This game was born on a long journey home from a graveyard shift, when I was listening to the soundtrack for the Mortal Kombat (1995) movie and noticing it sounded similar to the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines videogame soundtrack. I thought: what if I made a game that was basically vampire Mortal Kombat? But after mulling over the possibilities, I felt I needed a more emotionally compelling throughline. I thought about undead characters in Mortal Kombat, particularly Scorpion and his story about revenge. Vampires who were driven to endlessly seek violent revenge, to draw others' blood in battle for their own survival...now that was a premise I could work with.
I considered several systems to make DEBT OF BLOODFIEND in, including MÖRK BORG, Under Heaven, Underworld (天下江湖), Commons Rider (公地骑士), and Karanduun. Then I realized I actually wanted something less expansive, less action-oriented, and more psychological. I wanted something that could really cut to the heart of being responsible for advancing your own destruction and calling that play. Secession Cycles' EVERYTHINGISOVER was exactly what I was looking for. The game broke my heart the first time I read it, and I was convinced it was the perfect system to write DEBT OF BLOODFIEND in.
With a background swapping mechanic inspired by Annalise, and character creation questions inspired by The Skeletons and Mutant Monster Machine Girls, DEBT OF BLOODFIEND is an iterative, multiplayer hack of EVERYTHINGISOVER where players fight to recover their characters' memories one torturous word at a time. As they piece each word together, they will begin to decipher one version their characters' forgotten origins--only to confront another version in a different cycle of recovery. It's the most tragic game I've ever written, and I hope it will move you as much as it did me during its creation.
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