What Is This?

Underworld Blues

Underworld Blues is a title I've been using internally for quite some time now, starting with an old fashioned manuscript as far back as 2012 and persisting across a variety of media. In short, it refers to a sort of "shared universe" wherein many of my works take place.

I suppose it's kind of like my own personal "Shin Megami Tensei," or "Castle Rock," or "Yoknapatawpha County." You'll note that in at least two of the above examples, we're dealing with more of a shared "multiverse" than one consistent and persistent shared world. Underworld Blues falls firmly on that same end of the "consistency and persistency" spectrum.

Aside from the occasional shared character, location, and organization, the larger world of Underworld Blues  is mainly characterized by a mix of the magickal and the mundane, the presence of a common underpinning cosmology, and, usually, an emphasis on mystery and the exploration of the characters' psychological and spiritual states. 

I have decided to start using the title more formally and publicly, starting with this game here, because It just kind of feels right, I guess.
 

If you're curious, other titles that technically fall under the label, despite not formally having it attached, are as follows:

- How To Die Like A Graceful Beast : an experimental, text based game submitted for the WAG challenge.

- Getting Things Done, Or The Labyrinth Of Doctor Bernstein: a slightly less experimental (but still pretty dang experimental), hypertext gamebook. It's quite a biggie, all things considered. 

- Pleroma: a surreal 3D exploration game in what I personally refer to as the "dream emulator" genre (think LSD Dream Emulator, Yume Nikki, Datura) - this was my first "commercial release" and resulted from my first successful crowdfunding campaign (I think the budget for this one was only around 500 buckaroos, but the game also ended up being quite a biggie). 

- Queen of the Fireflies, this was an RPG / Visual Novel hybrid that had been in pre-production for a while and for which I ran a sadly unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign several months back. It will hopefully return soon, under the title Underworld Blues: Queen of the Fireflies, though perhaps not quite in the same format as originally planned.

Speaking of that last one, The Chameleon's Dish, the first of the formally titled entries and the subject of this campaign, is in many ways a reiteration on that core concept, and puts to use a lot of the groundwork that had previously been laid in preparing Queen of the Fireflies for production.

All of the above having been said, every entry in the series is ultimately stand-alone. Underworld Blues was always intended to follow an episodic and anthological pattern.   

The Chameleon's Dish - Genre and Premise

The Chameleon's Dish is a mystery and investigation game in an interactive visual novel format. There's a murder, of course. There's also drugs, politics, love, mysticism, and high strangeness.   

To offer a bit more detail, the premise of the tale is as follows:

Andrea Laiver, a private investigator in the employ of a boutique security, information, and investigation firm called Blue Rider, is sent to the decaying suburban town of Ryme, VA on a follow-up audit connected, albeit somewhat tangentially, to a year old unsolved murder case. Nobody really expects her to solve it, of course. A year is a long time to go without any new leads, and the killer didn't leave much behind in the first place. Her employer, and her employer's employer, are much, much more interested in the victim's somewhat unusual and esoteric hobbies, and Andrea has been sent in to mop up whatever scraps of arcana and Forteana the initial probe might have missed - books, artifacts, bespoke crafts, information, and maybe more besides.   

Gigs like this don't come along too often, and when they do, they pay very well. Not only is the base rate more than generous, but every significant acquisition, down to previously undocumented bits of local lore, can translate to a significant bonus. Plus, it's a welcome change of pace from the usual procession of cheating spouses and bail skippers. That said, even with the conditional blessing of Michael's widow, Andrea can't help but feel more than a little like a vulture.

Perhaps the murder is, indeed, a dead end. Perhaps knowing the sordid details thereof would come at the expense of tainting the legacy that the victim, a mild mannered local librarian, amateur alchemist, and collector of minor oddities, would have otherwise left behind. The knowledge certainly can't return him to his family. There is no grimoire in the world that could accomplish that, is there? But the truth could, perhaps, bring them a bit of closure, and ease some of the ambient anxiety that such matters often churn up in the community at large.

It's a long shot, certainly. But since Andrea is already on the scene, she figures that it might not hurt to give it the old college try, so long as she keeps her eye firmly on her primary objectives.    

The Chameleon's Dish - Structural and Technical Matters

The Chameleon's Dish is designed in a similar vein to its as yet unfunded spiritual progenitor, Queen of the Fireflies, and is built on the same code base, using the Godot game engine as the primary driver, because why in the world would I want to throw out months of hard work just because a previous crowdfunding campaign didn't work out? It is, however, notably scaled down and somewhat simplified in terms of scope, and thereby calls for a much smaller initial budget.

