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Lock & Key Progress Update - July 2024
🕑 Added 2024-08-02 17:00:08 +0000 UTCHello again, Magical Girls! It’s Rachel here again with another Lock and Key update. As we close in on our Kickstarter launch date, we’ve been spending our time finalizing the new assets and structural changes to the revamped demo as well as getting a few little extra goodies for the campaign page! They’re still in the works at the moment, but we’ll be sure to share them once they’re ready to go.
As we look toward the beginning of the campaign, we’re also taking time to do the reverse and look back on the game’s endings. I don’t want to spoil how many we’ve got planned, but I will say that it’s more than 2 and less than 100. Easy guessing range!
Writing endings is tricky, especially when there’s more going on than a simple “good ending vs. bad ending” situation. We’ve got our “true” ending, of course, just like HOTW did, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to everyone living happily ever after. In the same vein, the other endings needed to be more than just “everyone is miserable forever and everything sucks” because, to be frank, that would be super boring! That leaves us with a lot of middle ground to cover, and with two separate axes of choices to combine, it allows us to cover more ground than you might expect.
As we’ve said before, Lock and Key’s story and the characters’ ultimate fate are determined by how the player perceives Magical Girls’ roles in the world as well as how the player defines “justice.” Pessimism breeds pessimism, realism breeds realism, etc. etc. etc. These choices aren’t always obvious, and the player will be asked to look inside themselves and decide what they really believe rather than picking what seems like the “right” answer. Just like Magical Girls themselves, you’ll have to follow your heart!
I have my own opinions about both matters, of course, and every major character in the story carries some element of that belief. That said, I didn’t want any of them to be a pure mouthpiece; those beliefs are part of larger worldviews, many of which directly contrast with one another. Maintaining that contrast within the context of each ending was a tall order, but I found myself ultimately enjoying the challenge. It was a bit weird to write one ending where characters ended up just fine before opening another document and writing an ending where some characters very much do not end up fine, but in some ways it feels rather…freeing. Rather than having to sacrifice all of my ending ideas by tossing everything but one out the window, it gave me the chance to end the story in all the various ways that came up during our early outlining sessions. Sometimes the struggle is its own reward.
With all these paths in mind, I ended up writing a game that I think is meant to be played multiple times. As such, the choices can significantly alter the scene in which they take place rather than just counting as a point towards a specific ending. Different worldviews, different beliefs, different ideals…in the end, that desire to understand other people’s perspectives is what will give the player their most enjoyable and replayable experience. With the endings currently in the epilogue stage, we’re almost ready with every last detail. I hope you’re looking forward to exploring everything this world has to offer!
Love,
Rachel
Comments
SparkiestSparky
So HOTW is in my top three VNs. That being said, the choice system in that one really bothered me. I could see the reasoning behind it all, but having three endings based only on two choices didn’t give the player enough time or context to truly see where things were heading. On the other side, we have Without a Voice which gave the player more time and a better idea of what each choice may lead to, or at a minimum its effects on the characters. How do you see Lock and Key developing so far in that respect? Does the player have more agency? Thanks for the update and everything you do. I love everything Elan and the Bellhouse produces.
