M.J. Newman's Blog

Equinox of Evil!

Nightmares stir in the 'verses beyond the Prime. A sinister shadow looms on the horizon. Darkness stirs in evil hearts. And soon, the equinox approaches...

I'm joining the "Equinox of Evil" and putting the Darkdrifters books on sale for 30% off on March 19th! Pick up your copy of The Key and the Crescent or A Drift Apart on March 19th and you'll see the discount automatically! This applies to all editions, physical and digital.

If you're interested in what other horror authors are putting their books on sale, search for #equinoxofevil on social media. Hope to see you on the 19th!

Important Announcement

Hi everyone. I have an big announcement to make, and it's not an easy one to write, but here goes.

Next week will be my last week at Fantasy Flight Games. FFG has been my home for over 11 years, and leaving is one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. I will forever cherish my time here and the many friends I've made along the way. I’m so proud of everything we’ve done and all the amazing, talented, and lovely people I have been fortunate to work with. But all good things must come to an end, and it’s time for me to embark on a new adventure.

To my FFG friends: I love you all so, so much. Thank you so much for encouraging me, helping me, and accepting me for who I am. I’ll miss working alongside you and listening to your incredible thoughts and ideas.

To everyone else: Don’t panic! I’m still making games. In fact, I hope you hear a lot more from me in the future. If you’re interested, stay tuned for details about where I’m headed and what I’ll be doing. As Bilbo’s song goes: “The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow if I can.”

Much love, all! ♥

Introducing Darkdrifters: The Roleplaying Game

All right folks. Here's the big one.

About a month or so ago I teased another Darkdrifters project I've been working on but was not able to share just yet. I've been working on this in secret for a couple years now, and it's finally (almost) (sorta) ready. Yes, that's right: I am designing a full fledged tabletop roleplaying game based in the world of Darkdrifters. Read on for more details!

Darkdrifters: The Roleplaying Game

The Drift—the land of dreams—is in peril. Nightmares threaten to overtake the infinite demesnes of the Drift. If these nightmares are not slain, they will seep into the prime reality: the one from which all other realities are wrought. Should this infestation remain unhalted, there will be naught left but horror and madness. Only those beings cursed with the ability to traverse the myriad realms of the Drift can hunt and slay the nightmares that dwell inside the dreams of others. These Drifters live by a simple mantra:Protect the Drift.Slay the Nightmare.Free the Mara.Do not go Dark.

In Darkdrifters: The Roleplaying Game, players take on the role of Drifters—people cursed with the ability to Drift and the cat-eyes of a Drifter. As Drifters, the players must delve into the dreams of others and slay their nightmares in order to prevent them from breaching into the prime reality and wreaking havoc, all the while maintaining their own psyche and preventing themselves from going Dark. One player instead takes on the role of the Demesneweaver, a narrator/gamemaster who weaves together the story, creates demesnes for the Drifters to explore, and nightmares for them to slay.

Darkdrifters: The Roleplaying Game uses a simple, dice-less "essence" system to create a collaborative storytelling environment between the Drifters and their Demesneweaver. Create your Drifter and craft your own Memento using special perks and powers. Utilize Rites to delve into dreams, navigate strange worlds, gain insight into dreamers and their strifes, and slay the nightmares that haunt them. Name demesnes you have discovered and record them in your dream-journal for others to explore.

Eager for more? Check out the Darkdrifters discord server to learn more and sign up to playtest the game! The game is not complete just yet, but there is enough material for me to run playtest games for whomever wishes to play. Hopefully fairly soon it may even be possible for players to start Demesneweaving for others. I may even livestream some games with friends, so be on the lookout for that.

Now for the elephant in the room: since I work for Fantasy Flight Game, I'm not actually allowed to sell a tabletop rpg for profit...so...I'm just going to give it away for free. No strings attached; completely free to download, read, and pass around. (Of course, if you wanted to, I dunno, donate to my ko-fi completely independent of that download, now well I can't stop you from doing that, can I?) For real though, it's 100% free. Just check it out!.

This is very much a passion project for me. Even though I won't be making any money off of it, it would mean a lot to me if you spread the word to people you think might enjoy playing or reading it. As always, writing a review of The Key and the Crescent on Goodreads and Amazon is a fantastic way to show your support.

Thank you again for everything, and I hope you join our community on Discord and sign up to playtest Darkdrifters: The Roleplaying Game!

Much love,

Maxine Juniper Newman

Darkdrifters News!

Hi everyone!

I teased some Darkdrifters news on Twitter...well here it is! This is my re-launch of the entire Darkdrifters series, starting with new editions of The Key and the Crescent and A Drift Apart, followed by some extremely cool previews of things to come.

My original plan was to launch a new Kickstarter for all of this, but to be honest, I simply don't need to this time. I had to do it the first time because I just didn't have the funds to do what I wanted to do. But, for a number of reasons, this time is different, so here we are!

I'm using a different print service this time, which affords a few benefits. This new edition is a little cheaper and quicker to print, and has new cover art that is designed to feel more consistent from book to book. After all, when I first wrote The Key and the Crescent, I had no idea I would ever be writing a sequel. (I only slapped that "vol 1" sign on the cover like half a year after I finished writing!) Apologies to any original backers who hate having inconsistent book covers on their shelf. Trust me, I'm one of you.

Anyway, I'm really excited to reveal this all to you, so let's break it down book by book!

[image error][image error][image error]The Key and the Crescent 2nd Edition

The Key and the Crescent is the first book in the Darkdrifters series. If you haven't read Darkdrifters yet, this is the place to start! If you're looking for more information, check out my portfolio or the book's store page for more.

This new edition of The Key and the Crescent features new cover art by the incredible vacuumchan and a few edits and story revisions. Other than the new artwork this version isn't too much different from the original, so if you already own a copy, no need to get the new edition...unless of course you want to >.>

I will note that the new paperback print quality is a little rougher with regards to the act breaks and the "chat room" segments (compared to the first printing), but the hardcover print quality is actually far better in this version, so if you're unsure, I'd spring for the hardcover! It looks fantastic.

Comes in e-book, paperback, and hardcover. (No dust jacket this time!) All physical copies bought from my website come signed/personalized.

You can also find copies on Amazon in all three formats!

[image error][image error]A Drift Apart 2nd Edition

An anthology of short stories inspired by the dreams and nightmares of Kickstarter backers. A Drift Apart is not a main book in the Darkdrifters series, but it assumes you know the basics about the setting, so it should probably be read after book one.

Nothing new in this version except for some minor edits to the text and the cover. Again, if you already own this one, don't bother getting the new version! It's the same.

Comes in e-book and paperback. All physical copies bought from my website come signed/personalized.

Copies will also be available on Amazon soon!

[image error][image error][image error]The Thousandth Cut (Pre-Order)

Now for the big one! I plan on releasing volume 2 of Darkdrifters sometime in 2024. If you're interested in getting an early copy, I'll have pre-orders available a few months from now. (Only reason it's not live this very moment is, well, I should probably actually finish writing the book before I accept any money for it.) But look at that amazing cover art! Atsuko looks absolutely badass. I can't wait for you all to be able to read what's in store for her.

Interested in picking up an early copy? Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog and you'll know the second pre-orders are live. Also, if you would like to be a beta reader, join the Darkdrifters discord server where you can sign up to read the book before anyone else and provide valuable feedback! I'll also pester you from time to time, it's great.

Pre-orders on my website will be at a 10% discount, so it'll be cheaper if you want to pre-order it!

Will come in e-book, paperback, and hardcover. All physical copies bought from my website will come signed/personalized. Will also be available on Amazon.

???

There's also one more Darkdrifters project I've been working on, but I'm not quite ready to talk about it just yet. It's gonna be pretty awesome. If you want to be among the first to see it, definitely keep an eye on this site or join the Darkdrifters discord server. I'm really excited for it—I actually wrote a whole section here out and it's pained me to have to delete it, but it needs a little more time to cook, and I wanted to make sure people were aware about the new book editions ASAP, so here we are. Hopefully I'll be able to share it with you soon!

If you like what you see here, spread the word! If you haven't already, please leave reviews of The Key and the Crescent on Goodreads, Amazon, anywhere you can. If you have already written a review on Goodreads, it would be awesome if you could copy that review and leave it on the new Amazon page as well! That would really help me out.

Thanks again for your support, as always. It means so much to me. Much love,

Maxine Juniper Newman

Gasp, an Update!

Hi! Wow, it's uhhh, been a while since I've posted here, hasn't it. Sorry about that!

At first, I didn't update for a while because I wanted my last post to kind of settle at the top of my blog for a while, but then I kind of lost track of time, and, well, a lot of things started changing in my life, and now it's been - holy crap, like a year and a half since then, so okay, probably time to update this website a bit. I also understand that I've been out of stock on The Key and the Crescent physical copies for a while now - there's a reason for that, which I'll get into. So here's what's been going on...

First off, in case you missed the memo, we announced my departure from Arkham Horror: The Card Game during a livestream several months ago. Two amazing developers, Duke Harrist and Nicholas Kory, will be picking up development on the Arkham Horror LCG line, and trust me, having seen what they're cooking up, it's gonna be awesome.

That doesn't mean I haven't been hard at work though! No, I can't tell you what I am working on next, but don't panic, I'm still employed with FFG. So just stay tuned, I guess! (Don't expect any news for a while, though.) I did write a pretty neat short story in the Aconyte anthology, Secrets in Scarlet, about a certain coterie member you may have confronted in The Scarlet Keys, which was a lot of fun!

Speaking of books, let's talk about Darkdrifters. Thanks to a combination of personal factors, it's taken longer than I expected to write vol 2, but it's happening! I'm in the middle of some pretty intense rewrites on Acts 1 and 2 which will obviously affect the rest of the book, but suffice it to say that it is in progress. I also have a sketch of the cover from Sofie / vacuumchan that looks absolutely incredible. I'm hoping to finish writing the initial draft by the end of summer.

But that's not all. I'm also working on a new edition of The Key and the Crescent, with brand new cover art I(below) and some additional editing polish, which will arrive in several different versions - a paperback edition, a hardcover dust jacket edition, and a "deluxe" hardcase edition, complete with a spot glossed cover and full-color interior. All three of these new editions will also come with a preview chapter of vol 2, The Thousandth Cut, and the deluxe edition will also come with the entirety of the short story anthology, A Drift Apart. That's a lot of stuff!

So when can you expect to see that new shiny edition? Well, here is my plan. As soon as the new version is ready and I've received proofs that look good, I'll make them available on my website to sell...however...drumroll...I will also be running a new Kickstarter for both the new edition of The Key and the Crescent AND The Thousandth Cut. This Kickstarter should help me alleviate some of the frankly daunting costs of self-publishing a title like this, while also drumming up some new support for the books! You'll be able to back a physical or digital copy of the new novel, or the new edition of the old novel, or both. There may even be something special for those backers who want something extra, like last time!

