Behind the Scenes with NoBread Studio
NoBread Studio is a small team made up of friends making games together with their specialization being in mystery visual novels. Their first game was SoulSet, a mystery and romance visual novel where you find yourself stuck in a mansion with five mysterious strangers. Now, Nayru, Xolf, and KleeBentz are preparing to release the much-anticipated mystery horror game The Elevator Game with Catgirls, a visual novel inspired by the Korean urban legend "Elevator to Another World." Today, we sat down with two members of NoBread Studio, Nayru and Xolf, to talk a bit about their games, the mystery and horror, and more!
Hello! Can you tell us a bit about who you are and how you got into game development?
Nayru: Hi! I’m Nayru, a silly creative girl from Poland who dropped out of college to pursue her gamedev dreams! :D I fell in love with video games when I was barely five years old, and it’s been that one thing in my life that I’ve always been passionate about, but never really believed it was something within my reach to pursue. It was only when I was having my first serious life crisis, that MstMori reached out to me and asked “Hey Nayru, how about we try making that game you always wanted to make”? And that’s how SoulSet came to be!
MstMori is a very good friend of mine that I met during one of the Manga & Anime meetings that took place in our city back in the day, and originally NoBreadStudio was just the two of us. It was somewhere half-way through SoulSet’s development that Marcianek offered to help us with the exterior background art, since we were struggling to meet deadlines. Xolf wrote an email to me after playing SoulSet with just some proof-reading feedback originally, and we somehow clicked so well that we’re currently writing game scripts together! :) And lastly, KleeBentz is a friend I knew back from college (similarly to Marcianek) that proposed making a short project together after we finished Blankspace… Well, I’m starting to learn that I’m terrible at making short projects.
But we’re not kidding when we say “we’re just a group of friends making games”. Our core team has changed with each project so far, but the rotation stays, and I suppose I’m the lead keeping it all together.
Your team really loves the mystery genre, as indicated by your numerous titles and your description on itch! Can you tell us what made you all fall in love with the genre?
Nayru: Short answer: 999. It’s the very first mystery visual novel I played, and it blew my mind so much, it left me in awe. I became fascinated with the emotions it made me feel. It was an experience that left a huge impact on my view of games, and the relative simplicity of it made me realize you don’t really need photorealistic 3D graphics and dynamic gameplay to tell a good story. It seemed like something more within reach. Ever since, I’ve been wondering whether I can ever make something that would make another person feel in a similar way I did when I got to experience such a thrilling mystery. It’s one of the main reasons why I want to keep making them. There’s a handful of games out there that make me think “Wow, I’m glad to be alive just to experience something like this”, and I greatly cherish every single one of them. Games can be a very powerful medium, and I’m happy whenever people can see and acknowledge that. Games are awesome!
I’m not really sure whether MstMori shares my sentiments regarding mystery games in the same capacity, but I can definitely say that the rest of the NoBread team can very much appreciate well-written characters and a good story. :)
Xolf: I really like it when things make me think, when I need to put pieces together and make sense of something, when I need to engage fully rather than being a passive observer being spoon fed the story. And what genre does that better than a mystery?
While we're on the topic, in your opinion, what makes for a good mystery? What advice do you have for developers who wish to make their own mystery game?
Nayru: That’s a tricky one! If I had to pinpoint something, I’d say dropping subtle hints throughout the story, and leaving the players to gradually make sense of the pieces is a good way for engagement. Something weird happens? Why is a character acting the way they are? Don’t reveal the answer right away. Also: know your characters in and out, and keep in mind what they know at all times. I don’t want to go into spoiler territory, but what really helped me in writing SoulSet’s routes and timeline, is that I kept track of both Mariko’s and Marco’s points of view throughout the whole game as I went along. The game is designed in such a way that one of them is able to experience things out of order, while the other experiences them in a linear way. It starts making sense once it does. Second tip: you don’t have to explain absolutely everything. Sometimes it’s better to leave hints and let people come up with their own theories instead of spoiling the whole thing for them. I can quote David Lynch on this one, because I whole-heartedly agree with him in this regard: “When something is revealed, it becomes a fact and there is no uncertainty about it. (...) Everybody holds the key to unlock the mystery, so why should I unlock it for them?”
NoBread Studio’s first release was SoulSet, a mystery and romance visual novel where you find yourself trapped in an eerie mansion with five other individuals who claim that they lost their memories. What was it like working on your first game and what lessons did you learn from making SoulSet?