It certainly helps that most of the coding has already been done - it was pretty far along when the QoF campaign ran, but has been refined significantly since. This means that, bug fixes and testing aside and pending the completion of the save/load module, I can focus almost completely on writing, design, and artwork. 

The Demo

As of my writing this, a fully playable demo of The Chameleon's Dish had been put together for the fortuitously timed Mystery Game Jam on itch.io, and is available for download.

It is, of course, merely a demo, presenting what they call a "vertical slice" of features, moods, vibes, mysteries, and so on. It encompasses the very first location and encounter of the investigation. Since it was assembled in time for the jam, you may also have to pardon the occasional bug and typo (those will be getting squashed little by little in future builds ... although I can almost guarantee that some will sneak into the final build, because that's how it always goes).

That said, it runs well enough, and the word count for this slice is sitting at around 20,000, quickly approaching half the length of a short novel (I am nothing if not verbose). So while you can't exactly get very far in terms of new characters and locations, there should be plenty for you to sink your sharp and vicious teeth into when it comes to what's already there. 

Structural and Technical Roadmap 

There is currently only one core technical feature that hasn't been implemented, in some shape or form, in the demo, and that's the ability to save and load progress.

Of course, it's a pretty dang important one! For a demo and a jam context, it's redundant, and would have only taken up time that might have been spent refining the game mechanics and mapping out the narrative elements, but now that a deadline no longer looms, a functional save / load system is the immediate next step in the development process.

Thankfully, it's a bit less of a pain in the neck than it used to be, especially with Godot's rather handy Resource feature, which simplifies the process greatly and makes it quite easy to scale and adapt. As it stands, saving and loading has already been implemented in the current development build of the game, so, like with most technical, testing and refinement is now the name of the game.

Aside from standard saving and loading, I'd ideally to like to add some convenience features that would facilitate replay for the purposes of experiencing different routes and endings a bit more painlessly. I'll hold off the details for an upcoming Devlog, as this page is already wordy and overwhelming enough.

A  Note On Testing, Debugging, And Quality Assurance

In general, QA is one of the biggest limitations of solo game development, or game development done in small teams. It's just not really accessible to indies in the same way as it is to AAA or even AA studios (though, if you've ever played a Bethesda game, you know how that sometimes turns out - "it just works"). So we basically do the best we can with what we have.  

The Chameleon's Dish - Gameplay

In designing the format of The Chameleon's Dish, my aim was to provide a simple but robust means for the player to genuinely investigate, at their own pace and by their own volition, while keeping the visual novel / gamebook conventions central to the experience. In pursuit of this goal, I ended up promoting the database / tips / glossary feature common in visual novels and RPGs from a simple means of storing and retrieving lore and information to a central interactive mechanic.

Here's how it works:

Crafting Theories

Every unlocked Noun (person, place, thing, or idea) in the database can be combined with any other unlocked Noun to form a variety of working Theories, by choosing from a predetermined list of Verbs / Predicates. (i.e. "Johnny killed Boone")

Note: This feature IS fully implemented in the demo, from a technical standpoint, but only a few theories have been added into the game's internal database for starters, just enough to show off how it works. This is going to be one of the more time consuming tasks of production, since I'd like to account for as many potential combinations and permutations of nouns and verbs, including some objectively silly ones, as possible. 

Querying Topics

Every Noun in the database can also be saved to the main visual novel interface at will and then brought up as a Topic of conversation when interviewing key NPCs. Under the current control scheme, If you click on an NPC's hotspot while having a Topic selected, Andrea will usually bring that Topic up with said NPC in a short (by Aleks standards) VN scene.

Some of the resulting scenes are linear and some have internal branching paths and multiple subtopics to dive into, but the upshot is that you should basically be able to ask any available NPC about any Topic in any order, using the entirety of the database as your primary branching dialogue tree.

Some queries will simply provide more context or character development. A few might be complete duds, simply because not everyone has a lot to say about everything (and I am not completely out of my mind yet). Others will unlock new locations and Evidence. This sort of approach to investigative dialogue is, of course, hardly new, having been a method employed in several classic adventure games and RPGs. I personally enjoy it and feel like it can work quite well in providing players a sense of agency (at the obvious cost of creating a bit more complexity both on the development end and on the player's end). 