As for when THAT Kickstarter will happen...I don't know yet! It will depend on how quickly I'm able to truly finish The Thousandth Cut. Even though it would be mightily convenient for me to run it as soon as possible, I don't want to run the Kickstarter before it's finished. (To clarify: I will most certainly be editing it while the Kickstarter is active, but it will be written by then, for sure.)

Until then, if you'd like to stay engaged with my work, feel free to join the Darkdrifters discord server and follow me on Twitter, which I still use for some reason. I'll be looking for beta readers for The Thousandth Cut before too long, so if you're interested, definitely hop onto the discord server and you'll get updates directly from me!

As always, thanks for the support. Much love,

Maxine

The Light and the Tunnel

9/1/21: What follows was originally written in May of '21 and offered in private to readers who wanted to hear my story. It is now several months later, and today is precisely the 1-year anniversary of what I would call the "start" of my transition (although what constitutes the "start" of somebody's transition is entirely subjective). I thought now would be a good time to make this entry public, for anyone who wanted to read it.

While I could update this post with more information regarding how I have been doing the past three months, I thought it would be better to keep the purity of the original post intact and only add this preface explaining things. (Hence why the post says I came out "a few weeks ago" and also why near the end it says "I might delete this" which, if you are reading this, I obviously did not.) I chose not to "fix" or "update" anything because I felt that this version better represents the step of the emotional journey I was on at the time of writing. If you would like to know more after reading this, please feel free to contact me privately on Discord or Twitter, and I would be happy to chat.

There is another content warning later in this post, but since this is an enormous departure from my other design-oriented blog posts, I wanted to call attention to the fact that this post is of a very personal and intimate nature, and deals with heavy issues such as depression, transphobia, and suicide. Read at your discretion.

Either way, thank you. Much love. ♥

I'm surrounded by darkness. Complete, utter darkness, deep as the void of outer space. Behind me, my past life is laid bare, an unraveling tapestry of experiences, memories, opinions, personalities. In front of me is a single pinprick of light. Narrow walls surround me, trapping me in a claustrophobic coffin. A tunnel.

I can't turn around. I can't go back. I can only advance. With each step, that pinprick of light gets no closer. The going is so slow. Unbearable. I can't tell if I am making any progress, or if I am simply walking in place. And at that far end, always, that pinprick of light. An exit. But it never gets any closer. I feel as though I am on a treadmill. Somehow lost inside a straight line. No way to know if this is the way out. If I will ever reach the end.

And then, a door. I feel it along the wall as I grope aimlessly through the murk. A way out. Or is it? I have been walking along this path for what feels like forever. Maybe I am close to the light. Maybe if I just keep walking, I will reach it. But will I ever feel a door like this again? Doesn't matter. I'm not going to stop now. I keep walking.

And walking. And walking. And walking.

More doors occasionally appear as I traverse the seemingly endless tunnel, and each time, I'm incapable of choosing. Too scared to stay, too scared to take this mysterious new road. I grapple with indecision: What if this is my last chance? Do I take it? And if I don't, will I be stuck here forever? Does this door lead to a worse nightmare? Or my salvation? I fret and worry and agonize over every possible course of action until inevitably, the light at the end of the tunnel grows furious and bright, and there is a rush of air and a roar of sound. And I awaken in tears.

In Darkdrifters, I try to conjure up imagery of terrifying, haunting realms that exist within the minds of others. But this? This one's mine. A neverending tunnel, the feeling of intense claustrophobia exacerbated by the unease and dread of being unable to choose the right path forward. This is how I envision my own anxiety. It's not always the same, but some elements recur from time to time. A dark tunnel. That feeling of claustrophobia. Of feeling trapped. The worry of never finding an escape. Or worse: the worry I will accidentally take a path that leads deeper in. Sometimes, I take the door. Sometimes I don't.

But before I get to the point of this, let me back up a bit.

A few weeks ago just before trans awareness day, I came out as transgender. I also promised that I'd donate half of the proceeds from any book sales for that week to Trans Lifeline, and wow, you all did not disappoint. You raised over $150 for Trans Lifeline that week, and I am really floored by all of the support—this, and also, the messages I've received personally. I don't know what else to say. I have been really stunned by all of this. More than I probably show.

So...I wanted to share a bit more about my experiences. I know I absolutely don't have to. I don't have to "show my receipts," as it were. I have nothing to prove. But I feel like I want to anyway. Think of it as a form of self-therapy I guess. Or perhaps I just have no shame anymore. In any event, please understand that these are my own personal, subjective experiences, and should not at all be taken as representative of trans people as a whole, or anything like that.

Also please be aware that in the following I will occasionally purposely call myself "he" or a "boy" in order to demonstrate my state of mind growing up. I will also touch upon some sensitive topics, so below is a content warning for you. If you're still interested, feel free to read on. And thanks again for the support. It truly means a lot to me.

Content Warning: depression/anxiety, internalized transphobia, suicidal thoughts.

The very first time I questioned my gender, I don’t even remember how old I was. I must have been really young. My family and I were at the beach, and as I often did, I’d run off alone to play by myself. I don’t remember if it was one of the beaches by our house in Long Island, or if we were on vacation. All I remember was befriending some boy around my age who unwittingly called me a girl. The context was something along the lines of, “you’re kind of something-or-other, for a girl.” I don’t remember what the “compliment” was supposed to be. I’m also not entirely sure how I was mistaken for a girl. (Hence why I think this must have been when I was really young—too young for things like gendered bathing suits, etc.) I did have kind of longish hair as a child, so that probably played a part. All I know is that I vividly remember that comment, and even more than that, I remembered my reaction: an intense surge of pride. Yeah. Pride! For being called something I (thought that I) wasn’t. Why did I feel that way? It didn’t make any sense. And I didn’t correct that kid, either. I let him believe I was a girl and I liked it that way. I don’t remember anything else of that encounter. I remember wondering why I reacted the way I did, but I didn’t let it really get into my head much at the time.

After that, I remember wishing I had been born a girl. I couldn't really express why at the time. I just remember thinking, “I wish I was a girl.” I made up a lot of excuses for feeling that way. “Girls have cooler clothes.” “Girls can do more with their hair.” “Girls are allowed to like the color pink.” Yeah, it was stupid. I was a kid. But to me, feeling that way was perfectly normal—just a totally average thought when growing up. Like wanting to be taller, or shorter, or have different-colored eyes or different-colored hair. To child-me, it was just one of those things you wished you had, then realized you couldn’t, because you were born the way you were born and that's all there is to it, and then you move on with your life because that’s really all you can do about it.

When I was little, I used to stay up watching Robotech on the tiny little CRTV in my room. It only got 3 or 4 channels, and one of them happened to play Robotech around the time I went to bed. But just before that, it would play Sailor Moon. I would feign not wanting to watch it because I had to sit through it to get to the show I really wanted to watch—Robotech. And don’t get me wrong, Robotech is still one of my favorite shows of all time. But secretly, hell yeah, I wanted to watch Sailor Moon. Something about it just appealed to 10-year old me in a way I couldn’t dissect. It wasn’t because the girls were cute, although, why, yes, Sailor Mars was my childhood crush, why do you ask? No, it was because I wanted to be there with them. And not as the handsome male love interest, Tuxedo Mask, but as one of the Sailor Scouts. One of the girls. I was secretly obsessed and I told. No. One.

See, as someone who (thought she) was a boy growing up in the 90s, the environment was pretty toxic. If I admitted to liking anything girly—or even not liking something manly—it was something to be mocked. I wanted to play with girl’s toys but couldn’t because that was [[redacted]]. I didn’t care much about sports but I couldn’t not like sports as a boy, because if I didn’t, I was a [[terrible word]]. You get the idea. So like many who wish to avoid bullying as children, I covered my tracks. Didn't let people see the real me.

Related tangent: Last year, I went to visit my parents at their new place in Florida. This was a couple months after my egg cracked, and I was in some deep emotional turmoil. It felt a lot like my world was crashing down all around me. At that moment in time, my parents happened to find an old journal I kept from when I was 7 as part of a school project. I took a picture of a journal entry I found from that notebook. It reads (edited for clarity): “There is a toy called Mighty Max which is like a toy called Polly Pocket. Mighty Max is a version for boys. Polly Pocket is one for girls. Both Polly Pocket and Mighty Max are kinda the same.” Even at the age of 7, I knew gender was some variety of bullshit, though I didn’t put it in exactly those words.

It was around early middle school that I started really getting into anime. Like, importing shows from Japan, watching them in the original Japanese with English subtitles, that kind of "weeb" stuff that I didn’t know was weeb stuff at the time. The transformative experience I am about to talk about is a little show called Ranma ½. This is where shit started really getting intense for preteen-me. If you’re unfamiliar, Ranma ½ is a beloved comedy manga and anime by Rumiko Takahashi about a boy—the titular Ranma Saotome—who, while undergoing martial arts training in a lost, forbidden spring in China, falls into the “Spring of the Drowned Maiden” and is forever cursed to transform into a girl whenever he is splashed with cold water. Hot water reverses the effect, turning him back into a boy. And of course, there is a roster of other similarly-cursed characters who turn into a variety of animals in the same way, yadda yadda yadda.

Ranma ½ doesn’t exactly deal with trans issues in what I would call a...mature way. It doesn’t really deal with trans issues whatsoever. It was a comedy, after all. It often played Ranma’s curse for laughs. It was supposed to be genuinely heartwarming and funny. So it stunned the crap out of me when my reaction to finishing the first few episodes of Ranma ½ was uncontrollable crying. I’m not talking a few tears here and there. I’m talking two to three straight hours of me being a complete and utter sobbing mess.

I used to watch Ranma ½ in the basement of my house, away from prying eyes, for two reasons. One, there was a lot of nudity. I’m talking lots of nudity. And I was uhh. Young. So yeah. Last thing I wanted was my parents awkwardly walking in on one of the many, many, many bath scenes. But more importantly, I watched it in the basement because I was ashamed—and confused?—by how the show made me feel. I should have been excited for the martial arts choreography, laughed at the funny situations, enjoyed the banter of the many characters, but instead, I felt weirdly empty.

I tried for a while to figure out why the show made me feel that way. At first I thought it was because I wanted to live in Japan and get into zany martial arts antics. But that wasn’t really it. I knew Ranma ½ was a comedy show and not anything like real life in Japan. I wasn’t a complete idiot. When I hit upon the real reason, I immediately knew it was true. The reason was that I wanted Ranma’s power. More than anything in the entire world. More. Than. Anything. I wanted to be able to turn into a girl at the drop of a hat. Snap my fingers, and presto. Like Sailor Moon’s transformation sequence.

