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Memody, Absurd Neuroticism, and Is This A Bad Time?

5 years ago1,906 words

ANOTHER POST. I've made the new version of Memody I talked about in the previous post, and I feel like I've come up with a way that I could effectively explore the neurotic themes in a way that's entertaining rather than uncomfortable... but I'm wondering whether this is a bad time to be releasing this, if people are particularly busy!

I've been fairly productive recently, but today's been one of those days where I've felt so constantly tired that I've been unable to achieve anything at all. Always annoying, that. I've decided it's best to see it as a day off rather than forcing myself - I'll work on the weekend instead - but it seems that there's little I can actually do with the time I'm not spending working on this game, and the way I do end up spending that time - mindless browsing, barely starting then immediately giving up on composing or drawing projects, or less often playing games - just ends up making me feel more drained and depressed and ugh, so I'm writing this because it feels vaguely like I'm getting somewhere.

I talk about being tired all the time, yet write obnoxiously long posts despite it, and it's because these are generally cathartic mind dumps, not really creative efforts; I don't have to come up with anything new. It's so much easier to tell a story that happened to you than to make one up, don't you think?



I wrote in the previous post about how I was thinking of changing the main character of... whatever this game is called now. Memody: Sindrel Song, I suppose. MSS. Seems weird not referring to it as Sindrel Song, after doing so for months. Maybe I'll keep referring to it as that anyway. I've gone along with the changes that I talked about, including redesigning the protagonist, who now looks like this:



It turned out better than expected! She has a distinct feel to her that I wasn't exactly going for, but which I'm content to keep. She brings to mind the sort of eccentric apparently young woman who'd be into Mother Nature-based witchcraft, folk wisdom, and magic crystals... The character ∞ Magrat ∞ from Discworld is the same archetype, which will mean nothing to you unless you've read those books. But maybe you have! I wasn't deliberately aiming for that character type, but I don't mind that it turned out that way. I'm wondering what exactly contributes to that impression. Probably the hair?

Speaking of the hair, it's based on two things: The wavy bits at either side of her face are ∞ quarter rests ∞ from music notation ("musical silence", which is kind of like the life/death contrast the game constantly explores). The curls on her forehead and the shape of the back are both reminiscent of the letter M, which is a silly thing I like to do with characters (see the armoured and ∞ Taming Dreams version ∞ of Mardek, or ∞ Bartholio ∞, for example!). I also like that there's a gap at the back, as if something's missing or wrong, which goes with the 'defective mind' thing. Plus it looks novel, distinct to this character, not too generic.

Sindrels' symboliotes are generally the same colour as their gems, but hers has purple petals, again to suggest the 'defectiveness'. A golden core surrounded by darkness. Glimmer's design was dominated by purple, but Memody's uses both the theme colours for what I feel is a far more interesting look. Her skirt has six 'petals' like the aster motif. The holes in the shoulders and chest parts of her top mostly just add visual interest, especially the yellow accent of her gem poking through. She earns a new piece of clothing from each wintrel when completing their song; the ones from Dolour, the character who's now called Vivace, and Hearth aren't included here (they're jewellery), but the scarf - river-like and giving the impression of constriction, while also protecting from the cold of winter - is from Course, of course.

Does that scarf look blue to you? It ∞ unequivocally is ∞, but It looks subtly but pleasingly teal to me. Similarly, the hair is actually ∞ a muted shade of orange ∞, but in the context of the whole palette it looks distinctly yellow (to me at least!). A warm yellow, a joy to look at. Using a 'truer' yellow looks like an unpleasant acidic green, I feel. Overall she looks vibrant and alive to me and I like it.



So that's done. I also added a new intro in the form of a wordless tutorial, where you're presented with gameplay before any dialogue or story. I talked about that last time, and it didn't take long to add. I feel it's improved the player's entry into the experience immensely. I keep wanting to play it!

Now all that's left is some dialogue. I've written most of it, but I've been uncertain - again - about the themes I'm exploring. Insecurity, mental illness. The story necessarily isn't very long, and it feels like there's insufficient buildup for anything, but the main issue is that some bits are feeling uncomfortably real. Like they hit too close to home, in a way that'd perhaps be off-putting to people. The protagonist talking to herself about the pain she's in because of intrusive negative thoughts, for example.

