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Date Everything claims to be a dating sim, but it doesn’t love or understand its own genre

by admin June 18, 2025

Romantic games are one of the most overlooked successes in all of gaming. There are million-selling series spanning decades amongst them, and the loosely defined genre thrives on Steam in all its beautiful forms, encompassing everything from breezy pop star fantasies and summer adventures to hot gothic stories. Date Everything, a comedic “sandbox dating simulator” where I romance tables and lamps thanks to a pair of hi-tech glasses, has a lot of competition—and a lot of work to do if it wants to convince me that the jokes here aren’t aimed at the genre, or at me for playing it.

And to its credit, the writing is often genuinely funny. The slight problem is this game clearly has no idea what a dating sim actually is.

There are 100 dateable objects in the house, and I really do have to romance the vast majority of them all at once if I want to see anything close to a semi-satisfying credits roll. This fact alone instantly turns these intimate interactions into a meaningless “Gotta date ’em all!” clickfest (there’s even a date-a-dex installed on my in-game phone, with everyone given an ID number). And it makes me into the gaming equivalent of a brainless cushion-humping chihuahua.

No, worse than that—it makes me nothing. I am the submissive counterpart to the attic dominatrix. I am the perfect date of my charming desk. I am loyal to everyone and no one, and worst of all nobody seems to care.

Bedding my bed and getting topless with a trophy has no impact on the “love” state of the throuple I’m in with the washing machine and tumble dryer, and the magnifying glass will treat me like I’m the only one for her even though I’m already sleeping with four dozen different appliances, like a lovesick handyman let loose in a hardware store.

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(Image credit: Team17)(Image credit: Team17)(Image credit: Team17)

In an actual dating sim, like 1994’s Tokimeki Memorial (and a heaving shelf’s worth of others), pursuing someone takes time and effort, and always comes with risks. Rivalries form when I favour one person over another, or a scheduling conflict or special event forces me to pick a side. If I agree to meet someone next Tuesday, then I’d better meet them next Tuesday or not only will I tank their opinion of me but their friends will hear about it too, and tear my entire social life to pieces.

One of Date Everything’s dates is a cat clock, and their entire personality and mini-storyline revolves around timeliness and scheduling. Makes sense. I agree to make an appointment so we can introduce ourselves properly—12:00pm. The conversation ends. It’s noon. Fantastic, I can keep my promise. Except I can’t, because I already spoke to them today and that means the UI says no.

So I eventually show up at 12:00… three days later, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. For the clock. The clock-person whose entire being is all about timeliness.

Without stakes, friction, or consequences, it’s all meaningless. A dating sim where I never have to commit to anyone or anything, and my dates are just passive pushovers who could surely do better than someone who doesn’t care which Thursday they eventually showed up for.

But that’s no problem, right? This is a silly game, so I should just roll with it and enjoy the laughs.

That would be nice. The thing is, Date Everything is silly—until it isn’t.

While talking to my biggest fan—in every sense of the word—I get my first content warning. These give me a quick heads-up when the conversation might veer towards subjects including, and I quote, “PTSD, violence, stalking, manipulation, domination, mental health issues, addiction, and many more…”, and then the option to skip the character entirely (while still receiving the bonuses for clearing their story).

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(Image credit: Team17)(Image credit: Team17)(Image credit: Team17)

Interactive fiction can be a fantastic place to safely explore these subjects. But this is a game where my microwave is called Luke Nukem, a “warrior” convinced they’re fighting a bizarre sci-fi battle, and my shower talks like Elvis. In this context these dabbles with something deeper feel out of place, as if the drafts for something darker got mixed in with all the pink hearts and lengthy conversations about fitness and makeup.

“If you don’t like sociopaths…” reads one content warning, which, if nothing else, is surely the opposite of someone emotionally available and looking for love. And maybe the personification of my personal diary isn’t the ideal place to drop a random allusion to date rape?

A good dating sim has consistency. A mood, a tone—a promise. It will always offer a reasonably clear idea of what sort of romantic attention I’m in for, and because of that I’ll know what sort of romantic gestures are expected of me in turn. You know, the way Koei’s Angelique managed to do so with its sweet magical fantasy decades ago. On the Super Nintendo.