Nayru: When we started working on SoulSet, both MstMori and I had pretty much no idea what we were doing. I had zero coding experience, but I was determined to learn. MstMori had little experience in drawing, but he wanted to draw. It took us two years of dedicated hard work, and there was never any guarantee that what we set out to do would even pay off. I can’t deny it’s been hard, and our morale wavered more than once. But it’s also been a lot of fun! I’ve never before felt so alive than when I was working on this game, and that’s how I knew I had found “the thing”. I designed most of the characters that appear in SoulSet when I was still back in highschool, so this was a very big passion project for me. I poured a lot of love into it, and despite my inexperience, I wanted to write a compelling mystery story, so I was working on the script itself longer than anything else. You can actually read more about that in the artbook we published alongside the game. :)
Blankspace was the studio’s second title. This escape room mystery focuses on Beryl and Chris. When it came to making an escape room game, what things did you have to think about?
Nayru: Blankspace started off as a solo project for me, so the biggest hurdle was that I had to do everything for it myself. And since I wanted to try pushing my limits by making something more complex than just a visual novel (like SoulSet), point-and-click seemed like the next reachable thing. I was also determined to learn Blender in order to make 3D backgrounds, because drawing them all instead would have taken me another lifetime. The first three days of trying to get a hang of the program were horrible, and I wanted to give up at many points, haha. ^^; But I took a step back, and then kept going, and getting better at it day by day. Eventually, it started getting fun! It took me two weeks to model the first room, but then barely two days to make the last one, so the learning curve was there. Coming up with the puzzles was tricky, since I didn’t want them to be too generic or too hard, and I used a mix of my own ideas and a lot of research I did for escape room puzzles. It was somewhere mid-way through development that Xolf, who was initially just a proof-reader for the game, became my co-writer. We both had a lot of cool ideas that worked together well, and Xolf definitely helped me out in fleshing out the characters a bit more. And while I took the majority of the game design and coding upon myself, it was Xolf who coded the most complex parts of the puzzles in the game - like the lock in the second room, or the color-coded box in the third. I owe him a great deal for the help!
Xolf: This was my first real foray into Ren'Py coding, and I'm eternally grateful to the many examples that are out there on the internet that I was able to use to understand how to achieve what I wanted to. The inventory system gave a real feeling of accomplishment when it actually worked, too! I'm immensely thankful to Nayru for inviting me into the project, and for being so open to bat ideas back and forth; ideas and writing meshed together so well and I really am proud of our "small, simple" project that ended up not being so small or simple :)
Rather than featuring a big cast like SoulSet did, Blankspace only had two central characters. What were the benefits and disadvantages to having a smaller cast compared to a larger one like in SoulSet?
Nayru: One of the biggest advantages is definitely not having to worry whether all characters end up having a similar amount of screen time, haha. ^^ The biggest disadvantage though, for me, is the fact that writing scenes that involve a bigger cast somehow comes more easily to me. But overall, writing character dialogue is what I feel I’m a lot more adept at than prose/descriptions, so working with six characters at a time or just two is equally fun in my book. This is also one of the main reasons why our games are usually so dialogue-heavy. The Elevator Game with Catgirls is going to be our first exception, as it has a lot of NVL/descriptive text.
Xolf: It's a curious exercise to write in such a limited environment; just two characters, two viewpoints, and so you really need your characters to be engaging and to interact with each other in an interesting way. I like to think we succeeded - but at the same time I think it would be difficult to write like that every time, and it's natural to seek variety. I rather doubt we'll ever have the same type of cast members for two games running. :)
NoBread Studio’s next release is The Elevator Game with Catgirls, a horror mystery visual novel. In this title, you play as Asahi, whose girlfriend, Kirin, disappears while trying out the Elevator Game, where if attempted, could disappear the player to another world. The demo and trailer was a lot darker than your previous games. Can you tell us how the concept for this game came about?
Nayru: Deep inside, I always knew I’d want to try dipping my toes in horror someday, since like the mystery genre, it was another one that I cherished. Psychological horror, in particular, was something I became fascinated with after playing Eternal Darkness for the Nintendo GameCube back in 2002. This might sound silly, but I drafted the plot outline for EGC while I was sitting in a train on my way to visit a friend. It was a spontaneous thought that ended up growing out of proportion - which was kind of similar to Blankspace’s conception, as I literally woke up one day with the idea stuck in my head and ended up writing down nine pages of ideas for it in a single go. Initially it was just a small thing I wanted to tackle together with KleeBentz for the Winter VN Jam 2020, but it quickly grew into something bigger. We already mentioned that it’s inspired by the Korean urban legend, Elevator to Another World, which I read a lot about on the internet throughout the years. I could probably list Silent Hill as another big inspiration, though it’s a bit less direct.
Horror is a tough genre to nail. How did you and the team approach this game compared to your other titles? Were there any aspects of the game in particular that you focused on to really make the player feel uneasy?
