Austerity (00:00):
Live and drink Humanoids and True Kin alike. This is the Titans of Text podcast. We are, your hosts Austerity Nissenfeld

Eric (00:20):
And Eric Oestrich

Austerity (00:20):
And we have with us today Caelyn Sandel, a Boston based game developer and writer. We're going to talk about the upcoming game Lorefinder, the existing game, Caves of Qud, and basically everything narrative. Welcome, Caelyn.

Caelyn (00:36):
Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

Austerity (00:39):
So to start out, let's get into why you got into gaming design and game narrative and narrative in general, where where did you really start off? What was your original passion?

Caelyn (00:50):
Oh my gosh. My original passion is just that I wanted to make games like that goes all the way back. That goes back to elementary school when I wanted to be a "computer programmer", but specifically because I thought that video games were the coolest thing. I've had that interest for a long, long time. Like I never really received a proper programming education. There wasn't really one made available to me throughout high school and college, which was very frustrating for me. You know, I, at the time was pursuing theater, I had no idea that I was gonna, I mean, like I could have seen myself as a playwright. I was considering the merits of telling stories because I knew that I had a knack, you know, for, for fiction, but I kind of thought of that as being something that I would bring to the table in theater.

Caelyn (01:46):
And then, you know, ultimately I decided that wasn't for me. So I just kind of went from job to job for awhile. So 2010 was a big year for me because that was the year that Carolyn got me the job at Harmonix and it's the year that I co-wrote with her, my first full length, interactive fiction story. And it placed a third in the IMF comp that year. And we kept engaging with that community, but I found that there were a lot of people who weren't really interested in the more experimental aspects of things. And you know people were openly hostile to, to stuff that made the bar lower. But then I looked over and I saw that there was this like group of kind of pockets of queer artists who were using more accessible tools to do some really cool stuff.

Caelyn (02:41):
And that's how I got into being an indie dev. And when Harmonix laid me off, I decided to try using this brand new Patrion site and see if I couldn't do some online part time work and get people to support me and to do art. It was really great for me because having a per work goal at the time meant that I was reliably producing at least two games a month and they were small, but it was a great way for rapid iteration. And it let me really kind of hone my narrative design skills very fast, you know, like I built that portfolio and it, you know, eventually started to serve me because I was producing my own things. I was noticed by the lead coder of Caves of Qud, who followed me and gave me a key for the game.

Caelyn (03:36):
And I got really into it, you know, this kind of spills over into how I got started at freehold games, which is that I made a sort of like fanfic and Quickstart guide that was designed to get people into the early parts of caves of cud. And at the time that like there wasn't much in the beginning of the game and it was pretty samey and people ended up not playing because they just died it really fast and didn't know what to do. So that's why I ended up making this fanfic and that got the attention of Qud's lead designer who noticed that I had a knack for mimicking his purple prose that he packed into every single description. And so they were like, Hey, can I, can we put these creatures that you came up with in the game?

Caelyn (04:27):
And I said, yes, absolutely. That sounds wonderful. You know, they showed me some tiles that they had commissioned of, of these, these dear centaur people, these Cervitaurs and I was like, this is so cool, but then nothing happened for awhile. And you know, like Qud was still updating regularly, but you know, like they didn't really have time to get to this one feature until a couple of years later when they contacted me and were like, well, okay, we don't have time to put these in the game. How about you come put them in the game? And that's how I got started at a freehold games writing for Caves of Qud.

Austerity (05:05):
That's pretty fascinating. So were you able to, and I, and I use this as the cliche "make a living" right off the bat for Patriot. I'm sure that no, a little bit of time there, not at all, arguably I don't make a living now.

