Jeff based A Nightmare’s Trip on a real trip — and a fantasy multiverse
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.
A Nightmare’s Trip is a visual novel about the fursonification of a nightmare who gets out of the game and decides to see the world. Adrien meets a cast of wild characters from around the multiverse, and all the while they do the same stuff as regular Earth travelers. (Or, well, Earth travelers in 2019.)
How long have you been making games?
I’ve been making games since…2015? I had the drive in early high school to start making stuff, so…I did! My first projects were all RPG Maker games, and you can actually play a remastered version of my first ever game release here. Our next game is actually a re-imagining of that project!
What tools do you like to use?
We used Ren’py for A NIGHTMARE’S TRIP, which was nice when it came to quickly implementing the game’s script. All of our other projects since have been built in GameMaker Studio 2, which allows us the flexibility to play in a multitude of genres. I definitely will miss how fast it took to implement all the text, although I won’t miss the trouble it took for us to program the UI!
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I really like to explore stories about characters connecting with things in a new, exciting way. That could be someone visiting a place for the first time, befriending someone new, or exploring a forgotten past! “Connection” has been the embodiment of our PROJECT NATURA series, and I really want our works to center around the feeling of intimate discovery with the world and people around you.
For genres, we want to try all sorts of different things for each project — we’ve done visual novels, idle clickers, now we’re doing a full on point-n-click adventure game…maybe we’ll get to try something of the action / rpg kind in the future too! I don’t like to stay contained to one type of experience for long if I can help it — I’m someone that’s down to play all sorts of games, so extending that to our design ethos will be cool. Our emphasis on narrative and characters will probably be the big thing grounding our projects together, even if what we do may be wildly different from project to project.
This is to say, if we were to make, say, A NIGHTMARE’S TRIP 2, it would have a very different approach to design (it’d still be a VN, though! but it’d be a lot less focused on subtle changes and on allowing the player to direct moment-to-moment story sequences).
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
Whew, definitely a loaded question. Every day I bounce back between loving the work I do in games and other times loathing it. Getting to collaborate with friends is probably when I have the most fun with game development — just sitting in calls, yelling about stuff like Pokemon and the like while building out levels is so chill! Other times it can be a collective stressfest.
Programming gets me really concentrated, so I enjoy that as well, but sometimes I’d rather just focus on writing out the narrative and story for the project on a slow night! On the other hand, as the writer for all these games, I’ll admit that being stuck in a writer’s block is probably the most nightmarish thing about these kinds of projects. Most of ANT’s script was written in one weekend, despite having already spent a few months on it. Sometimes it just doesn’t come together till a lot later than you’d like, haha.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
I’ve gone on record for saying this before, but Chicory: A Colorful Tale was definitely a game that came at the right place, right time. I went through a total burnout after the Kickstarter of another project I’m working on, UNBEATABLE, wrapped up and I haven’t experienced anything before or after that really resonated with my anxieties of being a creator. It’s a really empowering game, the kind of thing that made me remember why I love making games in the first place, and how much I should cherish the ability to do this as a full-time gig while I still can.
A Nightmare’s Trip is such a great idea — a retired nightmare sees the world. How did you come up with it?
The game was inspired by a trip I took in the Summer of 2019! I wanted to make a little game out of a trip to see family in Taiwan. Most of the backgrounds in the game were photos taken from that trip, including a few shots I took of my brief stay in Tokyo during the vacation! Adrien was modeled after the anxieties I had of traveling across the world for the first time in nearly a decade. I wrote portions of the script during the trip and wrapped up the project with my friends Moxie, Christina, Sonde, Evan, and Ruky after I got home.
What’s sort of the back-of-the-napkin explanation for the multiverses in this world?
This is something we want to cover in other games we’re working on, so I can’t share too many details about this right now. What I’ll say is that Natura is kind of treated as a “default” destination point for those who survive the death of their home universes. SPACE / MECH / PILOT [Editor’s note: also in the bundle!] teased at some of that stuff, and the next game will fully explore it!
I was delighted that main character Adrien, the nightmare, is just another tired airline traveler. How did you balance the fantastic and the mundane?
I love tapping into that modern fantasy aesthetic, and what really makes that kind of world work is the ability to place fantastical characters and concepts in somewhat mundane scenarios. It also makes for great comedy! Seeing funny, fantastical creatures get lost in malls, going through disappointingly trashy night markets, and going through the equivalent of a TSA checkpoint makes stuff a lot more fun and fluffy. A NIGHTMARE’S TRIP was an opportunity to really explore the everyday life of characters in our world, even if they’re someone you’d see in a RPG or more action-heavy narrative.
The character designs are all wonderful. (I think Gangle is the best.) Do you have a favorite?
It’s honestly hard to pick a favorite! I did enjoy writing Bartholomew the most, though. Sonde designed him, and I worked with very limited notes on who he actually is as a character, so I ended up turning a very serious character into a goofy oddball. Oops!
Do the choices in the game affect the outcomes? I got a really nice ending but realized maybe it’s not the only one!
Choices in the game affect the story in subtle ways — especially in Chapter 5. If you didn’t befriend a character, they just don’t show up in the whole chapter. There’s different outcomes if you befriend everyone in a run or befriend nobody, so I definitely recommend exploring them! In addition, there’s some minor alterations to the script and different outcomes from choices based on the decisions you pick in the opening.