Nayru: Indeed it is! Like with most things in games, while one thing can be scary for one person, it might be totally anticlimactic to another. I learned that when you’re on the developer side and are aware of what's happening behind the scenes at all times, it’s particularly hard to tell whether something can be considered scary or not. If I had to point out one thing that can make or break a scene, it would definitely be the sound design. It’s essential for immersion, and even more so for horror, where it can build up tension and every single sound could hint at potential danger or scare. For this project in particular, I put in a lot of effort in choosing and implementing appropriate sound effects for all aspects of the game. There are over 200 sound files in the build!
Xolf: I have to agree, Nayru's done a cracking job finding the right sounds. There's one passage she asked me to write where the words were unsettling enough on their own, but my word, the sounds she found to accompany them... *shudder*
A Kickstarter was made for the game and it was successful! What do you think aided in its success? Any advice you wish to give to those wanting to use crowdfunding for their project?
Nayru: The low goal definitely helped us, first and foremost. We’re not that well known of a studio yet, and getting the word out is hard. Marketing is a black art we’re constantly struggling with. Whiteheart Woods was our second project after SoulSet, but it had a pretty ambitious funding goal and sadly didn't manage to reach that. For now, we’ve decided to try and concentrate on smaller projects (*cough*) where we can create almost all of them on our own, while gathering funds for the things we’re unable to do in-house - in both Blankspace’s and EGC’s case that was music, and now voice acting as well in EGC. If I had to give any crowdfunding tips, I’d say: start small, and start getting the word out as soon as possible. Exposure takes time, and your project will have a hard time getting funded if it just appears on Kickstarter out of the blue one day. From what I’ve seen, developers seem to underestimate the workload for their first projects in particular, and while I might point this out, I also came to realize that it’s something one needs to go through on their own in order to really understand it. We’ve been there, too. The key is not giving up!
Let’s have some fun! In your large cast of characters featured in the three different NoBreadStudio games, who would you play the Elevator Game with and why? And who wouldn’t you play it with?
Nayru: I wish! Unfortunately, the rules specify the Elevator Game should be played alone! :D Though if I were to overlook that, I’d definitely play it with either Marco or Shira, since I think they’d have the most smarts to outwit the rules. :) As for who I wouldn't play it with… probably a certain character from EGC, but mentioning them would be spoilers. ;)
For Marcianek, it depends on how she'd feel at the moment. Are we prioritizing survival and figuring out the mystery? Then Shira. Do we want to have a pleasant time while solving puzzles? Yvonne or Beryl! Do we forgo any sense of self-preservation and simply yearn to feel mortified yet oddly entertained while the world crumbles? Feathor seems like a "fun" choice. With that flexibility in mind there really isn't anyone she definitely wouldn't want to play it with... maybe except that mysterious woman that creeps outside the barrier in SoulSet?
MstMori would probably tell Feathor to go play it on his own (hoping that he’d never come back). ;)
Xolf: I'm always going to be tempted by a few favorite characters, but there's no way in this example I wouldn't be tempted to grab Blankspace's Beryl. Assuming the Elevator Game itself doesn't break anyway, her perceptiveness and intuition would be real pluses; outside of that, there are some fascinating mysteries to be solved with her. I wouldn't want to play it with Asahi, because it would be mean to split her up from Kirin!
With the release of The Elevator Game with Catgirls fastly approaching, tell us, what can players expect from the game? Should we prepare for someone to die? Is the happy ending going to be hard to get? ;)
Nayru: The players can expect a nice eerie atmosphere, at the very least! I can mention that the game is going to have 11 main endings and 4 secret ones, so death might prooobably be on the table. ;) Honestly though, looking at the track record of bad endings both in SoulSet and in Blankspace, it’s hard to deny this is something I could do without in our games. Whether there’s a happy ending even to be found in EGC is not something I’m going to spoil, however. I’ll let the players find that out for themselves. ^^
After The Elevator Game with Catgirls, what is next for NoBread Studio?
Nayru: Tricky question! While we’d love to give Whiteheart Woods another try, it’s an ambitious project, and we’re not sure if it’s the right time to go back to it yet. We also have ideas for other projects, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the next year brings. I know I’d like to dip my toes in a more proper “death game” sometime, too, or even a 3D platformer, perhaps! We’re all learning things as we go, and I’m constantly trying to push myself into something new, so we’ll see where our ambitions take us. :) Please look forward to our continued journey!
If you would like to keep up-to-date on NoBread Studio and their games, you can follow them on itch, Steam, Twitter, and Tumblr! They also have a Discord server where you talk with other fans about their games and more. The Elevator Game with Catgirls is set to release on Steam and itch on December 13th.