Pushing on anyway and obtaining the final, final, romantic ending for a particular character sees them… leave me. My ultimate reward, in a dating sim, is to see the characters I’ve poured 20+ hrs of work into and had supposedly heartfelt, life-altering conversations with… leave. Literally as soon as the dialogue box closes. One down, 99 to go. The house I worked so hard to transform into a literally loving home emptied out, one relationship at a time.

Sure, it’s nice that they go off and have fulfilling careers and large families, but am I seriously supposed to be OK with all that because the script assures me some of them come back and sleep with me from time to time? And for a game that’s so quick and careful with content warnings, it’s jarring to see my own sexual consent and personal desires never factor into these endings.

(Image credit: Team17)

This game has no idea what it wants to do, never mind what it’s supposed to be. Sometimes it’s tooth-rottingly wholesome. Sometimes it’s plain horny. And then just sometimes it ventures into deeply unsettling nightmare territory. It’s like they put 100 short stories, covering everything from popcorn prep to actual murder, in a blender and then locked me in a house with them.

It’s mush in dateable form, a mess of a game that lacks the narrative and mechanical depth of dating sims made before some of the people reading this were even born, and a playable example of why other examples of the genre don’t offer anything close to 100 dateable characters.

Dating sims are so much better than this. I just wish Date Everything knew that.

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June 18, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

The FPS genre is addicted to sprinting and clambering, but Halo just proved we’re better off without them

by admin June 14, 2025

Whenever I tell friends that I’m still playing Halo Infinite in 2025, the reactions are usually somewhere between confusion and open laughter. No, it’s not dead, and yes, 343 (now Halo Studios) still adds stuff to it—battle passes, the occasional gun, and frequent map packs created by the Forge community.

This week kicked off a Halo 3 nostalgia event, marked by the return of 2007 armor sets and remakes of 11 Halo 3 maps bundled into a special playlist. But the mode doesn’t only turn back the clock on maps, it also recreates the feel of Halo 3—that means no sprint, no clamber, player collision turned on, and jump height increased.

I’ve been playing Halo Infinite with Halo 3 rules nonstop for days, so I’m sure it’s not just the nostalgia talking when I say it’s the most fun I’ve had with Halo since Reach. This slower, more methodical version of Halo is better—it always was, really—and I believe it should serve as the blueprint for Halo’s future.

Subtracting sprinting and mantling restores Halo’s distinct rhythm. With everyone running at the same jogging pace, sticking with teammates takes less effort, vehicles are more valuable, and death has more meaning when you can’t just sprint back into the fight within 10 seconds.

The ramped-down pace has me more focused and aware of my surroundings, so much so that I’m questioning if I ever liked sprinting in the first place, or if it just felt like a feature that’s supposed to be there because it’s an FPS. Just like in Call of Duty, running at full speed with my gun down gets me killed a lot more often than it gets me kills—as such, taking sprint off the table entirely is like Halo slapping the pack of cigarettes out of my hand. What’s the rush?

Above: When maps are built with Halo speed in mind, there’s never a lack of action.

No sprint kicks a nasty habit that never served Halo’s floaty movement in the first place, but no clamber? That’s a real eye-opener. The ability to automatically catch any ledge, another feature that just sorta showed up in Halo 4 because every other shooter had it, shaved off a lot more skill expression in Halo than I realized.

With clambering, jumping from A to B is essentially automatic. Without it, even rudimentary jumps become legit skill checks. You have to learn the ins and outs of Halo’s gravity (turned down in the Halo 3 playlist to mimic the original game) until you can sense the arc of a jump before you take it. Sticky ledge grabs can’t bail you out of an ill-considered leap. This week, I crouch-jumped in Halo for the first time in 15 years, and it was lovely.

(Image credit: 343 Industries)

It’s remarkable how naturally Halo’s weapon sandbox slots into this throwback movement. The version of the playlist with SMG starts instead of battle rifles highlights the benefits of slowing the game back down: Halo is at its best when you spawn with a gun that you’d rather swap for something better. Base Infinite makes closing the distance so easy that you can always make a starter gun work for you, but with no sprint, the MA5K Avenger (Infinite’s version of the SMG) is appropriately situational.