I think I've found a solution for it though: absurdity.

Early on, Memody says something to one of the other wintrels that she immediately regrets due to the cold response it gets. She feels rejected, ignorant, and her symboliote brings this up as a memory again and again for why she's socially inept and nobody could like her. It hurts her when this comes up, fuels self-loathing. In itself, that's already quite iffy; who'd want to read her own mind senselessly tearing her apart over something that doesn't even matter?

But I feel it could work if it was ridiculous. For example, instead of just saying "[that person] must hate me!" or whatever, she could think:

"What I said was so stupid that they've surely drawn a picture of me and have been just pointing and laughing at it for several hours!!"
"That seems unlikely!"
"Yes because they had to burn the picture after a few seconds because they couldn't stand to be around even a not-real version of me!!!"

It's kind of like what the neurotic mind does anyway: it invents exaggerated, highly negative scenarios and the anxiety largely comes from them. So if they're really stupid scenarios that Memody's mind frets about, people who actually do have those anxiety issues would relate to them, I'd hope, but even people who don't would at least hopefully get a laugh out of it.

I'd been feeling very "eeeehhhh" about the dialogue, but when I had that realisation, it was like a light bulb lit up, like I could actually get this idea working after all. I need to revise some of what I've already got with this in mind, but it's much easier to edit what's already there than to create from nothing, so that shouldn't take too long.

I've been thinking of other famous characters who are defined by comical exaggeration of what might typically be seen as negative or mentally disordered traits. ∞ Eeyore ∞ and ∞ Marvin the Paranoid Android ∞ are both ridiculously depressive, but they're so constantly depressed about everything that they became memorable and appealing because of it (Marvin moreso for people who are fans of his world probably, though I do like Eeyore myself). Interestingly, the Wikipedia article for Marvin says "Adams also admitted that Marvin is part of a long line of literary depressives, such as A. A. Milne's Eeyore or Jacques in Shakespeare's As You Like It, and even owes something to Adams's own periods of depression." The character GlaDOS from Portal also comes to mind. She's acerbic rather than depressive, but she's appealing despite insulting and threatening the player constantly because it's so caricatured. Perhaps it's because of a lack of surprise; you already know they're going to say something dismal/mean, so the humour comes from the specific details, nothing's unpleasantly surprising. We feel fear and are repulsed - creeped out - when we encounter someone and we don't know what they'll do or say next.

I doubt that what I can write will be comparable to characters like that, but I feel I have a direction to aim in now, more clearly than before.



Speaking of dialogue, I'm considering adding two different modes: the normal STORY mode, and another called something like ARCADE. In Story mode, there'd be a lot of dialogue, as planned, but Arcade would have none; you'd just play each song back-to-back, aiming for nothing except a high score.

I'm unsure whether or not it'd be worth the effort though. I can see it being appealing to people who'd be put off by any reading at all, or by the narrative themes, but also to people who might already have completed the story mode but want to just dive into some gameplay for a few minutes for the entertainment of it, or to show someone else.



Finally: this game is almost done, but is now a bad time to be releasing it into the world? I get the impression that people are busy with things. There seem to be university exams and dissertations due around this time, Easter is a holiday, Avengers: Endgame is coming out soon and seems like it'll occupy the entertainment part of many people's minds for a while (I won't actually be able to see it until it comes out on DVD, to my great annoyance)... A new series of Game of Thrones started recently too, or so I've heard.

Obviously people have space in their mind and time for multiple things, but I think there are times where there's plenty to fill those spaces and less of a desire to seek out or accept the novel and unusual. These blog posts have been getting fewer and fewer views, I've noticed, and it could be because it's not very interesting reading thousands of words about the minutiae of developing some eccentric game, but it could also be because it's a busy time. My world's the same as always since I'm so disconnected from the main one, though, so I'm only guessing here.

I'm wondering whether it's best to wait a short while before releasing it, but I don't know. There are probably statistics about the best and worst release dates that I could look up when senseless anxiety isn't preventing me from doing so.

It might be irrelevant anyway because I'll only be starting testing soon, and that might itself take a few weeks. Hopefully not, but if there are big things testers are unhappy with, I'll have to make big changes, so... I'll have to wait and see how it turns out, I suppose.