Caelyn (05:21):
I definitely do have to lean on my spouse for, you know, for a reasonable standard of living, but, you know, I have enough that I could live on it if I had to, at this point when I was first starting out, no, I had a, I had a remote job doing Map QA for a subsidiary of Nokia. So like I was, I was out there like trying to figure out if certain towns or streets in India actually existed or whether they were just like, you know somebody's junk suggestion or data, like it was, it was a very strange living to be making. Do you know, at this point I do have, you know I am very fairly paid by Freehold and you know, like I have a contract with Lorefinder as well. So, you know, things are more stable for me now, but they're definitely not fully stable. Being, being a freelancer in this current economy and also like games, job sphere is it's kind of rough. It doesn't pay a whole lot. There aren't a lot of supports and, you know, like I can't imagine doing it without being able to lean on my spouse. It would be really hard. So yeah, I definitely am lucky to be able to have gotten to the point where I am now paid fairly.

Austerity (06:49):
Well. That's that always seems to be a big, a big pin in the indie game scene is, you know, how tight of a living it really is to throw yourself onto the, under the fire of your passion.

Caelyn (07:02):
Yeah.

Austerity (07:03):
What stories. And, and usually I just say books, but I think there's more interesting things than just books out there. What stories from any media source would you say inspire you most that you lean on stylistically or that really just inspired you to create yourself?

Caelyn (07:22):
Oh, you know, it's so hard to say because I pick up a lot of things from the many, many people who produce small works of fiction around me. I've definitely been, you know, arguably I kind of started the micro fiction trend among my social circles, but I've, it's been really like a cool thing for my development too. See the ways that other creators have iterated upon something that I popularized. And that's super cool. And, you know, obviously I'm seeing other micro fiction accounts popping up elsewhere. It's not like it's an original idea, but it's been cool. You know, like there are some poll from an original source, but then, you know things inspired by that work will in turn inspire an original artist. It's like, it's something that we're all kind of workshopping together as, as a bunch of disparate social groups who pass our media around. And I think that's very cool.

Austerity (08:26):
Speaking of microfiction, I've witnessed a number of them on Twitter and voted for ones that lost most of the time you're branching narrative. But how, how did you get into that? Like, what was, was that like a writing exercise initially? Or was it something that and that you just like, this would be really cool if we just started doing this?

Caelyn (08:46):
I mean, that was kind of it. I was one of the things that I really like think a lot about is that since Twitter is my primary means of self promotion, I try to figure out ways to make it work. So if I can get people engaged, if I can get people interested and something that I'm trying to do, it's much more motivating to me and it's easier to do more of it. And it's a good way to get an idea of what my audience is interested in and wants to see. So, I was thinking about just kind of like a choose your own adventure thing, which I'd seen people doing before, but it felt elsewhere like something that was kind of not necessarily on rails, but the author had an idea of what they were making going in. And I thought to myself, what if I did it?

Caelyn (09:44):
What if I didn't have any idea what I was about to write that just sounded really exciting to me is the idea that I like, you know, I'm like pick a card, any card, and each of the cards goes in a direction that I have not planned at all. I haven't looked ahead. I haven't thought about what I'm going to write next. I wait for everyone else to pick, and then I think about it and then I write it. And then I think about what another choice would be that kind of will send me into unexplored territory. It's been so cool. And I, in a very much a learning experience is there a place that we can like find that bundled up at all after the fact, because this, because the story which I'm calling loose ends after one of the protagonists there's I haven't finished it yet, and once I finished it, I want to figure out a way to kind of like package it and keep it.

Caelyn (10:43):
But right now what I have is a thread that I have bookmarked in Twitter. I can provide a link, but it's, it's just a sort of summary thread that links to each chunk of the story so that it can be presented in a readable fashion rather than just one long horrible thread. What's it like working with procedural narrative and building a world in pieces. So to say, I mean, it's, it's cool. Like honestly, it doesn't feel all that much different from like yeah. And, you know, thinking up a role playing games set in an established universe, right? Like I've been given a lot of leeway for what I create, like in cud. Knowing that like, who knows who, when people are going to see it, or if people are gonna see it, it's just kind of like being released into the air.