Dang, it’s almost like Bungie knew what it was doing in 2001, 2004, and 2007.

Addition by subtraction. Maybe it was a mistake for Halo to blindly adhere to 2010s FPS movement conventions established by the rise of Call of Duty and Titanfall. I embraced the change at the time, but in our modern era of live service shooters cannibalizing each other for attention, I think Halo has more to gain by being different. In this case, the old really does feel new again.

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June 14, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

‘I don’t actually play horror games’: Phasmophobia’s lead developer had no intention of making a horror game but still kicked off a whole new genre

by admin June 12, 2025

I’ll never forget the first time my friends and I played Phasmophobia. It was like nothing I’d ever played before, absolutely hilarious, and surprisingly terrifying—it still is. So it’s rather funny to me that not only does Phasmo’s creator not really play horror games but he didn’t intend to make one either.

“I failed to make a co-op puzzle game,” director and lead developer Daniel Knight told my colleague Andrea Shearon during an interview at Summer Game Fest. “Or a co-op puzzle horror game. I didn’t really settle to make a ghost-hunting game. It just ended up being the kind of perfect fit.

“But the main goal was to make a social co-op puzzle game where you actually had to stand next to your friends and figure the puzzle out together. And then the horror is kind of like the secondary part—it just happened to be the perfect fit.”

Now Knight mentions it, I can totally see where he’s coming from with the puzzle idea. Trying to figure out what kind of ghost it is by working together as a team, using various tools, and having a checklist is just like solving a puzzle. It’s just a scary one which also involves you getting chased around a house by a red-eyed demon child.

Having a horror game that isn’t necessarily focused on being scary but instead works at being tricky to solve and an immersive experience for you and your friends may be what makes Phasmophobia so memorable. The best moments in Phasmo always come from someone messing up a test or a ghost surprising the team by doing something that we hadn’t accounted for.

Phasmophobia devs on mod support, 2025 updates, and more | Kinetic Games interview – YouTube

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I still remember playing on the Brownstone High School map with some mates where all the signs pointed us towards the ghost being in one of the rooms on the ground floor next to the stairs. We ended up having a massive argument as half of us didn’t think it was actually in this room after finding no physical evidence. It wasn’t until the ghoul appeared behind us that we realised the EMF Reader and Sound Sensor were actually pointing us towards the room directly above where we’d set up shop.

It may seem kind of weird at first, but maybe a horror game from someone who doesn’t massively love horror games isn’t such a bad idea. “I don’t actually play horror games,” Knight says. Although when pressed, he did admit that he’s dabbled in a bit of Content Warning.

I love Content Warning, and don’t get me wrong it can be absolutely terrifying when you’re being chased by the Snail Man or flipped upside down by the Ceiling Star, but it’s also probably the most tame co-op game to come out recently. But hey, a horror game’s still a horror game, and I don’t think Knight has to prove anything, not after making Phasmophobia.

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June 12, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Pragmata is a fascinating genre mash-up, and Capcom at its experimental best – hands-on

by admin June 12, 2025

I love it when Capcom experiments. It’s true that with a staple of franchises and characters like those it has, there isn’t all that much pressure on Capcom to experiment. It has most of what it needs to make that corporate profit line go up, in truth. But every now and then the company nevertheless experiments with something new – and usually, backed up by those successful franchises, the company can strike gold.

Pragmata

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Availability: Releases in 2026 on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

My favourite Capcom experiment of all time is undoubtedly Dead Rising. We shouldn’t take that Dead Rising came to exist for granted – with one successful zombie IP, Capcom had little call to create another. But it did, and in differentiating itself from Resident Evil we ended up with a mechanically glorious offering. Pragmata, I think, could very well be that sort of Capcom experiment. More Dead Rising than Exoprimal, so to speak.

After years in what certainly looked like development limbo, Pragmata has emerged as a third-person sci-fi shooter where a bloke in a spacesuit (Hugh) stomps around smashing up androids and solving the odd environmental puzzle to progress. Fun enough, but certainly like a hundred other video games out there. There must therefore be a twist – and Pragmata’s is delightful.