But, again, I couldn't ever admit to wanting to be a girl. Media in the 90s did a truly awful job of portraying transgender individuals accurately or fairly. Trans people were used as the brunt of a joke more often than not, and I can recall more than a few Law and Order episodes that sparked some deep internalized transphobia in child-me, because of course it did, because representation in media fucking matters. Anyway, the point is, I bottled it all up. I imagined it to be completely normal; I wasn't trans, obviously, of course I wasn't trans, I was just—in my mind—a boy who wished I'd been born a girl, a boy who was starting to deeply resent not having been born a girl, a boy who was starting to absolutely despise who he saw when he looked in the mirror, but definitely not trans, of course not.

This was exacerbated by the fact that by now I was in middle school, and I was starting to. Uh. You know. Change. I was horrified when I started growing body hair. And I didn’t just grow a bit of it, I grew a lot of it. I started growing my first dumb little mustache when I was in 7th grade. My mom taught me how to wax it off because, in her own words, “shaving made it grow in thicker,” and as much as I hated waxing it, hooooo boy did I ever not want it to grow in thicker. But I didn’t have much choice. By high school, shaving was unavoidable, and I had thick, dark hair all over my chest and everywhere else, too. My shoulders, my back, the works.

This, in my mind, was a point of no return for me. There’d be no way I could ever be a girl with this shitty body and its shitty hair. But there was hope, for I was a dork, and in dorkdom, there was such a thing as roleplaying games. When I got into Dungeons and Dragons, it was partially because I didn’t want to be me anymore, and D&D was a really good outlet for those emotions. It let me create whoever I wanted to be and embody that person. And—surprise surprise—nearly every character I created was female.

And I remember my friends commenting at the time: Why do you play so many girl characters? And I would come up with a bevy of excuses. “We needed a female character in the party.” “I am better at drawing girls.” “My last character was a boy.” (I would sometimes alternate genders from time to time specifically to throw off suspicion.)

That wasn’t my only outlet, though! Enthralled as I was by Ranma ½, I started making my own little comics. Most of them were incredibly stupid and self-promoting. I made up comics with my friends in them, inserted us being fun and cool when really we were a bunch of dorks, that kind of thing. Then I started a longer-running comic about—and I shit you not—me suddenly waking up one day as a girl and all of my friends having to cope with the fact that I’m a girl now and somehow, this didn’t set off any alarm bells or red flags for 13-year old me, because apparently, I am some kind of huge idiot.

I still have the receipts, so to speak, but I won't be posting them here because they're frankly waaay too embarrassing. They're physically painful to look at, to be honest. (Not because of the subject matter, but because of how truly awful my drawings were.) The point is that I used these comics as a form of escapism. I don’t quite know how all of my friends didn’t figure me out right then and there. Maybe they did and just said nothing.

Some of them actually got kinda into it. As I was rooting through my belongings to find these drawings, I found one drawn not by me, but by one of my friends, which showed me in my "girl form." He labeled it “Newman-Chick.” Not sure why she’s blonde in this version, but whatever. The point is, it must have been at least a little obvious what was going on inside my head, even if I didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time.

None of this mattered in the end, because despite all of this, I still thought there was no way I could ever be or feel like a girl. It was just an outlet for my emotions. A way for me to channel my dissatisfaction with my own body.

It was around this time that the internet came around. This became another important outlet for me. Anonymity behind a computer screen was the perfect way for me to be who I really wanted to be, even if at the time, that’s not what I thought I was doing. It started with Everquest on the computer in my Mom’s office. I rolled a female character, because of course I did, and wandered around as a Druid in the Elven city of yeah-there’s-no-way-I-remember-the-name, and I honestly don’t even remember playing much Everquest. I had the majority of my fun just walking around and chatting with people. I must have played for dozens of hours and only ever made it to level 12 or so.

This trend continued into high school, college, and beyond. I logged thousands of hours into Final Fantasy XI between both the basement computer and my PS2. It even came with the perfect excuse! You see, the Mithra—the awesome agile cat-people who I obviously wanted to play as—could only ever be female! Wow! So convenient! So I rolled up a Mithra and boom, I had a built-in excuse for why my character was an adorable cute cat-girl thief. I joined a linkshell—FFXI’s version of an online “clan”—and made believe, for the first time ever, that not only was my character a girl, but that I was a girl too.

I also started roleplaying on other websites as well. I discovered a text-based roleplaying site. Of course, I made a female character. And just like in FFXI, I got to know some of the other players outside of the game, and I posed as a girl the entire time. I made up an entire backstory for this fake version of me and stuck to it by the letter. I basically made up an entirely separate life for her, and the more I got into it, the more I wanted to be her instead of me. I wound up feeling like I was leading a double life. Every time I shut my laptop off and emerged from the basement, I felt...worse.

Later, in college, I played two MMOs, Warhammer, which I played with my ex, and Aion, which I largely played by myself. In Warhammer I was a massive muscular dude in a huge fuckoff suit of spiky armor, because I didn’t want my girlfriend to suspect I secretly wanted to be a girl, and nothing says "denying my gender identity" like being a massive muscular dude in huge fuckoff armor. But in Aion I was a cute little angel girl in a guild full of people who thought I was a girl.

You see, the more I repressed my feelings, the more I needed the escape. "I am not trans," I would think, as I booted up my voice modulator so I could participate in raids in voice chat without people discovering my secret. "I am not trans," I would think, as I read about the experiences of people who came out as trans in their college years and burned with envy. I fell hard into denial.

In 2007, I traveled to study abroad in Japan. Despite everything I was going through, I would say this was the best time of my life, until, all at once, it wasn't. On the one hand, I found such incredible joy in simple experiences like walking down random streets and finding hidden DVD and manga shops tucked away in tiny commercial districts of my town on the outskirts of Osaka, in biking just outside Kansai Gaidai and recognizing the architecture, the streets, the power lines, the sounds. It felt like home away from home. I felt like a different person.

But then I'd walk through Nipponbashi, see the cute harajuku-style clothes on display, and remember I was still me, stuck in this body I despised. I'd cry in a train station bathroom for an hour and miss my train back to Hirakata because I knew this was all temporary. A fantasy. One day I'd go back home and I'd have to be me again. Not the real me, but the me I'd designed to deflect attention away from who I wanted to be, who I really was. I looked up at the Umeda high rise in Osaka and thought to myself: If I knew with 100% certainty that I would wake up as this other me, I would gladly jump.

I would pinpoint this moment as the moment things started to go downhill.

I returned home and gave up. I simply stopped caring. I was fooling myself, I thought. I am me and that's all there was to it. But I secretly hated me, so I hurt myself, without realizing at the time that's what I was doing. I stopped exercising, stopped going to the doctor, stopped caring about the way my body looked (after all, it wasn't the body I wanted, so who cares?). I treated myself like crap. I treated everyone around me even worse. I was angry, bitter, and sometimes, downright cruel. For somebody who had, by this point, gone through over a decade of repressed dysphoria and internalized transphobia, I was remarkably dense when it came to mental health issues. I believed myself to be a voice of reason while on the inside: If I knew it would work, I would gladly jump.

At this point, I never took pictures of myself, ever. And if somebody else tried to take one of me, I would object. It would take a few seconds for me to give a convincing enough fake smile. I just didn't want to be seen. I embarrassed myself. Where teenage me was gung-ho and confident, post-college-me was anxious, slovenly, and exhausted. Just, all the time. I worried about every choice I made, from the profound to the mundane. I missed Japan. I regretted everything I did almost immediately. I lost sleep. If I knew it would work, I would...

My romantic relationships soured. I won't bore you with the details. I was unhealthy to be with, and every relationship ended up toxic. My anxiety got worse. I would get panic attacks thinking about the past. I got no more than 5 hours of sleep on a good night and as few as 2 on a bad one. There is a lot more I don't feel comfortable talking about. The point is: I was utterly terrified of death, but I also hated myself, and so I felt trapped in an existential nightmare.

But on the outside, I appeared to be doing well. I passed the bar. I got hired for my dream job, moved to Minnesota, made dozens of new and amazing friends, found success in game design, and was even given the opportunity to co-design a brand new card game. And yet, on the inside, I was still—metaphorically, mind you—up on the roof of the Umeda. Thinking: if I knew it would work...

It was now ten years after Japan, and over time, I had become a ghost of my former self. My social life had sort of crumbled. I gave up on the concept of sleep. I would consider myself a full-fledged insomniac by this point. Whereas before I could function pretty well on just a few hours of sleep, now…well. I tried to put it into words. It ended up becoming an excerpt of what would eventually become an early chapter of The Key and the Crescent:

“It’s not that I don’t want to sleep. I just don’t like what happens whenever I do. It’s better to just stay awake. That damn nightmare haunts me everywhere. Just a nightmare, I tell myself, but I know it’s so much more. Something I’ve carried with me for a long, long time. Darkness slithers into my room from every corner, smothering my sight like some kind of infestation. I have to get out of here. Nothing can be worse than climbing back into my futon. I throw on my raincoat, tie my bright pink hair into a messy ponytail, and quietly sneak out of my apartment. Penelope, the tiny sign on the wall next to my door reads. Even just the sight of my own stupid name somehow fills me with disgust. If only I could be anybody else.”

The “nightmare” represented my inner monologue. My anxieties, worming their way out of my mind whenever I tried to rest, taking control of my thoughts, keeping me awake. While “Penelope” ended up going through something very different from my own troubles, the sentiment carried through regardless. I think those last few lines are particularly telling.

I wouldn't say that I found solace in writing about this girl Penelope. I just knew I had to write about her. I had to get these feelings down in writing somewhere. It wasn’t a desire. It was a need. It burned a hole in my chest. I had to write what I was feeling. I had to. I felt twitchy when I wasn’t writing about her. Impatient. It felt like an addiction. I didn’t think it was a good story at the time. I didn’t even think it was a story.

For a few months, I was a zombie. I holed up in my room and wrote. I wrote much more than I think anybody will ever see. Thousands upon thousands of words. I started writing this: what you’re reading right now, albeit an incomplete version. I almost tweeted the whole damn thing out at 4am one summer night because I couldn’t sleep and needed someone, anyone, to know. I deleted it, of course. Then I started over. I deleted it again. I started over. So many times, I can’t even count. I didn’t sleep at all that week.

I started to wonder to myself how it all began. I had been carrying these issues for a long, long time, after all. The idea sparked my imagination. A darkness that could grow dormant, hidden, inside somebody. I wanted deeply to be able to hop inside my mind, pull out a sword, and just kill it. And with that, the idea of Darkdrifters was born.

