Arianna Ravioli spelunks the spotless mind in Will Die Alone
The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, nearly 400 of which are independent video games, all sold for just $60. I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.
Arianna Ravioli’s game Will Die Alone is short but provocative. You play a professional memory eraser who can’t leave, and you must read case files and decide which key memory to erase in each client. There is, well, also a cruel twist. You’ll see! The game is really polished and will even be released on Nintendo Switch soon.
How long have you been making games?
I’ve been making games for almost 2 years.
What tools do you like to use?
I mainly use Unity and a lot of Google docs.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I’m very into narrative games. I usually get really into different themes depending on what is going on in my life but lately, I’m really into memories and experiences that shape who we are.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
My favorite is the creation of the world, the lore, and the story itself. Those are very important to me and it’s also very important how I decide to tell them. My least favorite would be the programming side of it, but the reason could also be that I just need more practice with it!
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
I think the last game that affected me was The Last of Us Part II with its story but also What Remains of Edith Finch left some pretty strong emotions in me.
Will Die Alone is a dystopian work simulator. What inspired you to make it?
It was inspired by a music album called Everywhere At The End Of Time by the Caretaker. It’s an album of 6 hours about the different stages of dementia. There is a specific song called “A Confusion So Thick You Forget Forgetting” that made me think about how important are our memories and how they truly make us who we are. What kind of person are you if you don’t even remember your entire life?
How did you map out which memories were “right” and which were “wrong” to delete? [Editor’s note: I did not do well at this game.]
That required a lot of playtesting for sure. Will Die Alone started as a university project so it was “easy” to find the first playtesters. I usually started with my idea of what was “wrong” and what was “right” and created a Google doc with the client’s file. After that, I’d send it to the playtesters without telling them anything except what their “job” was. After seeing the results that thankfully were almost all positive, I changed some sentences or bios to make it easier to find the “right” one while still balancing the entire file so it wouldn’t be super clear and easy to do.
The game begins with a leader threatening the main character’s family. What was it like to design this dystopian world?
It was interesting to think and write about a world in which people want to forget memories so bad that they’re ready to risk their entire life for it (even if they don’t know how bad it is). To plan the lore of the world I wrote a short story to show how everything started. It was important to me to show both side, the people against it and the ones that wanted this world. The idea of forcing Alex to accept the job was all based on the fact that the CEO of this company is just very greedy and full of himself. Everyone has to agree with him no matter what.
In the followup section, we see a happy couple who met because of memory deletion. How did you decide to include this other side?
The other side came later during the process of the game. After finishing Alex’s story I felt like there was still more to write about the world. I thought it would have been interesting to include the other side of the coin, the people that LOVE this company. So I decided to connect it to the main story, making the main character Alex’s boss Tom, and show how the company was at the start. People didn’t know the consequences and went to delete memories of the silliest problems. In that way, I was able to introduce the protests and give a bit of a back story of how the company went downhill with all the wrong memories problems.
What was it like preparing the game for consoles?
To prepare it for consoles I had the amazing help of a local Italian publisher called Fantastico Studio. After I self-published the game last year they reached out to me to bring it to consoles and little me that grew up with console games is very excited to see the game there!