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Basically, it’s a puzzle game. The enemy robots I encounter in a 20-minute hands-on demo all have some sort of shielding that renders bullets useless. That’s where Pragmata’s little girl sidekick Diana – who is actually (of course) an android herself – comes in.

Squeeze the left trigger to aim down sights at the robot and a little sliding block puzzle appears on the right hand side of the screen. You must use the controller face buttons to move through a maze quickly to deactivate the robot’s shields. Sometimes you just have to move an icon from point A to point B, while other times bonus objectives lay along the way, where if you navigate to the end of the hack while also hitting key points along the way you might unlock a damage bonus for when you start shooting.

Crucially, combat does not pause or slow while you’re hacking – it happens in real time, meaning you might need to dodge mid-hack, or cancel a hack midway if the combat positioning situation deteriorates. The challenge of doing both things at once is the point.

The hacking portion of Pragmata’s gameplay was brilliant in the short demo, but it’ll need to remain engaging over the whole game. | Image credit: Capcom

With the shields down, you’re free to blast the robot to bits. So a flow emerges – hack while backing off from attacks, then get in there and blast away.

I often tire of hacking mini games in RPGs or shooters and the like, and so that is where Pragmata is most impressive – I enjoyed hacking, and found it intuitive and challenging to do while juggling the other requirements of third-person combat. When you end up in encounters with two or three enemies players have to do some quick thinking and make tough choices – which hack should they do first? Should you hack all of the foes and only then start blasting, or should you pick them off one at a time?

It’s multitasking: the game, with players asked to juggle two characters each with unique skill sets at once. I find it fascinating, and honestly I can see why Pragmata took so long to emerge in a playable state – I can easily imagine it took a heck of a lot of iteration to get the basic controls to a point where hacking and shooting, controlling both Hugh and Diana at once, feels natural and intuitive. In the section I played, it does.

How big the game world is and what there is to explore remains to be seen. | Image credit: Capcom

The vibes are myriad. I get a little bit of God of War, or The Last of Us, or one of those other Sad Dad games, from the pairing of Hugh and Diana. Some of the visuals give me Lost Planet vibes. The experimental gameplay systems design certainly echo Dead Rising, even if it’s mechanically something very different. The concept of hacking robots to expose their weak points even made me briefly think that this has the vibes of a realistic Mega Man reboot. Which is a strange but welcome thought.

As you likely appreciate, I really think it’s rather good. Though it’s also true that a 20-minute demo against a limited range of enemies doesn’t stretch the concept very far – and the system could easily wear thin and take on the status of a gimmick. Capcom will need to show us more to prove that this system can work writ-large, then – but as a concept, it’s already got me very excited to see how far this design can be taken. We’ll find out when Pragmata releases in 2026.

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June 12, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Code Vein 2 Seeks To Expand The Souls-like Genre Without Reinventing It

by admin June 11, 2025

After the 2019 release of Code Vein, Bandai Namco staked its claim in a genre it helped popularize as the publisher of games like Dark Souls. Code Vein married that Souls gameplay with its penchant for anime aesthetics to manifest a world of vampires and tough-as-nails action. Now, years later, the team behind that freshman effort is returning with an expanded sequel that will give fans of the sleek anime souls-like more to chew on.

Keita Iizuka, producer of Code Vein and its sequel, acknowledges that the genre has changed since Code Vein released, but sees it as a challenge to rise to. “Yes, games like Elden Ring are very praised,” Iizuka starts with a glint in his eye, “But I like to consider those games our rivals.”

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Now Playing: CODE VEIN 2 — Announcement Trailer

While Code Vein 2 started development just after the first game wrapped, it is clear that the developers have tried to anticipate where souls-likes might go. While the first title was a bit like souls-likes at the time in structure–which is to say, the non-linear freedom to get lost but not much choice in where to go–Code Vein II looks to rectify this. This time around, the game is expanding around the edges, letting players look for bosses and dungeons in an open environment. The player-character, once again custom-made, even has a slick motorcycle to help facilitate exploration.

And explore you must, even if you have played the first title. Code Vein 2’s world has no connection to the first game in terms of narrative, IIzuka says.