I poured all of my pain and sadness into my writing. It was therapeutic, in its own way. Writing The Key and the Crescent forced me to re-examine my own regrets. My repressed feelings. Why, when I personified everything I was feeling, was that character a girl? Why did I cry whenever I read the success stories of trans people who’d come out? Why, after I’d thrown out all of my drawings from what felt like a lifetime ago, was one of the only comics I kept snippets of the one about me magically transforming into a girl? Why did I feel like every choice I ever made was a mistake? Why was I so wracked with regret and self-hate? Why did I despise the person I looked at in the mirror?

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment my egg cracked. I don’t remember what the inciting incident was, if one even existed. All I know is that one day I thought I was “healthy,” and the next, I knew I wasn’t. I remember taking a day off from work, locking myself in my room, and crying all day long. Holy shit, am I actually trans? I thought. I still didn’t think it was true. I can’t be trans! People who are trans know they are trans at a young age, right? (This isn't true, but it's what I thought.) All the signs had been there all along, but I had never thought I was trans, so that couldn’t be it, right? That’s not how this is supposed to work! I’m too old to be trans! I should have realized it when I was 14! No, when I was 18! When I was 22! When I was 25! I thought it was too late to do anything about it. I am still, to this day, struggling with that fear.

But then a strange thing happened. I stopped hiding bits of myself, little by little. I admitted without hesitation things that I might have hid. I not-so-subtly tweeted bits of my repressed feelings. Whereas before I would choke up when somebody mentioned something that might expose me as “girly,” I now started to embrace it without a second thought. My love of girl’s clothes, jewelry, the fact that my favorite color was actually pink, always had been, little things like that. At the time, I wasn't planning on transitioning. I was just...I don't know. Dipping my toes in the water, I guess. I pierced my ears, dyed my hair, started wearing different clothes. And I found that, lo and behold, I started to finally feel like me. With each step I took, that feeling of disassociation started to fade, little by little. I started to take care of myself.

I knew the ending to The Key and the Crescent now. I rolled up my sleeves and wrote. That story wasn’t about me discovering my gender identity, not at all. But it was, in its own way, an interpretation of the various subjective experiences I’d seen and felt.

So there you have it. My own personal “nightmare.” The tunnel is the hole my mind dug for myself, my inner darkness that despises me. The light is my way out. And the doors are the many, many times my doubt, my anxiety, my fear, my self-hate would lock me down, freeze me in place, rattle my mind until I couldn't find my way forward anymore.

I don’t really know what my objective was in writing this. It’s entirely possible I will delete this soon after writing it, like I’ve done so many times before. I just knew, like Penelope’s trauma, that I had to get it down in writing somewhere. I didn't think it would be an entertaining or even an educational read. But I hope it's been valuable in some small way. Maybe just as context. Or maybe more. Doesn't matter. Like everything else I've done recently,

it was for me.

Maxine Juniper Newman

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Behind the Curtain – Investigators (part II)

Hello again Arkham LCG fans! Last time I wrote about Arkham, I talked about the value in "identity" cards, and what goes into the design for the game's various investigators. I offhandedly wrote that entry as "part I" and promised to write a sequel walking through the steps we took in creating a single investigator. That was, um... (checks notes) yes, a while ago. Well, wait no further! Today I'll be going through a couple of the investigators in the upcoming Edge of the Earth expansion and show how we incorporated the various design principles I talked about.

First, let's talk about everyone's favorite salesman: Bob Jenkins.

Buy! Sell!

In my last journal I wrote about the pillars of a "good" Arkham investigator:

An investigator should be able to fill at least one role. An investigator should fill a space other investigators don't. An investigator's ability should "inform" their deckbuilding. An investigator's card should line up with their backstory. An investigator should be cool.

Of course, not every investigator lines up with this perfectly—the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules—but these are still aspirational objectives we'd like to achieve with every investigator, when possible.

I also wrote about how many investigators emerge from what is called a "power fantasy," that is to say, the kind of fantasy you'd like to fulfill when playing that character. Obviously, playing a salesman is not quite as fantastical as playing a Wizard or a Shieldmaiden of Rohan, but there is still a power fantasy to be had. In this case, it is—

Yes, that's the merchant from Resident Evil 4, and why no, I have no shame, why do you ask? Okay, listen. This dude conspicuously carries everything you could possibly need on him at all times, shows up mysteriously from out of nowhere whenever you need him, and charges for everything despite the fact that you are literally trying to save the world. If that's not the quintessential salesman, I don't know who is.

So, when designing Bob, we wanted him, and therefore you, to truly feel like a merchant: carrying around a storehouse of items to give (or sell) to other players, buying things from (or for) other players, that kind of thing. And of course, using all of those items, too! So, let's go through the list.

An investigator should be able to fill at least one role. In this case, Bob could fill one of two different roles. In most groups, he'll fill a support role, using his bonus action and resources to help purchase whatever items the rest of the group needs. Don't underestimate the impact of having somebody else spend an action and a couple resources making your turn go even smoother! It's very common to hear Bob players say "anybody have an item they need to play?" at the start of almost every round. In solo play, or in some groups, Bob could instead fill a flex role, using his wealth of items to fill whatever role is needed at any moment. An investigator should fill a space other investigators don't. Bob is the undisputed master of playing item assets. Bob's full kit includes a bonus action for playing items, the ability to play other investigators' items, the ability to pool resources toward a purchase, cost reduction on items, and the ability to play items under the control of other investigators. This fits a very teamwork-oriented support niche that no other character can currently come close to emulating. An investigator's ability should "inform" their deckbuilding. This one is easy; Bob likes items. Therefore, stocking his deck with a variety of items will allow you to get the most of his ability. You'll also want ample resource generation in order to help you pay for everyone's stuff. His ability directly informs what you want to include in your deck. An investigator's card should line up with their backstory. Bob is not just a salesman, he's a collector. It makes sense that he'd not only be able to purchase things easier (as in an urban/shop environment), but would also be resourceful enough to find things out and about, or just have whatever he needs on him at all times. An investigator should be cool. It's pretty cool to have everyone in the party looking to you to help them get their tableau set up, and very rewarding!

Of course, just looking at Bob himself isn't the entire picture! Whenever we create a new investigator, we want to also provide some new tools for that investigator to use that help that power fantasy come to life. For Bob, that includes (1) a suite of new items to use, buy, or sell, and (2) new cards to help sell that "merchant" flavor. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Schoffner's Catalogue helps you pay for lots of items, and Untimely Transaction allows you to actually sell an item to another investigator, which is just...so much fun to do in the middle of a horrible situation. Fun fact: that flavor text was actually uttered by a playtester during gameplay.

The tricky part when designing new cards is that we don't want them to be 100% only for the new investigators; we want each card to fill its own role in the cardpool and be useful for older investigators, as well. Take Schoffner's Catalogue, for example: it's a survivor card that uses secrets, which means Minh could use it to help fuel some fun Ariadne's Twine shenanigans. It's also a cheap tome card that doesn't take up any slots, meaning Parallel Daisy will love to take it for a whirl, especially since it will help her pay for her other tomes. It's also a decent option for any item-heavy investigator with survivor access, like Yorick!

Right. Let's take a look at another new investigator, shall we?

Have Whip, Will Travel

Monterey Jack is a longstanding veteran of the Arkham Files crew, so we knew he had to be special when he arrived. We held off on him for a long time because we knew that we wanted him to be a Rogue/Seeker of some kind, and the Rogue-who-becomes-a-Seeker spot in Edge of the Earth was just too perfect for him to pass up.

Now, for Monterey, there might be a specific character we drew inspiration from. But he's pretty obscure. You've probably never heard of him.

For Monterey, we wanted him to fill a similar power fantasy as Ursula. We wanted him to be bouncing around the map, moving from location to location every turn, and be rewarded for doing so. Now, it's worth noting that, like Ursula, there's nothing in Monterey's kit that actually helps him move; just things that reward him for moving. The reason for this is the third bullet point, above; an ability that simply helps you move around doesn't necessarily inform your deckbuilding; you would just build a Normal Good Deck (TM) and use that ability to help you move. Monterey's design, by contrast, necessitates that you actually include movement cards in your deck in order to make the most of his ability.

We also wanted to ensure that Monterey wasn't just moving back and forth between two locations in the same round in order to trigger his ability; after all, if you end up in the same spot you started, you're not really trailblazing, are you? So we worded it in such a way that you have to actually forge ahead every turn. This gives him a palpable disadvantage—a way for the encounter deck to "counter" his ability in its own way. (Note that with Ursula, the fact that she only benefitted from her ability if there were clues to find naturally required her to forge ahead, so such a measure was not necessary.)

Finally, Monterey needed a whip, to whip things with. This was, apparently, of the utmost importance. All right, now let's go through that list again:

An investigator should be able to fill at least one role. Monterey fills a few roles: exploration, clue-gathering, and enemy management. While not as good at the latter as other Rogues, his ability gives him an ample economic engine that rewards him for exploration, which helps him be pretty well-rounded and capable at many tasks. An investigator should fill a space other investigators don't. Monterey's kit is rewarding enough that he could spend almost the entire turn moving and it would not be a wasted turn. Even more so than Ursula, Monterey is the master of revealing locations and exploring the map. When built with his ability in mind, Monterey players can be wherever they need to be at any moment, just in the nick of time, and get free cards and resources every time they show up from out of nowhere. An investigator's ability should "inform" their deckbuilding. Again, this one is easy. Monterey players want to move, far and fast. Events that move you across the map are good. Assets that let you move repeatedly are even better. The farther, the better. And hey, since you're getting free money every turn, why not include some cards that benefit from wealth? An investigator's card should line up with their backstory. Monterey is always seeing new archaeological finds, and is always on the move. His ability ensures that he is always ahead of the pack, looking for the next big discovery. An investigator should be cool. Bouncing from one end of the map to another to bail out another investigator who is in trouble, then getting free cards and resources for doing so, is very cool. Running through the map to reveal all of its locations in order to give the party a better understanding of its layout is exciting and useful. But to be honest, Monterey's appeal is more in efficiency and economy than in wow factor. Still, if that kind of thing excites you? Very cool.

And of course, once again, we included some new cards, just for Monterey:

We heard you all really enjoyed Skids O'Drool's ability, so we put it on an event!

Scout Ahead is like a rogue version of Shortcut, with a few subtle but key differences: (1) it actually costs a resource, (2) it's not fast, and (3) can only be used on yourself. It may seem very similar—it compresses actions and helps you move around—but the truth is that it it used quite differently in practice! Shortcut is great for emergencies, since it is fast, free, and works on anybody. It helps you get where you need to be if you miscalculate your actions or fail a crucial test and need that action back. Scout Ahead, by contrast, fills a different role. It helps you quickly get from one end of a large map to the other, and it also lets you skip enemies that might be in your way. This is handy for if something shows up at "the farthest location" and you need to deal with it fast, and it's also perfect for the ol' Super Metroid escape sequence (one of my favorites, as you know).

