Feral Cat Den here!
It’s summer in NYC and we’re enjoying the sunny days. No Man is even cutting loose!
We’ve been making good (if slow) progress. In our previous post, we wrote about the great feedback we got from the new trio of writers we brought on to Nirvana Noir. Their main focus was the start of the game, and finding ways to build emotion, clarity, concision, and mystery in a quick set up.
Reexamining these initial scenes has been a lot of work but unlocked so much! The process of refining the set up has made the later game revelations much sharper, deepened No Man’s emotional arc, established new visual shorthands, and refined UX for interactions.
In this post, we want to share some of these refinements with you!
The Set Up
In the previous post we shared an initial prototype of No Man’s decision that leads to his split life - whether to step through Miss Mass’ door and consummate an affair that ends with a tragic gunshot or to walk away into lonely alcohol and failure.
The player must choose the affair or to leave, but No Man’s indecision causes the game to undo the player’s action. Getting the subversion of your choice to feel clear and fun took some iteration. Here are a few different prototypes:
In addition to the interaction, we’ve added visual feedback to differentiate the choices.
We’re also teaming up with a talented animator we met at the Annecy Film Festival while exhibiting the Nirvana Noir demo - David Cisneros. David is a Gobelins trained animator who specializes in character acting and has credits on some amazing projects like Primal Season 3. Since this door scene is the player’s introduction to No Man, the acting needs to blow players' socks off and leave them excited to go on No Man’s adventures. Here’s a taste of the acting refinement’s David is creating:
Black Rapture
We made two small tweaks to The Wrecking Ball to strengthen relationships.
Originally No Man was thrown out of the club at Miss Mass’ direction. The woman scorned wasn’t happy the man who rejected scurrying around her club. But even after adding more details that depicts No Man’s relationship with her, the focus of Nirvana Noir isn’t Miss Mass, so her sudden antagonism wasn’t landing.
We’ve instead made No Man get tossed out by the developers after they discover him not working on their clocktower.
Giving No Man a mask to blend into the party, making the unveiling of the completed clocktower the climax of the party, and simplifying No Man’s relationship with Miss Mass have all been big wins.
While revisiting the Wrecking Ball masquerade, we discovered a perfect reference from the 1931 Beaux-Arts Ball. Check out these amazing building costumes worn by the architect who designed the real building!
We never stumbled on this bit of history when we first started concepting The Wrecking Ball. Finding such a perfect reference years later is so rewarding!
Constant Testament
This timeline begins with No Man in jail and being recruited to be a criminal informant by Detective Dawn and Dusk. In the original scene, all the set up happens in a police interrogation room.
But there’s a lot to establish here! Even with the help of the writers to condense the exposition, it’s still a lot to take in. Greg’s solution was to break up the information into scenes.
Like No Man wearing a mask at The Wrecking Ball, this tweak also led us to an obvious and powerful costume change. No Man is in prison? He should be wearing stripes! A perfect costume to establish No Man’s troubles (and a nice representation of BR/CT).
No Man being given his clothes is also a powerful moment. Reclaiming his identity, but what’s the catch?
Greg also added some flashbacks to the night of Miss Mass and Golden Boy’s death and No Man’s imprisonment. The player experiences these pivotal moments, they don’t just hear about them while sitting in the interrogation room.
Until next time!
PS: Bonus inspiration! We’ve been enjoying this album by Eden Ahbez. We first heard this music in an episode of Fargo, and fell in love with it. The story of Eden is also fascinating - starting with life on an orphan train and living the hippy lifestyle in the 1940s.