“It is a new world, new characters, and a new story,” he explains. This does mean that Code Vein’s ending cliffhanger, which implied a connection to the God Eater series but still left fans desperate to know more, will not be followed up on with the sequel. Those hoping for some resolution to the harsh cut-to-black tease from Code Vein’s ending will not find it in this sequel, at least as far as Iizuka is willing to admit right now.

Code Vein 2 does not follow up on the first game’s cliffhanger ending.

Instead, Code Vein’s narrative tells the story of a world where humans and revenants, the series’ name for vampires, must join forces to stave off a world-destroying force that threatens them both. To do so, you as a revenant hunter must travel between the past and the present to better the world. This is also the driving force behind Code Vein 2’s other major improvement: a time-travel mechanic where actions and quests in the past affect the future.

When pressed for examples, Iizuka mentioned that saving a bridge repairman in the past gives the player access to a dungeon they otherwise might not have been able to reach in the present. If an NPC has a life goal of creating a specific tool, that character may not have survived into the present, but helping them achieve their goal likely means that tool is waiting for you to use years later.

Beyond those new mechanics, Code Vein 2 is not looking to reinvent the wheel. Iizuka is clear-eyed on his vision: marrying sleek anime-style characters and action with the more thoughtful and pensive gameplay of a souls-like. As such, players will find aspects of Code Vein have been expanded, like a brand-new agile dual-wielding weapon type to attack enemies while looking cool doing it.

Like the first game, partner NPCs play a crucial role in combat.

Partners also once again play a major role, which Iizuka believes sets the Code Vein series apart from other games. With it, players encounter and recruit NPCs to go through dungeons and beat bosses with them. The decision of who to take with you is a strategic one, but even characters who may not make sense strategically could be a player’s favorite or have story implications. Iizuka wants players to have to think hard about who has their back.

“That sense of overcoming trials and achieving victory creates a unique sense of enjoyment,” he explains. “Because [Code Vein 2] takes place in a different world with new characters, even if you have played [Code Vein], I think you will fall in love with these new characters.”

Code Vein 2 is releasing in 2026 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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June 11, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Out of nowhere, ArcSystem Works sends the fighting game genre into chaos as the outlook suddenly changes for Riot’s 2XKO

by admin June 5, 2025

During last night’s PlayStation State of Play, the show concluded with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls. A superhero tag-team fighter from Arc System Works, the community of die-hard fighting game lovers celebrated the announcement, with some making comparisons to Riot Games’ upcoming release: 2XKO

2XKO, itself a tag fighter that has been in development since Radiant Entertainment was acquired by Riot back in 2016 had largely had the tag-fighter space to itself for the foreseeable future, with the exception of the endearing but budget title HunterxHunter NenxImpact.

However, with this announcement, it looks like Riot Games has a real Marvel rival to contend with. Social media was abuzz with excitement for Marvel Tokon. Justin Wong, perhaps North America’s most prominent Marvel vs Capcom player, wrote: “Holy shit MARVEL FIGHTING GAME IS BACK?!”.

If you missed it, check out the Marvel Hokon: Fighting Souls trailer here!Watch on YouTube

Yipes, himself a beloved figure in the professional fighting game scene and a legendary Marvel vs Capcom 2 player, was lost for words. He posted, “!??!?!?!??!?!?!”, an apt measure of the overall feeling following the State of Play.

This reveal brought with it immediate comparisons to 2XKO, due to the unavoidable rivalry between the two games. Former pro player Alioune summed it up with “If « fuck you 2xko » was a game”, whereas one fighting game fan on Twitter reacted by stating: “Game already has a bigger roster than 2xko”.

Indeed in the run up to 2XKO’s release later this year the game has been seen through a more critical lens following recent announcements and play tests. Game director on 2XKO Shaun Rivera revealed in a Discord Q&A earlier this year that 2XKO will have 10 champions at launch, a relatively small number for a tag fighter. That game currently has seven announced fighters, whereas Marvel Hokon blasted out the gate with eight on display.

Congrats to Marvel, ArcSys and Playstation on the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls reveal. The game looks amazing and I can’t wait to play it.

