Laura: You are the mustache-twirling Errol Flynn; you walk around smooching people; you can have better relationships, or you could just be a renegade.

Sarah: So you brought some shorter recommendations as well.

Laura: Yes, and these are, depending on your length of, like, you can play them as long as you want, but these are pretty short.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I have heard of and I have seen many people playing it, and we’ve talked about it on the site, which is Regency Solitaire!

Laura: Yes. Solitaire, but make it Regency. [Laughs]

Sarah: I mean, how do you not?

Laura: Yes. So if you like Solitaire – okay, if, if you’re not good at Solitaire, you will probably play ten to twelve hours of this game to beat it, but it’s a Solitaire game, so I think of it as a pretty short one, because, like –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – you’re playing one or two rounds of Solitaire, then you’re moving on with your life. But it’s got all of the Regency tropes. It’s not Jane Austen, but it’s Georgiana – the other –

Sarah: Georgette Heyer.

Laura: Thank you. I was like –

Sarah: Georgette Heyer.

Laura: Yeah. I was like, it’s the other one!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Laura: Where your brother Edward is, you know, real shitty, has put your family into debt, and for some godforsaken reason, you playing Solitaire will earn money back? [Laughs]

Sarah: Look, just, you’ve just got to go with it, right?

Laura: Just got to go with it, but, like –

Sarah: I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be Regency high stakes poker.

Laura: No! And as you’re playing, you’re earning money for fans; you’re outfitting your dressing room; you are –

Sarah: Right.

Laura: – you know, getting thing like, cupid arrow statues that will give you superpowers in Solitaire, but also help you go to, you know, Brighton. You can go take the waters.

Sarah: Oh!

Laura: You are going to various balls at different times; you are dealing with meddlesome gossips. It’s all of the Regency tropes, but to get through the plot you’ve got to win some hands of Solitaire.

Sarah: Play Solitaire, yep!

Laura: [Laughs] I –

Sarah: So if you like Solitaire and reading Regency romance, this is the perfect marriage.

Laura: Oh yeah! And it’s, the most fun thing about this game is that so many, like, hard MMO bros got incredibly into this.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Laura: Felicia Day tweeted that she had played Regency Solitaire for six hours straight, and so a bunch of dudes then played it and got hopelessly addicted and were like, I’ve never played a casual game, but I, I got to get the pearls!

[Laughter]

Laura: My last one is a, I will say it’s a blind recommendation, but I’ve heard enough people say it’s got really good rating –

Sarah: ‘Kay.

Laura: – and I wanted to have something for the people who are like, this is all sweet, but all of this is smooching, and I need something – I need some kink; I need some erotica; I need, like – is there a game that treats sex – like, is there a sexy game? Ladykiller in a Bind is a BDSM, lesbian, erotica visual novel.

Sarah: I didn’t know those words needed to go together, but those words needed to go together.

Laura: Yes. So, written by a queer woman. [Laughs] You can toggle putting Christmas sweaters on everybody.

Sarah: That’s just adorably hot.

Laura: Yeah.

Sarah: You have a, you have an option to put Christmas sweaters on the characters during the sexytimes.

Laura: Uh-huh!

Sarah: I love it!

Laura: Yeah! Like, it is a game about consent being sexy.

Sarah: In your perspective, the real romance game blockbuster has not been invented yet, and lots of games have different pieces of it, and I completely agree: there’s always something I’m like, oh, it’s just, wish that one thing.

Laura: Yeah. I think that there are so many – people are still thinking about romance in terms of mechanic design. They’re thinking about, like, engines and how you add, like, plus two to wooing and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: I, I think it’s really hard for game designers to balance the feeling of intimacy and consent and all these really messy feelings and the happy fulfillment and the, like, movement towards love and an intimate relationship as something that – there’s a term that in games called the Vending Machine, which is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Laura: – unfortunately what Stardew Valley does, which is, like, you give someone a gift, and then they like you.

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: The more realistic your romance is, the creepier that is. It’s weird to give a gift and accept sex in return, and that is, as long as that’s the model, it’s going to be creepy. So when people scale up from the, like, sexless fun romance games, like, the, the, the more rendered, the weirder it is, and, like, you know, there’s also the Tamagotchi. Like, I do eighteen chores, and then we, like, get to have a cut scene where I have sex. Again, it’s that, like, reward mechanic, and so I think the real romance game blockbuster doesn’t exist yet ‘cause the people are still figuring out how to write good dialogue that’s interactive, and I, I think there’s a lot of people doing really interesting work in the space trying to figure out new models, but, like, until someone figures out the dialogue and how you earn relationship growth that doesn’t feel squicky, like, those are the two blocks. And people are working on them independently. It’s hard enough to get it as a subplot in a game about killing things. Making it central?

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: It’s going to be a lot har- – like –

Sarah: Makes it much harder.

Laura: – the more choices, the harder it is. That’s kind of why the small games –

Sarah: Yeah.

Laura: – get away with a lot of choice. When most of your design is going to combat and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Laura: – a tenth is going to romance, you’re going to pick one barrier and move on.

Sarah: Yeah. I get it! So what are you playing right now, and where can people find you?

Laura: So I’m playing a game called Button City for next week’s episode, and it is a very cute low poly colorful game about banding together to save the arcade. It’s, it was under a wholesome games bundle?

Sarah: Are you enjoying it?

Laura: I am. It’s very cute. So, and it’s –

Sarah: It looks like candy!

Laura: It does! It feels like candy! It feels like eating candy.

But in general, you can find me, the podcast available at theshortgame.net, and you can find me on Twitter @laurajnash!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. Thank you to Laura Nash for hanging out with me and talking about all of these games. Y’all, I have started Crème de la Crème, and it is super, super fun! [Laughs] Oh my gosh, it’s so enjoyable!

I will have links to everything we talked about, never fear.

Thank you to garlicknitter for transcribing this episode. [You’re welcome! – gk] Thank you to the Patreon community for making sure each episode has a transcript.

As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke comes from a listener! This joke is from Tess! Thank you, Tess! I love this joke! Are you ready?

What do you call a lazy baby kangaroo?

What do you call a lazy baby kangaroo?

A pouch potato!

[Laughs] Tyrannosaurus deer and the pouch potato! It makes such a good television show! Pouch potato!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, whether you’re reading or playing games or all of the above! We will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[space music]