With INDIE INTERVIEWS, I talk to the game developers hanging here on Cohost to learn more about new games you might love.
Games can take all sorts of forms, both in terms of art and interactivity. One of my favorite things about the "visual novel" genre, or other games similar to it, is that you'll often see the variety of styles on display. Recently, I took notice of @littlerat and his games, which pack a lot of feelings into a simple cartoon package. He's got a bunch of games on itch.io you can check out, several of which give us snippets into the lives of queer characters, and we had a chat about it.
You can find littlerat's games on his itch.io
Introduce yourself for everyone here on Cohost! Who are you?
Hi! I’m littlerat. I’m here to make games about people figuring themselves out!
Is there a project you're working on currently? Tell us about it!
I haven’t officially started work on it, but I’m planning to make a game during O2A2 Game Jam – Queer Edition this April. I’d like to call it “two men go on a date and don’t fall in love”. I want to tell a story about queer characters that isn’t a romance, and in fact is about characters for whom the concept of romance is fraught and uncomfortable. Still, for various reasons, they feel like they should go on a date...
I’m a bit nervous as it’s the first time I’ll be exploring aromanticism in a game, but I’m excited to have the opportunity!
(I am not personally affiliated with O2A2 but it’s very cool and I’d definitely suggest checking it out!)
How did you find yourself first getting into game development?
I actually wanted to be a novelist when I was little(r)! I just have a lot of stories I want to tell. To be frank, though, writing a whole novel is a ton of work and a lot to keep track of. I tended to overcomplicate things and lose the plot after a while. Novels don’t tend to come with fun pictures or sound effects either (though there are certainly exceptions – illustrated books and audiobooks are very cool!).
I’ve considered comics, too, but they tend to involve a lot more art than I personally want to draw. So it seems natural that I ended up becoming a visual novel dev, where I get to put words and sounds and pictures together in the way that I like. The fact I have to draw and code my own characters makes it easier for me to hold back on making a lot of them, meaning I end up with a story that’s easier for me to follow. I also really love exploring different paths and choices in a story, making the medium even better for my interests.
Actually, though, the first game I ever published on itch was a text-only Twine game. I made a second text-only Twine game after that, and then I tentatively decided to try adding pictures and sound to my work. I love making visual novels now, but in the end, the thing I’m most comfortable with and passionate about is writing stories – everything else in my games exists to support that!
Given that a lot of your games are about characters figuring themselves out...do you feel like you need to have yourself "figured out" first before you feel confident enough to write stories for others like that? Or is writing the stories a way of helping yourself figure life out even when you may not fully have the answers yet?
While I don’t think I’ll ever fully have the answers to life, it’s true that having at least some some sense of who I am and where I’ve come from helps considerably with making games about people going through similar things.
I’ve got quite a few old game ideas and prototypes that I could never finish making because I was trying to give definitive answers to questions I didn’t have the answers to myself. I wanted to be subtle and gentle and thoughtful and helpful to people with exactly the same kinds of problems I was having, so I needed what I wrote to always feel personally enriching and fulfilling, as well as assuage every doubt I had. And I wanted to show varied perspectives on those problems, because I was torn between different ways of handling them and wanted to have all of those different ways represented in the same game. It was too much pressure for one little story made by someone who had very little gamedev experience at the time.
I’ve had much more success making games about things I feel more secure about myself, or which I’m a bit more removed from. I don’t get as upset when the games inevitably don’t represent every perspective I want to show, and I don’t feel as wretched and reluctant about something bad potentially happening to one of the characters.
At the same time, the issues I was struggling with as a fledgling gamedev are still important to me, and I’ve definitely considered revisiting some of my old ideas. I’ll keep them in mind!
If there's one thought or feeling that you'd want players to take away from your games, what would it be?
The comments on my games that really stay with me are the ones along the lines of “wow, I’m so grateful someone could articulate the kinds of feelings I’ve dealt with,” or, on the other hand, “wow, I never thought about that, but now I think I understand the experiences of others better.” So I guess what makes me happy is when people learn that they may be able to relate to or connect with people they didn’t expect to be able to.
This extends to my more lighthearted games, too! Even the silliest of my games are about people living earnestly, and it’s a delight to see people get really invested in the stories and motivations of characters who make decisions I might not recommend in real life.
Any advice for aspiring indie devs out there?
It’s okay if your first game doesn’t come out the way you want it to (or your second game, or your third game, or your fourth game...). As long as you make anything, you’re making progress. Just remember that finishing and publishing games are trainable skills – if you always stop making your games in the middle because you don’t think they’re good enough, you’re missing out on some useful practice!
If you finish making a game and you’re unhappy with the way it came out, you have plenty of options – work on a new version, make a sequel, make a completely different game, or even just let the game exist as is and appreciate that you managed to finish it. But if you never finish the game at all, you’ll never gain the skills and insight that you could have from the process of finishing it. You don’t necessarily have to publish it, if you’re not comfortable with that. And if a project really isn’t working for you, it’s okay to set it aside and find something that suits you better. But still, if you want to be a gamedev, it’s important to finish at least one game!
Lastly, are there any indie games out there you've been playing recently? Any favorites to shout-out?
It’s a harder question to answer than I expected! I tend to play whatever catches my eye, and a lot of the indie games I played lately are of such a nature that that it’d be hard to say “I’ve been playing them.” It’s more like “I had the pleasure of briefly enjoying their stories.”
One such game is DON’T SAY YES by realkey, an eight-minute gameboy-style visual novel about a dying pilot and a mysterious creature on the moon.
Another is your own game RCI, a text adventure about getting through a day as well as you can, and maybe putting your head in a big floating cube.
In terms of games I would say “I’ve been playing,” the latest one I got super into is one I probably wouldn’t call indie, but it is quite small in scope considering the developer – it’s Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo.
The fact that it’s short (for a Square Enix game), made by a small team (for a Square Enix game), and centers around a small area and a small timespan (for a Square Enix game) allows it to have some of the features I admire in indie games, such as clarity of vision and concise storytelling.
The game stands alone, with all of the characters appearing only in this one game, so I can’t immediately look at a character and go “well, that person’s going to survive, because they’d never kill a beloved character from their other franchise...”
Also, there are few enough puzzles that each one can stand out from the others without having to become annoyingly outlandish. (Actually, one of the puzzles reminded me of a puzzle in npckc’s pet shop after dark, which was pretty cool!)
This is all just to say, wow! I hope big publishers continue to see the value of supporting smaller projects. And, of course, I hope small publishers that already support smaller projects and indie devs continue to be successful in the future.
Woah, an RCI shout-out? That's a first for me, so thank you! And thanks for chatting! Everyone can go follow @littlerat on cohost for a look at his work. Also check out his games on itch.io! I'll see you all next time!