— Shaun Rivera (@Unconkable) June 5, 2025

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However rather gritting their teeth or keeping thoughts close to their chest, several members of the 2XKO development team praised the new game. Unsurprising, as the team is composed of several former professional fighting game players. Rivera congratulated the Marvel Hokon team on the reveal: “Congrats to Marvel, ArcSys and Playstation on the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls reveal. The game looks amazing and I can’t wait to play it.”

Ben Forbes, 2XKO’s editor-in-chief, shot out an initial “oh fuck”, before following up with: “sorry i was in meetings and had to pay attention MARVELLLLLLLLLLLLLL I’M THERE DAY ONE IRON MAN LOOKS SO SICK AAAAAAAAAA also star lord is dante???? LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO”.

All in all it appears to be a “two cakes” situation, with two somewhat similar games clashing in the future resulting in more options for those who love diving deep into 2D brawls. As Wong puts it: “Too many fighting games what a time to be a fighting game fan”.

If there are any companies catching strays right now, it’s actually Capcom. The developer responsible for the Marvel vs Capcom series up until the poorly received Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. Folks reacted to Marvel taking the IP to another company with the sort of humour you’d imagine. Take Evo champion Sonicfox, who posted the following image:

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Ultimately Marvel Hokon: Fighting Souls has made the next year or so dead interesting. Whether Riot Games can capture the hearts and minds with a live service approach, or Marvel Hokon: Fighting Souls can cut itself a slice of the pie with some of its own boundary-pushing twists on the genre, is something the two will have to fight over.

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June 5, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Quantum Witch is a story of religious oppression, queer emancipation, and a dancing skeleton that hopes to popularise the ‘plotformer’ genre

by admin May 29, 2025

You might not have heard of Quantum Witch, but if you’ve an affinity for pixel-art platformers with engaging story-beats, meta-narratives, and an array of kooky characters, then you should be all over it. To just call Quantum Witch a colourful platformer with a strong narrative (read: ‘plotformer’) is to do it a disservice, though.

Quantum Witch is so much more than its vibrant pixels; it is NikkiJay’s personal story of fleeing a religious cult, embracing her LGBTQ+ identity, and seeking solace in video games. There’s a dark undercurrent, but ultimately, Nikki chooses to tell her story – and a story that many others will no doubt see themselves in – with humour and pride.

To get a better idea of exactly what informed Quantum Witch and how the indie ‘plotformer’ came together, VG247 sat down with NikkiJay to ask how growing up in a religious cult led to the development of the game and what she hopes audiences will get from it.

The below interview discusses religious trauma, coercive control, and the abuse of power.

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VG247: I’m aware that Quantum Witch is largely informed by your own personal experiences of fleeing a religious cult; would you mind sharing some more about your experience, and how it has informed Quantum Witch’s story and characters?

Nikki: I was born into the group and my family on both sides were third generation. Age 10, I needed my tonsils out and I had to tell the surgeon that I would rather die than accept certain medical treatments. As a 10-year-old, it’s one of the questions they ask when you go for CPTSD diagnosis: “did you at any point honestly really believe you were going to die?” Yeah, I was told I had to be prepared for that. I had to die for God if that was the option that was presented to me. Either take this medical treatment that God said I couldn’t have or die. I had to choose death. This cult literally kills kids for God.

A lot of people stayed because the alternative was to lose your entire support structure and social network. You were literally by yourself with nothing, which was the option I chose in the end. It’s high coercive control. This way, they say that you have the personality God wants you to have. Religious control and abuse of that power is the biggest theme that made it into Quantum Witch. It is very much again about urgency and choice: I think if people have been through similar things, it’s going to resonate with them.

VG247: During the demo, I got the impression that Ren is largely not interested in the religious beliefs shared with her by others in Quantum Witch, but she still appears to have a fascination with the Old Gods. I have two questions about this: is Ren on the fence, so to speak, about her beliefs? Does this align with any of your thoughts and feelings about religion now?

Nikki: Yeah, I am agnostic. I am a skeptic. I have to be open to the possibilities. A skeptic who isn’t open to possibilities isn’t a skeptic. They’re a cynic, and Ren is very much a skeptic. The majority of the characters in the game are just aspects of me that I’ve made into a character, it’s just a little piece of me that I’ve enhanced without turning it into a stereotype as far as I can.