Caelyn (11:37):
And it's actually kind of surprised me as I, as I kept writing. And as more of my incidental dialogue went in to see my own influence, like kind of seeping in from the edges, because I had, because I'd filled in so many cracks and you know, I'm planning to continue doing that and, and it's exciting and makes me feel a real, a sense of inclusion. The procedural Jenner and elements themselves feel very comfortable to work with, honestly, because our use of randomization is not all that like inaccessible and I don't really have to worry too much about like terrain generation. I just get to make a little map and, you know, either Brian sticks it in an algorithm or, you know, Jason just finds a place for it to go all of the, all of like, I've, I've done a number of maps for Caves of Qud that are static, aggregate and never change.

Caelyn (12:37):
Like the lightning struck tree outside of Bey Lah, where you find skind for the first time in the Kith and kin quest, that is a hand drawn map. And I also hand drew Bey Lah itself. And I hand drew the Mopango hideout. So the stuff about procedural generation that I don't entirely understand, it's actually not something that I tend to interact with. The stuff that I'm working with is like, you know, population and encounter tables. I can understand those working with those fields. Fine. You know, and, and markov, we've got markov text all over the place, but that's not really where the joyful randomness of cut is. It's seeing which card to pick basically what, what comes up in the deck.

Austerity (13:21):
Do you ever worry on, on, you know, the idea of procedural generation and randomization and all that, do you ever, do you ever write something and then, you know, wonder is anyone ever going to see this? Is that ever something you think about when, when you're working with that stuff?

Caelyn (13:37):
I mean, you know, like if, if I derive some kind of satisfaction from writing it, I don't really care that much if nobody sees it, because here's the thing, we're, we're a rope. Like this is a roguelike game, which means that our fans are the most thorough and ridiculously dedicated people on the planet. They are willing to give us hundreds of their hours. Like, you know, I was, I am one too. Like I have, I have put I want to say 1300 hours into cut. Like I've played a lot of that game and that's cause it keeps giving back. So yeah, like I'm not really worried about that because I know someone's going to see it. Even if it's somebody who's basically picking through XML files and you know, what people do that because we have an active, modern community. So every once in a while, somebody will see a pun that I put in a dialogue node name and crack up about it on the discord. And like, I never expected anyone to see that, but they saw it and it's, it's gratifying. It's gratifying to see people noticing these things.

Austerity (14:43):
So I'm just going to say this. This is a question technically, even though grammatically, it's not one word. And then, and then you can react to it: Snakelite.

Caelyn (14:53):
It's Snakelite! Hey folks, are you looking for a new appliance that can serve all of your needs? Try Snakelite! It's proprietary AI is capable of tracking you anywhere in the house and it will never kill your family.

Caelyn (15:06):
Sorry. I blacked out for a second.

Austerity (15:09):
That was good.

Caelyn (15:10):
I just regained consciousness. Did anything happen? The Snakelite is not my greatest accomplishment...

Austerity (15:21):
I kind of disagree. I don't know. There might be other people who disagree too.

Caelyn (15:26):
ButSnakelite was a tremendous amount of fun to write. I I'm like at heart, part of me is a dedicated schlocky horror designer. And you know, like I, I do write horror games. That first game that I wrote with Carolyn was basically a splatter punk horror game.

Caelyn (15:48):
So like, that's cool by me. Like, I love writing things that are meant to be disturbing that take something familiar and twist it up. You know, like it's fun. It's fun to go outside of of a regular style. It's Snakelite.

Austerity (16:06):
I mean, honestly, these are the things that make some games; I wouldn't say it makes the game interesting specifically, like I'm not going to buy the game just to go find a Snakelite and then stop playing it forever. It's these moments like, you know, the AAA games have their, the Bethesda glitches, like Fallout New Vegas with the doctor's head spinning around on its axis. Yeah. Doc Burford, a recently someone had found the cat in Shipbreaker and that creates like a, it creates a media moment for sure. Like an advertising point cause it gets people interested in it. It's a communal, more importantly, it creates a communal point. Well, the community can be like, I play this game, I'm going to go find this cat or I'm going to find a Snakelite and it brings people together. I think, I think those are really important.

