Happy New Year everyone,
I was visiting family for a chunk of the holidays, and as such was separated from my beloved PC. Having said that, the grind never ends, and I’ve been working on some more of the writing of Pulse, from micro-level updates to the actual script to macro-level structural stuff. So, let’s talk about the writing of this game, and its overall structure.
Structure:
There are two key segments that make up Pulse’s episode-by-episode structure: the day-in-the-life interpersonal drama of a young man finishing up his post-secondary education, and the action-oriented, life-or-death stakes of his nighttime activities. For clarity, I’ll refer to these as “MC” segments and “Pulse” segments.
The game is episodic, with each episode/release being part of a larger chapter/arc. These arcs form the larger overarching narrative of the game, but the goal is for the chapters to be satisfying on their own.
For AVN fans, the “MC” segments will be the more familiar of the two. These are lighter in tone, and are more reminiscent of (a much more linear version of) games such as the Persona series, with MC building up relationships with his various friends, allies, and love interests. We’ve already talked about this a bit in the first devlog, but rest assured, the game is very much character-focused, so we want these segments to be engaging.
The Pulse segments are what define the arcs. The first arc acts as a prologue, taking place during the summer before the school year starts, and featuring our protagonist’s first interactions with some of the more colorful figures in Neo Nysa’s criminal underworld. As the game progresses, the villains will escalate in competency, and their plans/crimes will have higher stakes. These segments will still include a lot of the more “adult” oriented action that you’re looking for, but again, in the context of a masked hero getting some. While these segments can be more tense and have those higher stakes, the goal is for the game to strike a fairly balanced tone in terms of humor, emotion, etc. The game isn’t completely grimdark, nor is it way too silly.
As mentioned, there will be quite a bit of crossover between these two sides of MC's life.
Future Plans:
The plan is for episodes to release regularly, without waiting several months between them. As such, I’ve been spending a lot of time laying the groundwork for (creating assets, writing the scripts several episodes in advance, having the whole thing planned out) future episodes, so that I can focus on actually putting it all together between releases. In fact, many of the characters that you have already seen don’t appear in the first episode, and act as teasers of the larger first act of the game (just in case you were worried about there being too many characters in this).
Anyway, next week we’ll be showing some more scene set-ups, with characters in environments, as we move closer to release. Release is becoming more and more of a reality, and I’ve been really happy with the way the characters look in these environments, with the post-render compositing bringing it all together. I’m also hoping to have some updates RE: music in the coming weeks, and can possibly share some snippets of that as it gets closer to being finalized.
Thanks as always!