Tyra [Ren’s partner] is more cynical: ‘come on, it’s nonsense’. And Ren’s like, ‘no, let’s go find out’. Her desire to go explore is going to lead her into things that she shouldn’t have explored in the way that she’s going to. But yeah, she is definitely that part of me who would like for there to be magic.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: Quantum Witch’s marketplace – which features unnamed characters that bear uncanny resemblances to some iconic video game mascots – is what I assume to be a representation of some of your favourite games. The game itself regularly reminded me of themes and mechanics from Undertale, The Binding of Isaac, and even Stardew Valley. What other games or pieces of media helped inspire Quantum Witch, and how?

Nikki: I love Undertale. What I loved about Undertale is the mixture of all those styles and then you’d be talking to a character and suddenly you have to play a really fast reaction game. I can’t do that. I’m too old. But it was a big inspiration in the style of game I wanted to create.

As for the reason why the video game characters are there in the plot of [Quantum Witch’s] story; they do tie into the plot and there’s a little hint that they say. And I just loved putting in my alternate takes on who these characters were. You might know Paul Rose from Digitizer. At the very beginning of the project, I had all my story beats worked out. This is what’s going to happen. This is how it’s all going to interact, but I could not – for the life of me – start it.

I couldn’t build the bridges between these beats and Rose helped me a lot. He did a script treatment and some of the dialogue in the marketplace is directly from him; [one of the characters you meet is] talking about pills and I was like, ‘that that just fits in perfectly because there is a character later on who might need that pill’. It’s also a bit of a cue for me to have the characters talk about medication. .

I also wanted to add some queer flavor to them, so Princess Nectarine – who is similar to but legally distinct from a certain Nintendo character – is in a polycule with Bowser and Mario and they like to roleplay kidnapping. I did not set out to make a queer game. It’s turned out that way because I can’t help it, but it’s not all these characters are.

VG247: I know you’re a solo developer and this is a largely solo project, but I’m aware you’ve received some help with the whole endeavour. You mentioned Paul Rose. So could you tell me more about the people who have helped you with creating Quantum Witch and what they did?

Nikki: I must absolutely shout out Jerden Cooke for the music. We composed a lot of it together, [with] me mostly on the ukulele which you can hear in Ren’s theme. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video clip of David Lynch helping compose Laura’s Theme from Twin Peaks. Working with him is like that. I got some fantastic music which was like the music I could hear in my head when I started playing on the ukulele. He was able to put it down, basically extract it from my head, and put it into a word file.

And Paul Rose; I knew him through Digitizer meetups. We just got talking on Twitter one day and met up. He’s a great guy and things came about quite naturally because it was when Covid hit and a lot of TV work got cancelled. I said to him, look, you should get yourself on Fiverr. Put your writing services out there because people should be paying for this. I will be your first customer, and so I was! Without his help, this would have still been a collection of little story beats that I would have had no idea how to wire together.

And I’ve always wanted to work with Stephanie Sterling. What if I just ping her on Bluesky and say, “Hey, want to write a chapter of this game? It’s got a dancing skeleton in it.” She said, “Yeah, I’m in.” She said that when she started to do it, she wasn’t entirely sure whether it would be the right project because she just saw a [dancing] skeleton.

The more she wrote for [Quantum Witch] and the more she played the game, she went, “Yeah, this is my wheelhouse,” and she poured her religious trauma into it, which happened to just fit absolutely perfectly. It’s like I could not have asked for a better group of people to work with, and this is kind of what I want to say to indie developers who are solo. You’re not alone. You might just want one name on the credit, but it takes a village to raise a child.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: I was taken aback by just how cosy the game is. Admittedly, even with the subject matter, I didn’t expect – largely given the art style – for this to be all doom and gloom, but I definitely didn’t expect something so jovial and honestly, straight-up funny. How did you decide that this was the approach you wanted to take when creating Ren’s story?