Caelyn (17:01):
Yeah. We have a really thriving a fan community for Caves of Qud and it makes me very happy. I have, I have seen a lot of amazing fan work. And you know, like we don't hire everyone who does good fan work, just like mainly me and Ava probably. But you know, I've seen some amazing stuff from the people who like this game. And I think that people connect over that shared understanding of a fictional world that has its own intricacies and culture. Like those things to me are what are interesting. And that's why that's why I write them.

Caelyn (17:45):
That's why I am so excited to fill in the cracks of Qud because, because the little things also make or break a game for me. If there are wondrous things to discover in the corners of a world, you bet I'm going to comb the whole thing.

Austerity (18:04):
Let's shift over to Lorefinder. Cause Lorefinder is coming up. What is Lorefinder all about? It's like, I'm not, I'm not even going to say the M the word that I'm sure we don't want that word anymore...

Caelyn (18:19):
But honestly, ours, our CEO uses it. So I'm kind of whatever, like I, you know, I refer to this genre or as exploratory platformer because the way that I think of it is, but basically you are in a big map. It's usually side scrolling. You are you are fighting enemies. You are exploring areas in an order of your choosing usually areas that you cannot get are locked away by ability gain a new ability and you are able to proceed.

Caelyn (18:51):
And that is in fact what Lorefinder is. It is, we could say that Metroidvania is the word that we're not supposed to use, but really I'd say that Lovecraft is the word that we are not supposed to use because we are an Eldritch, horror exploratory platform we are perhaps iterating on work by certain famous racists or maybe just one, but we're definitely approaching the whole concept of things that man was not meant to know from a different angle. We're, we're looking at it differently. We're processing it differently. Our themes are radically different, but there's still plenty of body horror. There's still plenty of horrible monsters. So if you came for those, there will be plenty.

Austerity (19:42):
I've read, I've read the description. I know there was a demo. It was, it was part of the demo weekend. Was it not?

Caelyn (19:48):
Yes.

Austerity (19:51):
How did that demo go? Do you know, were you in the loop with the rest of the team on yes.

Caelyn (19:55):
Yeah, no, I was definitely, it was, it was pretty good. We got a lot of wishlists. Let's hope that people buy it when we actually come out, but we're, you know, we're going to try to make sure that everybody who wishedlists it goes through with it, you know, tell your friends though. Cause word of mouth is still a very useful way to get people to play games. I should know. I've given a lot of people recent to play Qud and that makes me super happy.

Eric (20:24):
How does the self corruption mechanic work? Does it affect any parts of the narrative?\.

Caelyn (20:30):
Yes, it does. Well we haven't gotten there yet. So OK. I should, I should go into a little bit more detail about the game. I kind of like fell off there. So this, this is a game where you play a private investigator looking into the disappearance of their father. Their name is Casey Morgan and, and they are a gender queer protagonist. They have a girlfriend named Pamela whom they call to save the game. And the premise is basically you go to this weird house, horrible things are happening. Your father leads you through with like, because he can like call you on the house phones, but you don't know where he is. And meanwhile, you know, there, there are other entities in the house trying to influence you. And as you go through it, you kind of explore how there, there's going to be a lot of thematic stuff that I'm not going to go into detail about. So I'm not going to venture into spoiler territory, but, but I'm very much with my script focusing on themes of othering and belonging and the ways that we kind of twist ourselves up to get where we want to be.

Caelyn (21:50):
And a lot of that is going to be accomplished through a sort of retelling of the story of the house. The rest of it is going to be like a kind of exploration of Casey's relationship with their dad. They kind of are a lens through which we see kind of like, like, you know, if you're going through the, the art section, your you and your dad will talk about creative pursuits and and you learn more about Casey's past through those scenes, I'm really excited to be doing this story as lead writer and working with June Hornsby, who is the lead designer and Emma Massen and Njord. Emma and Njord are the, the company heads. And they have been driving all of this and they're the reason that are our demo looked so good.

Austerity (22:44):
There, there is one thing I want to know and you don't have to say if you can't, but it's generic very general in a general sense, is, are there bad and good ends? Can you result in a better end?

