Spooky Date was an early choose-your-own-adventure dating sim kind of project back before I had developed my world build in as much detail as I have. It starred one Barry Wallace, in whom I fit as many horror movie victim tropes as possible: black, nerdy, fat, but also a player who had a lot of casual sex.
It was also really well done if I do say so myself. I hadn’t looked back on it since I finished it in 2017 and I was surprised by just how well made it was.
Barry gets a call from his friend Nemain “Nem” Morrigan, an adorable satyr-like individual who just happens to also be a type of grim reaper. She informs him that she found out he’s going to die in seven days due to complications from having sexual relations with a supernatural monster girl, and they have to find her in order to find out what he’s inflicted with as well as figure out a cure.
The problem? Barry’s kinda been busy lately and there’s a list.
Also a creature from his past is coming for him.
It was my own take on a dating sim. Now funny thing: I hate dating sims. I think I’ve played maybe one partway and have watched Let’s Plays of them because the running commentary is often pretty funny. That said, I got to thinking about how I’d create a dating sim that I would actually enjoy.
Now if you know me, I’ve done quite a few art project threads on SomethingAwful where I create a series of characters off the top of my head. Thing is, I’ve been doing it a lot longer than I’ve been active on SomethingAwful. I’ve always liked creating characters, but after my wife passed away it was one of my coping mechanisms to fill the void. “Spooky Date” made use of a character generation system — everyone except for Nem and Red were rolled up just for the board game.
What made Spooky Date different was how I generated the player character however: I came up with a “Just-in-Time” character generator.
Just-in-Time Character Generation
Barry begins the game as a blank slate as far as his personality is concerned but he doesn’t stay that way for long. Just-in-Time Character Generation is like Schrödinger’s cat in that he has all the skills and traits and none of them until the time to reveal occurs.
So as an example when he’s set up for a date with a devil in the flashback, the game asks: how did he present himself? This was the point to reveal an aspect of his character. The players were given a number of options along with the pros and cons of each and decided he would be Romantic, which meant he’d bring a traditional gift of candy and flowers. Being Romantic would make Barry more easy to manipulate by his date, but also make him more in-tune with her needs.
All of Barry’s traits except for his physical form (and a few secrets) were left unspecified until the moment it would be relevant to reveal them.
Just-in-Time Character Generation did the following interesting things:
- Players didn’t need to guess what skills and traits will be useful. This addressed a pet peeve of mine in RPG’s where during character generation you’re given a list of potential traits, attributes, skills and ability and zero idea about how critical they’d be. With the Just-in-Time character generation it meant that you didn’t need to decide on an aspect of your character until you might need it.
- Some situations defined a character by their inaction or motivation — it was possible to do the same thing but for different reasons, and the motivation impacted what options would be available down the road.
- Players had to create a character and role-play it. Once the players chose for Barry to be Romantic it meant that he was going to be romantic for all the dates and for the rest of the game.
- Building the character was part of the game. In many RPGs you spend time allocating resources without context and separated from the world. In Spooky Date you allocated your resources on the fly according to what you wanted to happen in the Flashback.
A Dating Sim where Sex Was Not the Goal
In my limited exposure to dating sims the goal always seemed to be to get into someone’s pants, making up for the limited gameplay with the motivation to see porn or at least a character in a skimpy outfit. There’s a few problems with this from my perspective:
- Characters are reduced to conquests.
- The effort isn’t worth the reward. If you just want porn, there’s easier ways to get it than by mashing through text.
- Characters — except the player — are entirely too passive. They just sit around waiting for the player to seduce them. Their relationships are often just boiled down to “give them things they like” and “tell them what they want to hear”. They never attempt to seduce the player, and in the games I’ve seen they don’t even send signals.
- There’s a lot more to relationships than just “obtaining” the person. I mean in real life people forget about this all the time and that’s why the magic goes out of things. I used to get my late wife little gifts all the time for no reason other than I thought she’d like them and it’d brighten her day and I found out later she liked to brag about this to her friends. Most games don’t write prepare much for after a couple is paired up. A few games like Stardew Valley and Fallen London have a post-consummation event or two, but nothing compared to what was involved getting there.
Spooky Date did things differently:
- Every date had her own agenda.
- The sex was both plot and game mechanic relevant. What happened prior (and even during) the sex set up the mid-game.
- The characters were active and interested in seducing the player based on their individual motivations. Some were just horny, some wanted friendship, and one in particular was interested in trading sexual favours for performing scientific experiments on the player.
- The sex was all initially casual, but to survive the mid-game you needed to provide some kind of motivation for the characters to help you. Creating a genuine relationship with them greatly improved your chances of survival.
Sex was the hook to get people interested and to set up the conflict; the game itself was about survival through relationships.
Not to say that Spooky Date didn’t have some problems — I got a little too ambitious with the end-game, some parts were a tad overly dramatic, and over-all it would have been better if I had kept it a little simpler. Overall though, the writing was pretty solid and the art was OK and it’s a project I think has the potential to revisit.