Nikki: [Stardew Valley], Chrono Trigger and Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door are my three most played games. I love the style of Stardew Valley and I love that there’s some darkness hidden in Stardew Valley. I really liked the humor in it. I mean, if you thought I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but I am, then that’s an achievement. That’s exactly what I wanted. My main coping mechanism is humor. I’m not saying it’s a healthy coping mechanism, but it kind of works. And I mean, I was heavily influenced by reading a lot of Douglas Adams. and he was able to find humor in the most bleak situations.

And the graphical style… When I started this, I couldn’t draw a convincing stick figure. I look at the art that I did four years ago when I started messing about with this idea and it’s just embarrassing. Objectively terrible, but my main influences were Stardew Valley and The Darkside Detective. I loved the low-resolution style art, but there was so much character in them. So, I took a pixel art course on Udemy and a color theory course and… then just found, hey, I can do this now. That’s weird.

VG247: While looking into Quantum Witch and yourself, I found a lovely quote of yours from The Guardian: “A lot of religion is about giving up autonomy to some mystical power that you’ve never seen, heard or met. Over the course of the game, Ren takes that agency back… It’s a queer emancipation story.” Could you expand on this?

Nikki: The consequence of being yourself in a group that says ‘no, being yourself is wrong’ is that you just get thrown out. It’s weird because I think of my experiences as unique, but the themes they really do seem to be universal. Stephanie Sterling from The Jimquisition: she wrote a chapter of the later part of the game. I originally said to her, can you write these three scenes? She came back and said “I couldn’t stop writing. I just love this universe” It’s weird, because you wouldn’t know it was a different author. The religious oppression of queer people is the same wherever you go.

I’m really hoping just that I’ve got that balance right between a game that’s fun and cozy and humorous, – that there is a dancing skeleton who can see through time – but also has that deeper meaning and that message that you take back control.

A lot of people would look at this and think ‘you must be anti-religion’ and I’m 100% for freedom of religion, but that also means I’m 100% for freedom from religion. Whether you’ve got faith or not, nobody wants somebody else’s faith forced on you. You can’t have freedom of religion without freedom from religion.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: How long is Quantum Witch set to be, and how many endings will there be? I know you also mentioned some side quests having various conclusions, as well as the game’s main endings being different depending on your decisions.

Nikki: I watched a tester play from beginning to end. It took him about three and a half hours, and he got my second favorite ending. He had questions about the lore and I said, “play it again and make different choices, and you’ll get a different ending, which will probably answer that for you.”

It’s difficult to say how many endings there are. There’s three definite categories of endings. There’s bleak. There’s interesting, where you kind of get a bittersweet ending, and then there’s the super happy ending, and there are variations on each of those. [These depend] on the characters you’ve helped. There’s also little puzzles that you can go and solve which can enhance the happy ending. It’s kind of like an open-world choose-your-own adventure book, but in pixel format.

If I’m going to do a full playthrough of all choices and all stories, I will easily put aside six or seven hours to do it and I wrote it. So, I’m not trying to discover it. I think it’s like The Stanley Parable in that sense.

VG247: I also learned that Quantum Witch could have been a novel. It could have initially started out that way and you then obviously decided to turn this into a game. How did that come about?

Nikki: One of my friends was doing the National Novel Writing November. I thought, I’ve got this story in my head which might fit, so I started writing it. I don’t know if anybody’s realized this, [but video games] are quite difficult to make, and novels are very easy because you just type… I was wrong and I really did not enjoy writing it.

I decided, thinking back on my childhood, I want to make this into a game. I want to make this interactive. Choice is a big theme. I want to give the player a choice. And it did end up as a point and click [game] for a while, rather than a plotformer. No matter what you do, it is a valid choice. There are no game over screens in Quantum Witch. Anything you do is just a part of the story and the game is over when you get the credits.

Quantum Witch is a surprisingly cosy and jovial take on topics of religious trauma and queer identities, but if your curiosity about this game is piqued, it’s up to you to find out all of its secrets. NikkiJay stresses that there’s so much to discover for those who are eager to explore the game and discover all of its various paths, endings, and dialogue.

For those who want to try Quantum Witch out, you can find a demo for the game on Steam, and it’ll also be participating in Steam’s Next Fest during June.

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May 29, 2025 0 comments