Hello, cozy coven!
We have another blog post for you today, covering a topic we get asked about ✨a lot✨.
The question: Why can't I create and customize my own character to be in Wylde Flowers?
The tl;dr is:
🌸 Wylde Flowers is Tara’s story, from Tara’s perspective
🌸 Tara being set allowed us to create a cast of fully realized characters
🌸 Tara has her own specific voice actor
The longer version is this blog post. 💖
Wylde Flowers is a farm and life sim in many ways, but at its core was designed as a narrative game that tells a strong, emotional story that deals with real-world themes. To successfully blend farming simulation gameplay with a story focus our team intentionally breaking some conventions you might be used to seeing in-game a.k.a making your own character.
Wylde Flowers opted to create a set protagonist, Tara Wylde, who you as the player will control for the duration of the game. Having a set protagonist helped in a huge way to make our world and its characters feel real and interesting.
I had the opportunity to talk to Wylde Flowers’ Narrative Director Desiree Cifre about why this choice was made, and how it allows for deeper storytelling. Enjoy! 🌸
Audrey: Can you give me a brief glimpse into what it was like to design the narrative for Wylde Flowers? What makes it unique in the life sim genre?
Desiree: Wylde Flowers checks a lot of the boxes of the cozy life sim genre, like a cute art style and gameplay centered on restoring a farm. What sets it apart is the depth of the story and characters. Alex and Amanda told me that while they wanted the game to be approachable for casual players, they also wanted the world to be populated with characters that felt like real people, and for the story to focus on real-world themes. I spent a lot of time when I first started working on the game writing in-depth bios for all of the characters, and connecting their backstories to the major themes of the game. We ended up with 70 pages of just the bios before any dialogue was written, and that's not including the fae characters who were added later! Our cast is very diverse, and with the coven, I wanted to include different witchcraft traditions from around the world, so it was a lot of research.
Audrey: Players in this genre are used to being able to customize their character - can you tell me about why we chose to have a set protagonist for Wylde Flowers?
Desiree: In order to make the non-player characters feel like real people, the first thing we had to do was break with genre convention by making the player character an authored protagonist. The downside of a player-generated protagonist is that NPCs have to be written as broadly as possible to account for the wide range of choices the player might make. The NPCs can have quirky personalities and catchphrases but they can't have specific responses to the player character's traits. You are limited in what the NPCs can say because they have to be written in a way that says very little about the player character. Making Tara an authored character opened up a lot more possibilities for how they could relate to her, and the history they might share with her and with her grandmother, Hazel.
Audrey: How does having Tara as the set protagonist affect the romance in the game?
Desiree: Making Tara an authored character also made the romance in the game feel more realistic, because it allowed the NPCs to have set sexual orientations. Tara can only date characters who are into women her age, and she although that might be limiting it also gives the player the sense that the NPCs are real people with agency and preferences. It was definitely controversial for some players - sorry Violet and Thomas shippers! - but we think in the end it makes the romances feel more satisfying. The NPCs are choosing Tara as much as she is choosing them.
Big thanks to Desiree for all of her insight and for letting us get a glimpse of the process of writing Wylde Flowers! 🌈
Please feel free to let us know in the comments if you have any further topics you’d like us to cover about Wylde Flowers! 🌸
✨ Audrey and the Studio Drydock Team
Keep up with everything Wylde Flowers by following our channels! ✨
Discord: https://discord.gg/QdrMPAcYpx
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StudioDrydock
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wyldeflowers
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiodrydock/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WyldeFlowersGame/
Wylde Flowers Wiki: https://wylde-flowers.fandom.com/wiki/Wylde_Flowers_Wiki
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896700/Wylde_Flowers/