Like the new cards showcased for Bob, this card is particularly great for Monterey, since it lets him trigger his ability in just one action. However, it's also great for a host of other investigators! Tony and Zoey can use it to hunt down faraway enemies, Jenny can use it to quickly get to where she thinks her sister might be, and any off-class rogue can splash it in as a way of getting some quick movement in their deck!

That's all!

I hope you've enjoyed this quick dive into a couple of the investigators in Edge of the Earth and how we've applied the theories I mentioned in my last article to their design! I'm really looking forward to players getting to see more of the many, many new cards included along with them. It'll be really fun to see what decks you make!

Much love! ♥

Devil in the Details

Greetings! This month I wanted to pivot a bit and talk about Darkdrifters for, surprisingly, the first time in a long while.

For those of you who don't know: Darkdrifters is my novel series which I Kickstarted last year, currently consisting of my debut novel, The Key and the Crescent, and A Drift Apart, which is a short story collection that was made in collaboration with Kickstarter backers at the "Chancel-maker" pledge tier. Darkdrifters is a story very near and dear to my heart, years in the making.

When you work on something as long as I worked on The Key and the Crescent, even the smallest details become incredibly important. From recurring motifs and overarching themes to references hidden and overt, from the basic building blocks of your setting to the finest details, everything is important.

Today—partly because I thought it would be cool to share some behind-the-scenes stuff, and partly because I don't know how many of these little bits were caught by readers, I wanted to go over just a few of these details. But don't worry—if you haven't read The Key and the Crescent or A Drift Apart, there will be no major spoilers ahead, just some very minor bits here and there. So, whether your eyes are already open to the world of the Drift, or whether this is the first time you've even heard of Darkdrifters, read on!

The Act Breaks

I am really into unique presentations in books, so one of my absolute favorite bits in The Key and the Crescent is the spreads that break up each of the book's four major acts. If you're unfamiliar, they look like this:

The artwork for these act breaks was done in an incredible minimalist style by vacuumchan, the same artist who did the cover art. They are just so cool, and each of them is perfectly evocative of the content of that act.

Each one of these also contains a mysterious message in both English and Japanese that conveys an essential truth about the nature of the Drift, and in doing so, reveals the major themes of the book. Two of these four messages, in fact, were themes that I wrote down in my original outline for the book, long before I even got around to writing those acts!

The Japanese text here and in several other places is not entirely decorative. It serves to establish a sort of motif of the story very early on: that there are two tales being told within the book, one a mirror of the other. This is true right from the very first two chapters of the book, and as you might suspect, one of those two narratives is set in Japan. By seeing English text next to Japanese text, it serves to ground the reader in this style of disjointed narrative, and the reader is encouraged to read on to discover how these tales intertwine.

But there is something else here that you probably did not notice. What is really cool about the Japanese text is that it does not echo precisely what the English text says. They are, instead, reversed. "Every nightmare is a lesson," the English text for Act I reads. The Japanese, "すべてのレッスンは悪夢", translates to: "Every lesson is a nightmare."

I'll reveal one more:

"Every world bears a purpose." And in Japanese: "目的それぞれに世界がある", which translates roughly to "For each purpose, there is a world."

In addition to being poignant idioms that fit the lore of Darkdrifters perfectly, this also points to the cyclical nature of the Drift, which is another major motif of the setting. It may not seem like much, but to me, this little detail is super meaningful.

Names

If you've ever created something—anything, really; a story, a script, even a D&D character—you know how important names are. Even if you don't know the inherent meaning behind a name, names convey meaning simply by their very nature. In Lord of the Rings, beautiful Sindarin and Quenya names like Galadriel and Eärendil evoke different emotions in the reader than, say, the playful rhyming names of Thorin's company (Nori, Ori, Dori, and the like). This is also why a sinister-sounding name is often used for villains.

In Darkdrifters, I took great care with all of the names used not just for the major characters, but also every major element of the lore. Even the names of every cat in the book were carefully chosen. I'll go through a few of the ones I really like.

Perhaps the most obvious is Poppy. In addition to referencing a well-known red flower (which makes the name a suitable choice for a girl with red hair), poppies are often associated with sleep. For me, the first time I encountered this theme was in The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy is lulled to sleep in a field of poisonous poppies. This gives the name an immediate through-line with the book's overarching theme of dreams and nightmares. Poppy's name was chosen long before I started writing the full novel, back when The Key and the Crescent was just a character short entitled "The Girl in the Attic." The very first words I jotted down that had anything to do with Darkdrifters was: "It would be nice if anybody cared what Poppy was up to."

Another major character in The Key and the Crescent is the Drifter, Ahtamankh. Ahtamankh's name is, of course, an anagram of Kaman-Thah, one of the two guardians of H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. I thought it was pretty cool that I was able to spin this name into something that sounded both fantastical and also distinctly Egyptian-adjacent, which made sense given his ethnicity. (Readers: did you spot the anagram for Kaman-Thah's fellow guardian? Sound off in the comments!)

My favorite of these character names is Atticus—the mysterious black cat you see on the book's cover, and also on Poppy's shoulder in that first act break. Atticus is actually named by Poppy in the book, and even you get to see her thought process when Charlotte asks her about it:

“The names in your notebook,” Charlotte pointed out. “You were picking out a name for him, right? And you chose ‘Atticus.’ Why?”

“I dunno, cuz like…he seemed really smart, and Atticus Finch is really smart, and I guess cuz I was up in the attic, so…” she trailed off, perhaps in disappointment that her clever name was not all too clever after all.

In chapter one, it is established that one of Poppy's favorite books is To Kill a Mockingbird, which also happens to be my favorite book of all time. I thought that Poppy, like me, would want to pay homage to her favorite book, and the fact that Atticus's name references Poppy's attic hideaway where she first meets him was just too perfect to pass up.

The last name I want to talk about is the term "Mara," which is an important word in Drifter nomenclature. I won't spoil what precisely a Mara is for those of you who have not read the book, but I wanted to call attention to where the name came from. In Buddhist cosmology, Mara is an entity similar to a demon, representing "the personification of forces antagonistic to enlightenment." This is pretty fitting, symbolically, for what a Mara is in Darkdrifters. Since all terms relating to the Drift are invented by Drifters in the lore of the book, it seemed more appropriate to use a real-world term, rather than invent one. It's likely that whichever Drifter first named this sort of entity a "Mara" knew the meaning of the word when they named it, and chose it for that reason. I can't claim total credit for this one, though, as it was a friend and editor who first introduced me to the term.

There are many other names used throughout the book that have similar thought put into them. I won't go into all of them here, because it would take me forever, but suffice it to say that I really love these little details.

References

One of the themes of The Key and the Crescent I wrote in my original outline is "Imagination is our true strength." This is true of Drifters in general, but is especially true for the main character, Poppy. As a result, it was fitting for Poppy's personality for her to constantly be referencing her favorite video games (many of which happen to be my favorites, as well). I imagine most of these will already be quite familiar to those who grew up with video games and anime in the 90s, like I did. But for younger or older readers who may have missed where these references come from, here are just a few examples:

Super Metroid was paused. Her tiny CRTV bathed her attic hideaway in a dark blue glow. Somehow, miraculously, she’d hit pause while she was drifting off. She’d been trying to beat the game in under three hours and unlock its secret ending for months.

The opening lines of the reader's introduction to Poppy shows her trying (and failing) to complete a speedrun of Super Metroid for the SNES. While speedrunning wasn't as big in the 90s as it is today, this secret ending is famously quite real, and not easy to achieve. To me, as a gamer, this introduction immediately tells me a lot about Poppy's personality. She is persistent, passionate, and doesn't like to quit. And yes, the pause menu of Super Metroid does indeed give off a dark blue glow—trust me, I tested it.

They were garbed in long, tattered cloaks, with hoods covering their faces, much like the Ringwraith on the cover of Poppy’s edition of The Fellowship of the Ring.

There have been literally hundreds of editions of The Fellowship of the Ring over the years, with dozens upon dozens of different covers. The exact edition Poppy is referring to here is this one, published in August of 1986, which also happens to be the month I was born. It's also the copy I owned when I was Poppy's age.

Poppy pulled her arm back and swung her sword across her chest in a horizontal cut, imagining herself as Link from The Legend of Zelda, and her blade to be the Master Sword. If Link was at full health, a beam of energy would shoot out from his blade and hit anything at a distance.

How would an eleven-year-old child fight? She would emulate her favorite video game characters. Poppy is trying to wield her blade like it's a famous blade from video game lore. The "Master Sword" exists in nearly every Zelda game ever made, and its ability—the power to perform ranged attacks while at full health—is well-documented. With references like this one, I tried my best to explain the concept using Poppy's own thoughts so that the reader would understand even if they had never played a Zelda game.

He grimaced and circled around her, observing her posture. Then he pulled a wooden walking cane from the air and rapped Poppy hard on her shoulder. “Keep your body lower,” he commanded.

The blow smarted. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”

“If that truly hurt you, then you stand no chance against the nightmare,” he scolded.

Poppy gulped and bent her knees slightly, lowering her posture.

“Good. Now, widen your stance,” Ahtamankh said, rapping the inside her of knees with his cane. She did as she was told. “Pull your hands closer to your waist. Good. A little higher.” She continued to do as he instructed, until he had circled around to her front. He raised his cane, pressing it against the flat edge of her blade as one might an épée. “Now fight.”

Okay, this one is a little different, since it's not a reference Poppy is making, nor is it a reference Poppy would even understand. But if you're a fan of Steven Universe, you would be forgiven for finding this sequence somewhat familiar. It's referenced again in chapter 51, near the end of the book.

Poppy hesitated, her eyes drawn to the advancing creature. No, this is just like the miniboss in Norfair. There’s no way to avoid it. It just keeps advancing till it corners Samus. The only way to defeat it is to shoot it with missiles until it backs up into a pit of lava, and—

Here Poppy is referencing an actual miniboss from Super Metroid. It's this guy, in case you're wondering. His name is Crocomire. Isn't he cute?

“First time for everything. Speaking of which…” Charlotte examined the stack of VHS tapes next to the TV and took the top one: Sailor Moon: A Moon Star is Born. She held it up to Poppy with a smile. “You’re always drawing stuff like this. It looks cool."

This actually is the title of the original English vol 1 VHS of Sailor Moon. I know because I rented it from my local video store from time to time.

“Firenectar,” she repeated curiously. “Like the vials on your bandolier?” She pointed to the liquid-filled orbs that dangled from the vine along his chest. “So you’re like an Alchemist class?”

