Hey everyone, It's time for another Steve dev log! I have been overwhelmed by the positive response to the last one. You guys have written such heartwarming comments and dms to me, I'm incredibly grateful to be able to have such supporters and I was thrilled to hear how excited you guys were about Murders & Mistresses. I also thought I'd attach a full image of Kaylah so you could all get a better look at her!I saw a question from Andrew Brick about which parts of Wales I've been to - my first trip (in a complete burned out state) was to a little cabin on a farm near the Brecon beacons which is this beautiful nature reserve, but since then I've been to pretty much every part of Wales on consecutive trips and my favorite is Snowdonia which is where I wrote the M&M finale on a creative retreat. 🙂I also saw Jonathan Hang (I hope you guys don't mind me naming you, if so just let me know and I'll edit these) inquire about the different ways to play through M&M so that's gonna be the main focus of today's dev log!
Learnings from CK
Some of you guys have heard this before - but College Kings was originally only meant to be three acts long. In my head I had clear character arcs for everyone probably up until when Nora can cheat on Chris with you.
I knew right away that that's what I wanted to happen long term, it was going to be the big difference maker right before the Summer Showdown. But because I had never written anything before, I didn't really understand how important it was for me to plan ahead timeline wise. In classic me fashion, I did not plan ahead (in fact most of ck1 was written scene by scene without even any plan, outline or even idea of what the next scene would be) and what ended up happening is that by the time we got to Nora's dramatic cheating decision, we were nowhere near the Summer Showdown.
Little did I know that it was gonna take another 3+ years of development and 6 more CK2 episodes in order to finish this mammoth of a game that I had started. Again, my original plan was to reach the summer showdown within 12 months of making the game. Oh well…
Anyway, one issue that became very apparent with CK2 was just how spread out everything was. We had tons of different characters and love interests, all with different arcs and hundreds of choices to keep track of. What ended up happening is that the game had a lot of width, but at the expense of depth. It was impossible for us to cover all possible paths at the depth that we would have liked to because we need to get episodes out within a certain timeframe both to be financially viable but also because thousands of fans were waiting for them.
This conundrum harmed production as well as the playing experience and being aware of how difficult it was to solve, made for a deeply unsatisfying creative loop.
Streamlining M&M
For Murders & Mistresses, I wanted to make sure I avoid this at all costs. After creating a small prototype to get some feedback from my team and feel out the characters' voices, I immediately went away and plotted out the entire game from start to finish.
And while plotting it out, I made some key choices that distinguish it from CK:
It's not episodic.The game isn't meant to be this huge 20+ hour experience of a full year of college. Instead it's a tight story with a clear beginning, middle and end and zero fluff or padding. This made it much easier to plan and write.
It's structured around player choices.College Kings, for the most part, was written as a day to day college life experience. And that means that when you make different choices that lead to different outcomes, we have to adjust not just the change in scene, but the transitions around them and sometimes the timeline of the day to make sure everything fits together smoothly. This may not seem like a big deal, but it creates a lot of extra work that doesn't actually make the game more fun or exciting.Murders & Mistresses instead works in what you could describe as story hubs. It alternates between:Main story - which is the throughline of the game with multiple endings based on your choices. Cases - which can vary, but include things like big multi location free roams where you talk to suspects, make deductions about evidence and arrest who you believe to be guilty, or even hostage negotiations.Maps - A map of the city where between cases you get to choose from a number of experiences: dates, hang outs, work stuff, going to the strip club, etc.This story hub setup allowed me to write an intense main story that warps your relationships and mental state, intriguing cases with different endings based on your choices and detective skills, as well as lots of optional map scenes depending on which love interests and marriage style you pursue.
The stakes are higherCollege Kings was set around a somewhat realistic (bar the underground fighting) college setting. So even when getting expelled was on the line, the stakes were rarely life or death. Murders & Mistresses is very different. You are constantly in dangerous situations and your decisions can absolutely save, or kill people. And it's not just side characters either, main love interests can be devastated, horrified, or even die based on your choices, and your choices alone. It can get really dark. And while there's definitely humor there, there's also a lot of pain that will be explored. I think a good tonal example is Breaking Bad. It's a fucked up setting where characters have to make fucked up choices, but despite all of that, many of the moments and characters are genuinely funny and/or heartwarming. At least sometimes.
What this means for your M&M playthroughs
When you put all of this together, M&M isn't a game that wants to create a limitless world of possibility, like CK tried to in a way. CK was just trying to let you play your best college life. M&M on the other hand is much more focused. You start the game as a brilliant, but overly cocky police consultant. Much of the game is outside of your control. The cases thrust upon you, your wife, the co-workers you're surrounded by. But within those confinements, the game lets you make some deep choices.
Whether your relationship with your wife Morgan is all about romance and her being the one, or about sexual experimentation with other women - that's up to you.
How you go about solving cases, whether you're trying to befriend suspects or intimidate them into confessing and how you interpret the evidence you find - that's up to you.Whether you choose to date and sleep with friends, co-workers and even ex-murder suspects (even though that's clearly a terrible idea) - that's up to you.
Murders and Mistresses has less width than College Kings - but it makes up for it with significantly more depth. Every wife's path feels completely different and has lots of unique sex scenes, every love interest has their own relationship arc and sexual preferences. Every case is different, every sex scene different, hell every casual map experience is different. No two scenes are the same.
My goal is that you can probably see about 50-60% of the content M&M has to offer in your first playthrough (depending on your choices). That way the average player that's just gonna go for one playthrough isn't gonna miss out on too much.
But in order to fully see every sex scene the game has to offer and experience the different case and game endings you'd need to play the game at least four times. So there's lots of things to discover!Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new dev log, please let me know what you look forward to the most about playing M&M and what parts of the game, or its development you'd like me to write about next! I read every message and comment that comes through, even if I don’t always respond. Developing can be busy but I sincerely appreciate all the input we get!
Much love,Steve