Applying Evidence 

When it comes to more in depth deductions, beyond the limited three-point Theory statements, all unlocked Evidence is logged and accessed much the same as Nouns are, but has a special function. It can be applied to established Theories to upgrade or downgrade them (make them more compelling, verify them, or prove them false) and / or evaluate the given Theory's relationship to a given piece of Evidence, thus adding an extra blurb to that Theory's entry.

"Johnny killed Boone" doesn't tell us much by itself. Alleged motive, weapon of choice, and so on can be found and, potentially, attached to the theory via the Evidence tab.

Progression Philosophy: Routes, Fail States, Endings 

Can you brute force a lot of the above via trial and error? Sure, sort of, probably. The progression of the game is designed to function a bit like a series of rooms, each leading to one or more other rooms, with each room locked by one or more combination locks. This is a metaphor, obviously. I am not talking about actual locked room mysteries ... or AM I?

You could try every combination until it clicks, but that's nobody's idea of a good time. It's much easier and more enjoyable to hunt around for the right answers to the right questions. At least, it is for me, as a player. 

Additionally, while there are no classical "fail states," such as our player character randomly getting eaten by a Grue as punishment for taking a wrong turn somewhere, the presence of multiple interlocking mysteries does, indeed, make it possible for the player to solve one but not the other in any given playthrough, resulting in one of several different endings. This functions a lot like a "traditional" flowchart / route system employed by many visual novels, but has a bit more of an open-ended quality, with different threads of narrative functioning a bit more like semi-independent quest-chains in an RPG. 

Gating the "perfect playthrough" behind investigative success might seem a little mean by today's standards, but I am not trying to make you have a bad time, trust me. I am just aiming to create a mystery game wherein you, as the player and the real world proxy for the investigator, must think and solve stuff as actively as the medium and format permit, and in-game consequences are a pretty tried-and-true method to cultivate that kind of engagement.

The Chameleon's Dish - Graphic Design, Artwork, and UX

Well, the images likely speak for themselves. While I was going for a fully painted and more "modern" aesthetic in Queen of the Fireflies, I am returning to the pixel art, retro aesthetic, complete with an old school 800x600 resolution, for the Chameleon's Dish.

I am doing all the artwork myself, with my own carpal-tunnel-afflicted hands, and would rather die than turn to so called Artificial "Intelligence" (sorry if you're an AI stan, but it just ain't my bag, baby - ethical issues aside, I also just plain hate the way it looks), and there are going to be quite a number of character portraits, as well as several backgrounds, maps, and "CGs" in the final version of the game.

While a painterly approach is, in many ways, more natural to me, being a "classically trained" painter with a proper degree in painting and all that fancy-schmancy stuff, it does come with certain added burdens and challenges, namely the fact that even a lightly stylized painterly image is a much bigger balancing act when it comes to the sheer amount of information that goes into it.

In a high res, realistically painted image, or even the semi-realistic ones you can find on the old Queen of the Fireflies Kickstarter page, value, line, and color each contain an infinity of possibilities. There are a thousand shades of every hue, and a thousand ways to render a particular form vis-à-vis the light, the shadow, the depth, etc. 

While a pixel art style based around broad flat shapes is less of my "personal forte," it still ends up saving me some time, effort, and energy on the psychological front, by essentially forcing boundaries and limitations. Instead of dealing with thousands of potential colors, I am only dealing with anywhere between two and ten.

Keeping a low resolution allows me to more easily and consistently size the individual bits of pixel art in relation to the overall interface. Plus, I have found myself enjoying the "retro" vibes in their own right, as they pay direct homage to the many old school adventure games and visual novels that have inspired me.  

Graphics and UX Roadmap

Speaking of resolution, however, it certainly isn't without its own drawbacks and challenges. Aesthetic preference aside, one of the biggest challenges in putting together the current demo build was in managing more limited screen real estate in relation to an interface that needed to convey a fair bit more information than most visual novels tend to. 

I think I've done alright on that front so far, but I do recognize that the quality of the current build's user experience is, to use a technical term, janky in a few key areas. The nitty-gritty details are better left for a future Devlog, for those of you specifically interested in that sort of thing. To put it very briefly, the current priority interface adjustments are as follows:

1. Make the entirety of the game playable with just the mouse, should someone wish to do so. Currently, keyboard shortcuts are required to access and exit certain menus. Those shortcuts are fine in themselves, but multiple means of access will make for a more intuitive and frictionless experience. 

2. The way Topics are added to the main screen may need to be reconsidered. There are a few potential advantages to the current implementation, and screen real estate was also a big driver in the jam edition's design, but if I can find an attractive way of making all unlocked Topics automatically accessible from the main interface, I would much prefer that.