Originally, I planned on Poppy explicitly referencing Final Fantasy Tactics here, but the Chemist job in that game was more about healing than damage-dealing, so I changed it to be more of an AD&D reference. It seems likely that Poppy knows the term from AD&D supplements from the early 90s (like Tome of Magic) that added alchemy, potion crafting, and the like.

I could go on and on. I made a point to scatter these references to 90s video games and anime only in Poppy's chapters, as a way of differentiating her from Charlotte (who has had no exposure to video games before meeting Poppy). By contrast, Charlotte—who is very observant—is constantly noticing things that other characters would not. I love little character touches like this, as they really help to sell each character's strengths and weaknesses.

Visual Motifs

The Key and the Crescent contains a host of visual motifs that are repeated throughout the book in order to hammer home certain themes and occasionally to help guide the reader toward a particular emotion or conclusion.

Eyes and Darkness: Darkdrifters, as evidenced by the very title, is a series about overcoming the darkness that dwells within one’s own self. This is described in numerous ways, from darkness swirling within the eyes of those who are infected by nightmare to darkness that “tugs” at characters' senses whenever they have negative thoughts. Conversely, positive thoughts like love and self-care is always described as bright, and counteracts the effects of this darkness. The idiom "eyes are a window to the soul" struck me as particularly evocative of the effect I wanted to get across. This led to eyes as an important recurring focal point in character descriptions. Normally I would not focus on describing a character's eyes quite as often as I did in Darkdrifters, but here it became a motif that was important to repeat, from the sliver of darkness hiding behind somebody's pupil to the juxtaposed bright and dark eyes that Drifters possess while channeling dream-essence (the left eye always dark, and the right eye always bright, which is a bit of a subtle nod to many of the fictional myths surrounding the famous Japanese swordsman, Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi). I also particularly love how the strength of the darkness in certain characters' eyes becomes a way for me to overtly convey the stakes in the story as the narrative progresses.

Cats: Cats aren't just important in Darkdrifters because I'm a cat person. Some are a reference to the Cats of Ulthar, of course, but that's not truly it, either. To me, cats represent a coin with two sides: simultaneously cuddly, adorable, and beautiful; but also deadly, graceful hunters at heart. I feel like this somewhat represents the double-edged nature of the Drift. It is simultaneously a world of infinite imagination and hope, and also home to the universe's unimaginable horrors. This double-sided nature is echoed in each of the characters as well, as each one possesses both unique strengths and their own inner darkness. For these reasons, cats feature prominently throughout Darkdrifters, as both characters and visual motifs. It is because of a cat that the events of The Key and the Crescent are kicked into motion. Whenever Poppy or another Drifter receives a vision, their eyes become “cat-like,” and throughout the story, such visions are called "cat-visions." Ahtamankh’s cafe is filled with cats, and the Neon City features graffiti with cats all throughout. Ahtamankh explains the nature of the Drift to Poppy using the metaphor of latte art, and the artwork is, of course, a cat.

Nightmares: In Darkdrifters, nightmares can (and do) take on many forms. However, many nightmarish descriptions contain several recurring visual motifs—chitinous exoskeletons, insect-like shapes, myriad legs and eyes, and black, slimy insides. These descriptions aren't just chosen because they sound gross; they're deliberately evocative of insectlike anatomy. Insects are the perfect visual allegory for nightmares because they are countless in number, honed to a razor's edge by evolution, possess a sort of alien, hivelike intelligence, and have no desire beyond hunger, growth, and reproduction. And yet, insects are still familiar to us in everyday life, just like nightmares themselves are to those who bear them. The word "infestation" is also used often to describe how a nightmare's influence worms its way through the Drift, and this is also evocative of insects.

That's all I have for you today. If this post makes you interested in picking up a copy of The Key and the Crescent for yourself, check out the store on this very site and purchase a copy! If you've already read The Key and the Crescent and want to discuss more spoiler-y things, feel free to head over to the Darkdrifters discord server. There is a LOT more I chose not to disclose in this post because I didn't want to spoil anything! And if you're interested in seeing a blog entry similar to this but for Arkham LCG, let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Until next time!

Behind the Curtain – Investigators (part I)

Hello again, lovely Arkham LCG fans!

After my previous series, I wasn't sure what to write about next. Well, you all chimed in...

And that settled things pretty quickly. So, without further ado, let's chat about one of the most important things in Arkham Horror: The Card Game—the investigators.

A Crisis of Identity

My favorite card games are the ones in which you take control of a single character, rather than controlling a faction or an army. Netrunner, Marvel Champions, Ashes, and of course Arkham Horror are prime examples of this. A Black Widow deck operates quite differently from a Ms. Marvel deck, a Noise deck operates differently from a Chaos Theory deck, and so on. Warhammer 40k: Conquest also ventured into this design space with its Warlords, and Lord of the Rings: The Card Game was similar in that you controlled three heroes, the sum total of which became the core of your deck's identity. The benefits to this approach are many:

Your identity restricts what you can include in your deck. In some games, like Netrunner, this is purely faction-based (although some fan favorites like Sunny Lebeau were their own mini-faction). In Conquest and Marvel Champions, you're forced to include a pack of cards based on which warlord or hero you chose. In Arkham, your identity belongs to a class, but also typically has access to a pool of other cards that are thematically linked with that character. In all instances, this restriction is important. It makes each character feel distinct and unique, and it also ensures that every player isn't just putting the best cards in the game into their deck, making them great at everything. This also makes your choice of identity the most important choice you will make in building your deck, which is ideal because it makes that cardtype automatically the most important one in the game. Your identity serves as a focal point for your deck. No matter what, you'll always be building your deck around your identity card. Whether it's capitalizing on what your identity is good at, finding combos that synergize with your identity, or shoring up your identity's weaknesses, it is always first and foremost in your mind. This is great for a number of reasons. For casual players, it helps to narrow down what might otherwise be an overwhelming collection of cards. For veteran card game players, it provides a built-in ability that they want to find other cards to build from. For developers, it provides an easy avenue to create new cards for specific characters or deck types. Your identity provides a narrative throughline for your experience. This is possibly the most important bullet point here. In games in which you control an identity—in which you, the player, are the character in front of you—you have an immediate connection with the action. You might connect with your chosen character based on their artwork, their backstory, their ability, or any number of other factors, but no matter what, you become invested in your character's success and well-being. For many players, this effect is far greater than it would be if they controlled an entire faction or army.

There are some characters in Netrunner who I unabashedly love so much, they've shaped my experience with the game. In my few dalliances developing for Netrunner, I always went out of my way to make a few expose abilities in order to make my favorite gal Silhouette even stronger. And when Jesminder Sareen was released, it opened up a completely new playstyle for me that I was never interested in before. (Incidentally, my very own Netrunner OC, whose flavor text I wrote for Cloak and Dagger, the game's first stealth cards, sadly never made it into the game. Riot for me pls.)

So, now that I've explained why identity cards are great, let's talk about their implementation in Arkham.

What's in an Investigator?

Knowing how important investigators were to both the card game formula and the Arkham Horror IP, we knew it was important to get investigators right. So we started off by making a cheat sheet of things an investigator should possess:

Skills. This is the obvious one, as it is present in every other Arkham Horror game. Skills are the primary way in which each investigator interacts with the game, and assigning different values to different investigators makes each one unique. It creates natural peaks and valleys for each investigator—things they're great at, things they're bad at, etc (or, if you're Jenny Barnes, perhaps only "things they're good at"). Ideally, no two investigators should share the same skill line. Of course, as the game has progressed for several years, we've broken that rule a few times, but generally, we want each investigator to have their own particular skill line. A unique ability. Probably the most important thing here. An investigator's ability is the real spark. The thing that makes you go "oh wow, I want to play as this person." Skills give each investigator strengths and weaknesses, but an investigator's ability is what truly makes each investigator play differently from one another. The more the ability changes the way the game is played, the more it sets that investigator apart from the rest. A way to interact with the chaos bag. Once we knew how the chaos bag worked, we wanted to capitalize on its uniqueness by giving each investigator their own token. Of course, having a separate token for each character would prove untenable for future releases, and also awkward in multiplayer, so we designed the Elder Sign token—which was previously just a "critical success"—and made it a different kind of success for every investigator. (Interesting aside: at one point in early development, when the chaos bag was a "chaos deck," each investigator came with their own chaos card that would have been shuffled into the deck. While this was neat, setup with the proposed chaos deck was pretty cumbersome, and ultimately the Elder Sign token is both more thematically compelling and more elegant.) Unique deckbuilding rules. This is crucial. If we really wanted to sell the idea that each of these investigators are unique individuals with their own repertoire of talents, spells, and equipment, they needed to have access to a different swath of cards within the greater card pool. And not just split by faction, either—we wanted it to be possible to have five different investigators of the same class who all had access to a different pool of cards. Luckily, we we several "knobs" that we could adjust: Deck Size, card classes, card traits, etc. Instead of choosing just a couple of these knobs, we made the decision early on that all of them were on the table. The most exciting of these "knobs," of course, was the concept of card levels—a feature unique to Arkham. Not only could we control exactly which cards an investigator could take, but how powerful each of those categories could be. This meant (a) we could create characters who focused on one category but could dabble in weaker cards from other categories, (b) we could create characters who didn't focus on classes, but rather, on traits , which was pretty rare in our other LCGs, and (c) we could even create characters who started off as one class and slowly built into a different class as they earned experience. (That's right—the idea for Norman Withers's deckbuilding was something we had thought of long before the game even came out!) With so many knobs to tweak and so many different ideas floating around our heads, we were sure we could make every single investigator have their own card pool without any two investigators sharing the exact same one. I was especially excited about the idea of investigators who could take any card of a particular trait, or even any card with a particular line of ability text—two ideas that wouldn't see fruition until Marie Lambeau and Carolyn Fern made their debuts, respectively.

Back when we first started working on Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Nate and I hashed out a lot of things regarding investigators. What the card would look like, what the abilities would look like, what the symbols would look like, everything. We did so with a lot of... *clears throat* joke cards.

Here's an...example. Yes, this is a real card. I've kept it in my collection ever since Nate printed it out and put it on my desk 5-ish years ago. (And I'll never let it go.) It goes without saying, but obviously, this was never intended to be anything other than a joke card. However, what's neat about this card is that you can see the skeleton of other Arkham Horror investigators in here, and this was months before we had designed any actual cards that would make it into the Core Set. For example:

Al has his name and profession right at the top, and his artwork dominates one half of the card, just like in the final versions, although the placement is reversed. His stats even add up to 12 and his health and sanity up to 14, just like a real human being! He's got a trait, an ability, and an elder sign ability, just like normal investigators, although at the time the icons were a bit different. You might note that his ability says "Focus" on it—at the time, that was early terminology for an ability that cost an action to perform. Only thing Al is missing is deckbuilding rules. Would have been premature if we'd designed them at the time, since there was no cardpool to really pull on. I guess we can tell that Al is a seeker though. The card border is yellow, after all. You might think it's weird that he has so much combat for a seeker, but he is an alligator, after all. I guess we didn't know how to spell parley back then. Cool.Okay, What's in a Good Investigator?

