Raptor Boyfriend’s spot-on rural ’90s high school — just add cryptids
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.
Rocket Adrift — Lindsay Rollins, Sloane Smith, and Titus McNally — made the 2021 dating sim Raptor Boyfriend. In the game, you guide Stella through a difficult senior year at a new school, in a small town inexplicably filled with cryptids. Stella can romance three cryptid characters, each of whom has a relatable (sometimes…symbolically) backstory and rich inner life.
How long have you been making games?
We started with our first project Order A Pizza: A Visual Novel in 2019. It was made during the month of March for the visual novel game jam NanoReno.
What tools do you like to use?
We used Photoshop for design, Clip Studio for drawing, Moho 13 for animation, and Ren’Py engine for Raptor Boyfriend. However, for our next game we are switching to Gamemaker Studio 2 and Aseprite for artwork and animation.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
We gravitate towards small, intimate stories about people and their relationships. In Raptor Boyfriend we wanted to explore aspects of mental health, codependency and social anxiety. We feel a certain affinity for these issues as we have lived them ourselves.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
Lindsay: My favorite part is when all our creative work comes together with every new build. The most rewarding feeling! My least favorite is probably the administrative/financial aspect of running the studio. Very taxing!
Titus: My favorite part is the beginning. Everything is pure potential. My least favorite part is the end, right before launch and even afterwards. You are just putting out fires and fixing bugs.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
Lindsay: Yes, I’ve actually gone back and started playing The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and was blown away by the design and pacing of the story, as well as the looping story lines. We definitely are interested in borrowing from that mechanic for our next game.
Titus: I absolutely loved the Forgotten City. It really reminded me of the power of characters and storytelling.
Raptor Boyfriend posits a world where cryptids exist and you can date them. How did the idea come to be?
The idea actually came to us as a running joke that included imagining a version of Twilight where Edward Cullen and Jacob Black were actually hideous monsters instead of movie-attractive boys. Like, what if Bella had to choose between a dinosaur and a Sasquatch?
We liked the idea so much that we had planned to make it into an animated YouTube series at first, but then we pivoted to video games and it quickly became a visual novel project instead.
The 90s setting works so nicely here with the upstairs phone and answering machine. Why did you set it there?
We wanted to have the story exist in a world before cell phones and instant messaging partly because of the nostalgia factor, but also because we wanted the player to be able to engage with the love interests in a way that felt more personal than sending an IM. We also wanted to avoid having to design a smartphone UI, since it would have been an involved process with Ren’Py.
We wanted to capture that intimate feeling of talking to your crush on an old phone in your room at night.
Ladle feels so much like my real small hometown. Which of you is behind this almost documentary depiction?
Sloane: That’s me haha. I grew up in a really small town, so I wanted to try to represent what it’s like to be a teen in a small town with not much to do accurately. One of the important locations for me is Stella’s truck. Most of my time at that age was spent driving around and desperately trying to find a place to hang out with my friends. “The Lake” was also inspired by a place teens would hang out at in my hometown. All that was there was a picnic bench, a barrel for garbage, and unfortunately no lake.
I liked the realistic way tragedy has touched almost everyone in Ladle. What was it like writing the arcs from sadness to joy for these characters?
Lindsay: It was definitely a process. We had re-written the entire game twice before we were satisfied with the narrative! It was also the part that took the largest amount of development time. It is so easy to underestimate the amount of time and work that goes into writing and narrative design, but we knew we couldn’t settle for first draft writing.
Titus: We really wanted to take the player on an emotional rollercoaster, because that felt the most true to a special high school romance that you would remember for the rest of your life.
My favorite is Day, but who would any of you most like to drive out of town with at the end of the game?
Lindsay: I’m definitely a Taylor stan. I’m a sucker for anyone who plays guitar. Also piercing blue eyes and quiet, shy bois lol.
Sloane: Day, 100%. But I’m biased because I wrote most of that route haha
Titus: It’s called Raptor Boyfriend for a reason. What other game can you date a rad 90s teen raptor?