3. The current layout and minimalistic visual style are likely to remain mostly unchanged, but I would like to spice up the graphic design in time, just a bit. I like how stark and simple it is, but I'd also like to get a bit more fancy with fonts, colors, and so on.    

Other Stuff

Who Am I?

I am Aleks Samoylov (they / them), indie artist, writer, and designer. I received my Bachelor's Degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008, and have been making art, writing stories, and building games my whole life. There really isn't all that much more to say about that. It's ultimately much easier for me to let my work speak for me whenever possible, as my own sense of identity is a bit ...  fuzzy.

You can check out a lot of my game design work, including interactive digital games and analog tabletop games, at thealeks.itch.io if you'd like. 

Who Are You?

I mean, I obviously don't know for sure. I mean, hopefully there's more than one of you, anyway.

Assuming that you've read this far and have a genuine interest in helping fund projects like this one, you're probably a reader, a mystery lover, a surrealism aficionado, an enjoyer of adventure games and visual novels, and/or some combination or permutation of the above, and then some. I suspect that if this is truly up your alley, then you already know this fact and don't need me to tell you. And If this is not up your alley, you're probably not even reading this. You probably checked out somewhere near the top. I don't blame you. What I do is always at least somewhat niche.      

Why Do I Need Money?

Note: This is mostly a philosophical discussion - for the more practical discussion of budget, timeline, and so on, check the "Budget and Timeline" tab. 

Because I don't want to starve, physically, mentally, or emotionally, simply enough. As to why or if you, in particular, should or shouldn't support me, well, that's more or less touched on in the paragraph immediately above. It depends on who you are and what you want to see more of in the world, and in your games library.

We live in a strange time where art and creativity are concerned. On the one hand, there are more ways than ever to share one's creations, to publicize them, and even to monetize them, without necessarily having to go through institutional gatekeepers like agents, managers, publishers, editors, producers, and so on.

On the other hand, not only has the path of an artist remained just as perilous, soul-rending, and demoralizing as always, especially if one's passions and fascinations do not run directly parallel to mainstream aesthetic sensibilities, but, especially in recent years, artists and their labor are increasingly being treated as more disposable, replaceable, interchangeable, cheap than ever before.

Our handiwork is being stolen and scraped by soulless and intentionless robots, who then proceed to flood the world with low quality, procedurally generated slop that sort of looks like original art from a distance, if you literally squint, thus making it even harder for real artists to be found by the potential viewers, readers, listeners, and players who actually want to find them. In this climate, the very fact that you're even looking at this particular page at this particular time is a minor miracle.

Marginalized artists are, as usual, worse off yet. Those of us, who, like myself, can't really hold down normal jobs for very long due to factors like disability, and can't access whatever meagre benefits might exist due to the drawn out, soul-crushing, and utterly Kafkaesque nature of the process, may not always have much else to hold on to. 

If this continues, we, the artists, whether disabled or abled, marginalized or privileged, will ALL genuinely be gone sooner than you realize, literally gone, dead, broken, or, best case scenario, resigned. And our example will send any aspiring new artists a simple and clear message, like a severed head on a pike set outside of an enemy encampment: this is what happens when you dare. Until, of course, the AI runs out of new "training data" and starts to cannibalize itself, churning out enough increasingly incomprehensible garbage for the average layperson to actually notice. God knows what will happen then.   

The world doesn't merely need artists. It needs professional artists. It needs more people who can make a normal, humble living this way, without having to be major celebrities, or millionaires. Just normal, every day artists who get paid normal, every day amounts for their work, so they can focus, and excel, and give the world what they can without starving or falling apart in the process.

Nothing wrong with doing it on the side, or as a hobby, but the amount of time and effort even smaller projects take means that many projects simply aren't going to be possible without some material offset. Perhaps that means that the public gets something in the course of ten years when it could have taken one. Often, it means the public will never get it at all. Artists are human, and if you expect them to work at two or more day jobs, one of them unpaid, they will either collapse in short order or will have no choice but to make safer, more basic, less ambitious, and less interesting work.   

You don't have to support my campaigns, obviously, and I am not even asking you to do so in this particular soap-box entreaty. If this doesn't fund, I'll try again later, as usual, as I have done many times before, and I'll keep at it until I can't try anymore, at which point I will be gone, and that will be that.

But I am asking you to support someone, if you can. If this project doesn't catch your eye, please find one that does (preferably one that doesn't rely on artificial "intelligence"). And, assuming you have disposable income to spare, support it.