Now that you know what we put into each investigator, let's chat about what our goals are when designing and developing a new one! Hopefully—if we've done our job right—you can see most or all of these elements in every investigator we've made, though perhaps not all of them adhere to this list quite so strictly.

An investigator should be able to fill at least one role. Now, before I hear you yelling, "What about Jenny?"—this role can be one of many different kinds, not just one that specializes in a particular skill. An investigator could be dedicated to a particular role, such as "fighter," "support," "healing," or "clue-ver" (as the Arkham community has so endearingly dubbed them), or it could be more of a "flex" role: somebody who is able to perform multiple roles and switch between them easily. Usually, we want to craft an investigator in such a way as to guide them toward a particular role, to really cement their identity and make deckbuilding a little less obtuse for players. If an investigator is too obtuse or difficult to place within any roles, that's not ideal. Example: Let's use Tommy Muldoon as our example. We built Tommy to fulfill a sort of "Paladin" power fantasy. As such, his primary roles are combat and tanking. He's good at using asset cards to soak damage and horror, and he can leverage the resources generated by his ability—along with his high combat value—to take out enemies, especially with his signature rifle, Becky. An investigator should fill a space other investigators don't. Don't let the above fool you—roles are important, but uniqueness is even more important. If an investigator occupies precisely the same space as another investigator in the cardpool, that's not ideal. Each investigator should have their own shtick, something they can call their own. That shtick can be pretty niche, or it could be broad—it all depends on what we want for that investigator. We can accomplish this goal in one of two ways: with an investigator's ability or with their deckbuilding options. Often, we do it with both. Example: There are many investigators who are good at staying alive, but Tommy is uniquely positioned to "tank" for other players; that is, to soak up damage and horror for other members of a party, so they stay healthy. His ability helps him pay for cards that soak damage or horror, and he has access to a wide variety of such cards in both Guardian and Survivor, several of which can be assigned damage dealt to other investigators. An investigator's ability should "inform" their deckbuilding. What this means is that there should be some connection between an investigator's ability and the rest of a player's collection. Players enjoy finding combos and synergies between an investigator and the rest of their cards. By contrast, if an investigator's ability is divorced from the rest of the player cards in the game, it makes deckbuilding difficult and uninspiring. Example: As soon as one reads Tommy's ability, the gears start churning. Every card with health or sanity is instantly re-evaluated when Tommy is involved. A card that costs 3 resources and soaks 3 health effectively nets a resource cost of 0, or can generate 3 ammo for Becky. This "informs" your deckbuilding: as Tommy, you want to include these kinds of cards in your deck, in order to capitalize on your ability. Sometimes, when creating an investigator, we may even work in reverse, deciding on what their ability should be based on what cards we want them to include in their deck. For example, we wanted Trish Scarborough players to feel good including cards that made them feel like a spy: cards like Eavesdrop, Followed, Burglary, Lockpicks, Slip Away, etc. The ability we ended up crafting for her accomplishes this goal by making her want to discover clues, especially when enemies are around. An investigator's card should line up with their backstory. Each investigator in Arkham Horror is more than just a name and a set of mechanics. They're a person with a unique history, a profession, friends, family, lives. These themes are not only informative for us as designers, they can help to sell player card mechanics. Card games are often notoriously abstract , so it's important that an investigator's ability can be interpreted in a way that lines up with their theme. It's also important that an investigator have access to cards that make sense thematically for who they are and where they come from. Example: As a young idealist often at odds with jaded superiors and the day-to-day of his profession, Tommy Muldoon's backstory is all about him wanting to protect others and "save the day." This led us to come up with the "paladin" archetype we wanted him to fill. It also helps to explain the specifics of his ability. That is, the reason why his assets are shuffled back into his deck instead of discarded: Tommy "saves" them, allowing them to get away and return again later. Without this small but important detail, it might instead seem like Tommy is purposely throwing his allies into the fire, which is the opposite of how we want him to feel! An investigator should be cool. Okay, I know this sounds rather informal, but hear me out. You know what would be cool? If there was an investigator who could hop into a portal and end up in their own little location. That would be so cool. No, no, wait—what about an investigator who was all about scrying the encounter deck, and she could, like, put encounter cards beneath her to keep them out of the deck? Oooo, or there could be an investigator who like... has a bunch of events beneath her and duplicate them with her signature card! Wouldn't that be cooool? You get the idea. We want every investigator to fulfill some kind of power fantasy, to be cool in their own unique way.Till Next Time...

That's all I have for you for now, but stay tuned. Now that you understand a bit of what goes into the creation of each investigator, in part two, I'll go through the creation of one such investigator, step by step, from start to finish!

My Formative Gaming Moments (part III)

Hello again!

Here is the final installment in my series about the moments in gaming that were formative for me in my creative career. These are the games that made me put my controller down in absolute awe and just think—not only about what just transpired but also about the colossal effort that went into such endeavors. I'll only be writing about three games today, and that will be the end of this series with a haunting thirteen entries. Enjoy!

Note: The games I'll be talking about today are more recent than the previous entries, so I'd like to put a big

spoiler warning

right here, so you're aware of what is coming.

11) Virtue's Last Reward (2012)—Remembering Something Important

This is one of my favorite games on this list, and probably my favorite moment in all of gaming (if not, definitely in my top 3), so once again I want to put a spoiler warning here in case you haven't played this game and don't want its most crucial gameplay element spoiled for you. Of course, if you don't intend to ever play this game, then surely read on, and perhaps I will convince you to play one of my favorite series of all time.

Virtue's Last Reward (or VLR for short) is the second in a trilogy of games called Zero Escape. The first game in the series, called 999, is in my opinion one of the best puzzle / visual novel games ever made. It starts off with an escape-room-esque premise—9 characters have been kidnapped and trapped on a tanker ship, and their only promise of escape is to proceed through a series of puzzles in which they must split up to open a series of doors—you know what, nevermind, just go play 999, seriously, you won't be disappointed. In any event, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes with 999, and its sequel, VLR, expands on these concepts magnificently.

Both 999 and VLR are what is called a "bi-directional" narrative. That is to say, you experience the narrative by jumping forward and backwards through various iterations. Rather than experiencing a linear story that goes from point A to point B to point C, you experience a story that goes from point A to point B, to point C, then perhaps back to point A, then to a different but parallel point B, and so on and so forth. Each time you jump, you—the player—learn something that gives you more insight into the situation, and what you should do next. The result is a flowchat that looks like this.

This in and of itself is nothing new—it's essentially what every CYOA ("choose your own adventure") game's narrative looks like. What makes VLR so special is how it presents this story. So, here's the setup. In Virtue's Last Reward, once again 9 characters have been kidnapped and brought to a facility in order to participate in a game of life and death, wherein only one of them may escape. This time, the participants earn points by playing "the AB game," a game similar to the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma." The characters are paired off, and you—playing the character Sigma—are brought into a room with a lever, and you are told the rules.

"So, let's say you choose "ally" and so does your opponent. You'll get 2 BP, and so will they, and you'll all get a nice warm, fuzzy feeling inside. We call that the "Best Pals" outcome. Just puts a smile on your face, doesn't it?

"Next is what you get if you choose "ally," but your opponent chooses to betray! If that happens, you lose 2 BP, and they get 3. We call that the "Stupid Jerkface" outcome. Somebody did that to me, I'd skin 'em and stew 'em with some taters.

"The third choice is the hopposite of that. It's when you choose "betray," but your nice, innocent opponent chooses "ally." This time you're the one who gets 3 BP, and they're the one who loses 2. We call that the "Serves Them Right" outcome. I mean, what were they thinking? Choosing "ally" was a stupid choice. And there's nothing for you to feel guilty about.

"And finally... The very last scenario. This is when you choose "betray", and so does your opponent! If that happens, neither of you gets or loses anything. Absolutely zero change in BP. Ugh. Boring. We call this the "Why Even Bother" outcome. As the gamemaster here, this is the situation I want to avoid the most!"

(this is Zero's dialogue, taken directly from the game's script. Yes, he says "hopposite." He's a bunny, see.)

You are forced to choose: ally or betray. If you reach 9, you escape. If you reach 0, you die.

The first time you play the AB game, you have no idea what your opponent is going to choose. You pick, they pick, and the game goes on with your choice recorded. This is the narrative splitting in the flowchart above. Choose "A," and you go down that story path. Choose "B," and you go down that one. You keep doing this, reaching various endings that range from bad (another character escaping and Sigma being left behind) to really bad (Sigma reaches 0 and dies) to really really REALLY bad—

—until finally, you choose to go back to that first branch and try something new. And when you do, a peculiar thing happens, and you realize what is really going on here. Let's say that first time around, you chose A and your opponent chose B. This time, you choose B, expecting your opponent to choose B again, and...

...they choose A.

You are dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. How is that possible? You are the player. You are the one with the ability to experience the bi-directional narrative. You are the one with the ability to jump from scene to scene and try new things, because it is a video game and you are the one in control. So how?

And then you realize that Sigma is having the same thoughts you are. His internal dialogue mimics your own. But, last time, they chose...so why, this time... And it hits you. Sigma remembers. Sigma is starting to remember the previous timelines—the previous jumps you have made along that flowchart. And the longer you play, the more you realize that Sigma isn't the only one—your companion, Phi, has been acting this way the entire time. And as the game progresses, both Sigma and Phi begin to retain their consciousness whenever they "jump" from one timeline—from one dimension, essentially—to another.

That's when Virtue's Last Reward blew my goddamn mind. Not only did it integrate its core gameplay loop directly into the narrative, but it explores things like mutli-dimensional theory and parallel worlds—concepts that I find incredibly intriguing.

There are many, many more twists and turns from there, but this is the moment that cemented this game in my top 3. I love it when games explain their "video-gaminess," for lack of a better term, with in-world explanations. Undertale, Destiny, Hades, and even the recent Loop Hero all do this perfectly, but in my experience, none of them stand up to the presentation of 999 and VLR.

The Zero Escape games were largely my inspiration for the Labyrinths of Lunacy scenario in Arkham LCG. There is this idea throughout that all three sets of participants are trapped in the same complex, fighting against the same mastermind, and then you reach the center where you expect to team up, and...nothing. It's just you. The other groups don't exist in your reality.

They are in their own parallel timeline, and your captor, Eixodolon, exists across all of them. I know it's not quite the same level of effectiveness, but I hope the twist in that scenario was similarly entertaining for players. I especially love this "Paradox Effect" treachery that hints at this somewhat by showing the same person in three timelines, giving players the opportunity to speak with a teammate from another timeline. (In an early draft of this treachery, you and that teammate would both draw a card if you were playing the same investigator—a nod to the fact that you are communicating with yourself across a different timeline, just like Eixodolon!)

