Hello, all you prospective detective assistants! My name is Sci and I am the weird lady behind Drone Garden Studios. I've been writing visual novels (and RPGs and narrative adventures, but mostly visual novels) for a couple of years now. I started as a way to keep myself busy/working during certain lockdown periods and just...sort of...didn't stop. It's a very fun side hustle.
Clash: Robot Detective was first released in September 2021. It's a mystery/sci-fi visual novel about a robot detective who hires an unwary human (that's you, the player!) to help him solve a mystery onboard a high-tech cruise ship. If it sounds like a strange premise, that is because it was inspired by a couple of different dreams I had that same year that would not leave my head.
The game was a success on itch.io! Or at least, a success by my margin. Good reviews from users, nice rankings in game jams, things like that. But most importantly, I was happy with it. Clash ended up being my favorite character I'd created. I wrote a couple of interactive fiction mini-sequels just to keep working on his characterization. I ended up expanding on the original game by adding those sequels into it, as well as other assorted goodies (hence, the "Complete Edition" subtitle). And again, people seemed to like him as much as I did.
I wanted to share him with a wider audience. Which meant...*gulp*...coming to Steam. No matter how intimidating that was.
And now we're here.
A big theme (for lack of a better term) of Clash is player choice. Taking inspiration from RPG speech checks, the player can affect the flow of the story by building up and testing their stats. These stats affect two big plot twists: who the culprit is and what kind of detective Clash becomes. You can check on these stats at any time by clicking the "Personality Traits" button, which was a feature added simply because I like being able to look at my stats.
This can end up creating a strange turn of events. During a testing playthrough of mine, everything was pointing towards (SPOILER CHARACTER 1) being the culprit. But halfway through, I decided to try building different stats...which led to the reveal that (SPOILER CHARACTER 2) had done it the whole time! Also, Clash yelled at me due to the other set of stats I had built up. :-( But still, it created an interesting way to have a mystery unfold.
Something else I wanted to explore was robotic sentience. Yes, its cliche. But I love stories where a robot gains self-awareness. Especially when the robot chooses to use that self-awareness to help rather than harm. And Clash is still learning. He's trying to figure out how life works. He wants to help but can't figure out what the (censor) everyone's problem is. He's tired and confused, but he refuses to give up. He's sarcastic, but he has a heart of gold. Possibly literally.
Even though he is not the playable character, he's the main character. And I wanted to create a main character that people could root for. And I think I succeeded. Maybe too well, because I have it on good authority that some people want to kiss him. Okay, but I saw him first.
Next time, I'll talk a little bit more about the bonus episode and the behind-the-scenes trivia sequence that are included with the game. Those are fun. :-)