Caelyn (22:59):
We haven't totally nailed that down, but what I can tell you is that there is a new game plus mode. So probably rather than multiple endings, it's that, you know, your initial ending isn't necessarily going to be the end. But then, you know they're one of the Kickstarter goals was to unlock "girlfriend mode" where you play as Casey's girlfriend. Yeah. That's going to be, that's going to be kind of like a different angle on the story happening after the the, the main story, like immediately after it. Well, the status of the ending is still being discussed. I think that it's more likely that there is going to be a single linear ending and then a followup ending.

Austerity (23:45):
I'm gonna, I'm going to ask something that might be perceived as a hard question here, not about Lorefinder or about Caves of Qud but about you. Pick one thing that we're going to, we're going to be linking in the, in the podcast page to your bio page. Sell everyone on one game, pick, pick a favorite and sell us on playing that.

Caelyn (24:14):
Okay. I will, I'm going to go with a song that I did initially for a game jam that wildly exceeded my initial expectations for it by basically writing itself over the course of a few weeks, it's called the Skeleton Key of Ambady. And it is about a wandering legend of a fantasy land who where's a key around her neck that can unlock any door. The game is based on a a song by the, the artists Dessa called Skeleton Key. The idea for the jam was that we had to listen to a bunch of songs, and then we picked one to be the inspiration for our game. And I got my list of songs and I was super unimpressed for most of them. And then I got to the skeleton key and it was this amazing, like driving a emotional song that told this like kind of mythological story. And I was like, I would love to use this song as a basis for world building. And so I did, and it kind of all came out like all at once.

Caelyn (25:24):
I just like wrote the game and I was making friends with some people at the time I was, I was, I would drop into to Kevin bays, art streams. And he played a preview of the game and was very excited about it enough so that he drew a bunch of art for it. So there's, there's his art in there. It has music. It has a cover of the, the song that I play and that is orchestrated by me. And then there's another cover of the same song at a, you know, lower tempo and, and a quieter that serves as the games. Second act soundtrack. The first act is just ambient noises. So I, you know, I made this game to be, it's mainly text, it's mainly a choose your own adventure style interactive fiction game it's it's hypertext, but it is illustrated. It has a soundtrack and it has a modular ending that can split into multiple parts depending on what you, so, yeah, that is, if you're going to play one game of mine, it should probably be the skeleton key or traveler, but, but my sales pitch is for the skeleton key.

Austerity (26:40):
It sounds pretty interesting to me. So we're going to conclude on that note of one last question. What is besides Lorefinder obviously, cause it's not out yet. And theaves of Qud is the kind of game that never stops being added to really; what is on the horizon for you? Is, is there anything else that you're planning to start or get into?

Caelyn (27:06):
I mean, I have a few projects of my own kind of on like, you know, on simmer. I've been putting most of my effort into Lorefinder and cut because Lorefinder is supposed to leave at early access probably this year or next it was originally projected to be this year, but then this year happened. But like the, the release date for Lorefinder, it's possible that we may get it out this year. I don't know. I would have to ask Emma what the official stance on that is, but I don't know. I could see us coming out with it at the end of the year, if we really push or next year, if we don't. Mmm. There is an upcoming project that I wanted to talk about. I'm writing a game called The Wait. There was a period at the end of that.

Caelyn (27:56):
The Wait. It is about, well, okay, I'm not going to say what it's about. It is a game that carries a sense of dread if I write it right. It is a, it is a sort of daily life, a text game with atmospheric horror elements and unreliable narrator, Ellen, I'm sorry elements of unreliable narrator as well. So, so please look forward to that. I, I it's been kind of on delay, but I hope to come up with, out with it soon. It's called The Wait. It is an atmospheric horror game set in your home.

Austerity (28:37):
And I imagine that'll post to itch to your itch page, correct?

Caelyn (28:41):
Absolutely.

Austerity (28:43):
Okay. So we'll look for that. And I'd like to thank you for coming on the Titans of texts today, to talk with us and, and our audience about everything that you're involved in.

Caelyn (28:53):
Thank you so much for having me on I ha I enjoyed myself, even if I did get a little bit lost in my own ramblings.