I think a lot about the theories at play in VLR. I often dwell on my own choices, and what my life would look like if I could "jump" back to a previous point in the vast flowchart of my life, and choose a different option. Sometimes I wish I had that power. Sometimes I think about the alternate, parallel me out there, living out a completely different life than my own, and wonder if they're happy. I took a lot of inspiration from this experience when writing one of the short stories in A Drift Apart, which is the short story collection I wrote in tandem with last year's Kickstarter for Darkdrifters. In The Dream of the Last Stop, June is trapped in a somber nightmare demesne of their own creation—an endless train that runs through the countless decisions they have made throughout life. Each passenger represents a decision point, and with each stop, June most grapple with their own regrets as they watch their life unfold in ways they never could have considered. Definitely check it out if this sort of thing interests you.

12) Doki Doki Literature Club (2017)—Oh, so that is what this game is about

Few games surprised me as much as Doki Doki Literature Club. In addition to being freaky as all hell, it has a lot to say about video games as a medium, or indeed even any work of fiction, if you extrapolate enough. It also has one of the best heel-turn mic-drop reality shredding moments in any video game, hands down. It also looks like this:

Again, I'll be dropping pretty massive spoilers, so if you want to experience this moment for yourself, scroll no further. For some context, I experienced Doki Doki in probably the most unrealistic and also most optimal of situations. Basically, a friend of mine who knows my tastes really well told me to just start playing the game completely blind, knowing absolutely nothing about it. I was encouraged even to avoid looking at the steam page and/or any reviews, in order to keep myself purposely in the dark about the game's true nature. I will say that I did catch a glimpse of the game's tags on Steam, and that alone intrigued the hell out of me. For those wondering, the game's tags on steam are as follows: Anime, Visual Novel, and Psychological Horror. To which I replied:

So I started playing, having no clue what I was getting into. It opens up with a very basic and intentionally cliche premise. You are the newest member of your school's literature club, populated only by a group of cute girls: your childhood friend; the quiet, bookish girl; the feisty tsundere girl; and the popular club president. And they're all sooo dateable! It is essentially the same premise as every single visual novel dating sim ever made. The first several hours of this game do not play at all with this trope, except with very very slight hints that there may be more going on behind the scenes. You attend class, converse with the girls, hear the poems they've written (some of which start to get a little.........strange), and "write" your own poems by clicking on words that match the girl you want to get to like you. Not that this ever pans out.

Your first sign that something might be wrong is that Sayori, your childhood friend, starts to exhibit signs of depression, which is exacerbated as you start spending more time with the other girls in the club. After several days of this, she confesses her feelings to you, and you are given the choice of whether or not to reciprocate them.

At this point, I was starting to get a little...worried. Both options seem a little unhealthy. Sayori was putting immense pressure on herself, feeling undeserving of your love. I didn't think that there would be a happy ending just by reciprocating her feelings. But then again, this is just a video game, and I'm reading way too much into it...right?

Okay, I have to give another warning here. This one is not a spoiler warning, it is a content warning. The rest of this entry contains images and/or video of explicit suicide.

Well. I suppose by now you can guess what happens. You go to pick up Sayori before school like you usually do, only this time, she's not responding to you knocking at her door. Your stomach turns. Something is not right. You open the door and what happens next is so sudden and jaw-dropping, I am quite sure it literally stopped my heart for a few seconds.

Again, this video is very disturbing. If you really want to know more but don't wish to watch this, I don't blame you. Seriously, I'm not joking.

What is truly nightmarish about this scene is how the rest of the game seems to understand it has just descended into an entirely different genre. The music, normally upbeat and cutesy, is warped and garbled. The game begins to break down and glitch. The background disappears, replaced with an error message. And the best part is, if you actually open up the game's text files and look at the spot where the "error" supposedly occurred, you see this little piece of genius: "Oh geez...I didn't break anything, did I? Hold on a sec, I can probably fix this...I think...Actually, you know what? This would probably be a lot easier if I just deleted her. She's the one who's making this so difficult." (jacksepticeye does this himself around 3:00 in the above video if you'd like to see this for yourself.)

This moment dug into my soul. I can't stress enough how completely out of left field it felt. Even knowing that users gave the game a "Psychological Horror" tag, I really honestly did not see it coming.

And then, the game resets. And Sayori simply isn't in the game anymore. It goes back to "normal," with you attending class and your "character" not seeming to wonder where Sayori has gone, but you, the player, know. Something is wrong. And as it proceeds, the game continues to glitch and break down in ways that make you question (1) whether this is really even a game, (2) who is making this happen, and (3) what you can possibly do to prevent it. But nothing stands up to the heart-stopping shock of Sayori's death.

In case you haven't played the rest of this game, I won't spoil the rest, but suffice it to say that this game made me re-evaluate what it might like to be a character in a false world, stripped of agency and worth, and what that realization might do to a person. This became a major theme in my Darkdrifters series: what is real, and what is fiction? If a Drifter like Poppy meets a demesnewalker in one of her dreams, is that demesnewalker a real person, or a fake one? And how much does the line between the two matter?

13) Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017)—The First Case

Nope, I am not going to talk about the ending to this game. If you're a fan of Danganronpa, you know how polarizing the ending to this game is. Honestly, it blew my mind quite a bit, but no—I'm going to talk today about the twist in the very first murder case, why I absolutely adore it, and why it lives rent-free in my head almost every day.

Again, I want to reiterate I'll be talking about some big spoilers for the opening of Danganronpa V3, which is the third in the series. If you've played 1 and 2, I highly recommend you play 3 before reading this! If you're not a fan of Danganronpa and have no idea what this is or how to pronounce this, let me lay down some information so you know what the heck I'm talking about.

Danganronpa is a series of visual novel games (seeing a recurring theme here) in which a class of 15 high schoolers, each the very best at their chosen study, profession, or hobby, are locked in a "killing game." The only way to escape is to kill one of the other students and get away with it. If the other students guess wrong, they are killed and the killer escapes. If the other students get it right, you are punished, and the rest live on, still trapped within the school. It's a fun premise, and it plays like a cross between a murder mystery, friendship/dating simulator, and a deduction game, like Phoenix Wright.

Danganronpa typically follows a pretty standard formula. In a cast of characters who are truly unique and eccentric in their own ways, you always play a pretty mundane, average boy with no spectacular ability. This helps you assume the role of the main character, and also serves to accentuate the rest of the cast. But this is not the case in Danganronpa V3. The writers instead made the decision to have the game's main character be one of the cast members with a specific skill—in this case, the "Ultimate Pianist." This is interesting because in this series we've never been given control over a character with such a distinct personality. She swiftly becomes friends with Shuichi Saihara, this game's "Ultimate Detective", and when the first murder happens, the two team up to uncover the truth.

I'll gloss over the exact details of the case, but the important thing is that, among Danganronpa trials, this one is actually kind of tough if you—like me—fell hard for the twist. Everybody who is suspicious seems to have an alibi, and there doesn't appear to be any way for the murder to have occurred...that is until you stumble across a piece of information that changes everything. It appears to implicate Shuichi at first, and for some reason, Shuichi is refusing to defend himself. In fact, he's oddly quiet for most of the second half of the trial. Kaede knows Shuichi is not the killer. At first you think it's just because of their deep bond. Then Kaede is asked if she knows who the killer is, and she drops this absolute bombshell of a line:

The game grinds to a halt. Kaede and Shuichi have an exchange in their heads—not a real conversation, but a sort of battle of wits as Shuichi realizes the truth. In her head, Kaede apologizes for putting him in this position. To make him do what he is about to do—she knows it will tear him apart inside. And yet, to protect all of them, she must.

Then your point of view switches.

And now, you are playing as Shuichi.

Kaede is the killer. She went after the mastermind to protect them all, but as the trial proceeded, it became clear that the person she killed was not the mastermind, but an innocent (and also, in my opinion, the character with the best fashion sense, goddamn it Kaede). And so, she forced Shuichi to reveal the truth.

Maybe some people were able to see this coming a mile away, but I will be honest. This twist got me hard. You have to understand—despite only being the first trial, by now, you had been playing as Kaede for a pretty huge chunk of gameplay—between 4 and 7 hours, likely. You've watched her every action. How could it be her?

But it's not just that. If you look up this game, until you've actually played past this point, Kaede is the main character. Despite only being in maybe 15% of the game's story, she is placed prominently in advertisements, including the game's box art.

Granted, so is Shuichi, but that's pretty common. In every Danganronpa game, there is usually some other "best friend" character who has prominent billing, so to speak. In fact, this whole twist is cleverly disguised by the fact that up until the twist, the original Danganronpa follows the same exact formula: the main character is best friends with the Ultimate Detective. And since Danganronpa is a very formulaic series (by design), you think: "Ah, it's this sort of relationship." You are convinced from word one that Shuichi and Kaede will probably both live until the end, or at the very least, until the final case.

Not only does this twist hit hard and fast, but it leaves its mark on Shuichi throughout the rest of the story. This scene in particular, in which Shuichi visits the school's piano hall to grieve, and hears her favorite song in his head (Debussy's Clair de Lune, which also happens to be my favorite piano piece of all time), well...it definitely got to me.

Anyway, while this moment isn't the most mind-blowing on this list by any means, I think I can appreciate it a lot more as a game designer than as a consumer. See, there are a lot of people who end up touching a game in some way before it reaches players. This is especially true for video games. There are entire departments who might even work in different offices or buildings from the game's developers. Besides those responsible for writing and directing the game, there is an art team, a graphic design team, a marketing team, a sales team, a production team, upper management, dozens of people. And for a twist like this to be effective, every single one of them has to be 100% on board.

In order for this twist to really work, the art team has to give Kaede the compelling appearance of a main character. The graphic design team has to work both Kaede and Shuichi prominently into the game's cover. The marketing team has to really sell the fact that Kaede is the game's main character and only main character. And you might be thinking, "well, yeah, obviously," but it isn't always easy to get that many people all on the same exact page. All it would have taken is one marketing writer to accidentally call Shuichi the main character in a press release or magazine ad, and wham. Suddenly the whole thing is dead in the water. This is even more true when one considers the game's ridiculous and incredible ending.

I guess this twist just impresses upon me the fact that every game is a team endeavor, and that communication between departments is absolutely key to selling a story's twists and turns.

Well, that's it. I hope you've enjoyed this series. It turns out I have a lot to say about video games, which is...not surprising, to say the least. If you've enjoyed reading this, please consider subscribing to the site to be notified of future updates, and check out my projects page for more! Thank you!

~ MJ