I saw a play-through of this game today and I am deeply moved. (I can't play scary games myself, but I love watching them!) Have you done any interviews about the writing of the story? The intricacy of the writing is absolutely astounding and I would love the chance to hear about your process!
Thank you for such a generous comment! This is the first time someone asked me about the writing process of my game and I'm not sure where to start. Still, I'll try to answer as best as I can.
When I first decided to make a horror game, I thought about what makes people scared. The answer I found was simple: it's the emotions we harbor. It's the emotions we try to hide but slowly eat us from within without us even knowing. Everyone is familiar with jealousy, guilt, shame stalking them for all their lives, and I wanted to tell how destructive and terrifying those emotions can be if you keep running away. And since love is one of the most complicated and powerful emotions, i decided to write a story about the fine line between love and obsession.
To tell you the truth, I think the story itself is not that special; I mean, it's just another high school drama. But I think the reason why many gamers got absorbed into the plot is because I tried to make the experience personal. I chose a diary as the main plot device so that the players are easily drawn into the life of the characters, even if most of their faces are not even shown in the game. The best part is that almost everyone who played the game can easily understand what's I'm trying to say. Most of us had our secret crush and the fear of rejection, and are familiar with the pain of having to hide our feelings and having our soul and mind torn because of it. Even after we are grown up, those experiences haunt us and make us do crazy things without us even knowing. I wanted to show that something so familiar to us can keep us on the edge of the seat without the lengthy chase sequences or endless jump scares.
I don't know if this satisfies your question, but if you want to discuss more I'll be more than happy to talk.
Thank you so much for answering! This game hit so well on the red-hot core of shame, and I think the shame of an unwanted crush is well-highlighted by the shame of *actually* having done something terrible. It allows us to explore the peak of the emotion more effectively.
Further question: What impressed me most was how the diaries are so clearly related, yet never in a way that compromises the plot's integrity. (For example: One diary discusses helping Brian with his poetry homework, the other then has a poetry puzzle.) It seems so obvious that the two diaries are in communication from a narrative standpoint, but it doesn't feel ham-handed, and the twist remains completely believable in retrospect.
How did you go about coordinating the diaries to one another? What was your process for making sure there weren't plot holes or continuity errors? The story is so damn *effective,* and it seems like it must have required a lot of careful coordination.
Thank you for sharing your insight about my game. I cannot agree more with what you said about a character's shames affecting one another.
(SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO DIDN'T PLAY THE GAME)
Love, Sam's narratives are driven by two diaries; one written by Sam in the past and one written by Kyle in the present within his subconscious. Both give very different perspectives on what happened in Rosen Peek to the players, therefore I carried the risk of the game's narratives being too confusing to deliver.
I had to be careful writing the two diaries so they don't drift too far apart from one another. Therefore, I set up a timeline of what happened in Rosen Peek (such as the date of Sam's arrival and the date of her meeting Brian for the first time). Next, I wrote Sam and Kyle's thoughts about those events in the form of diary entries and revealed each entries to the players in order (so if Kyle's diary is discussing incident A at one point, the players will be shown Sam's diary that talks about the same thing, but in her own way). That way, readers could effectively understand the story with broader perspective with minimum narrative confusion.
Next came endless proofreading. I checked for plot holes, missing/redundant details and how well the narratives can captivate the players until the very end of the game. I had some help from my friends because no matter how hard I tried to proofread with fresh perspective, it was just impossible. They were a huge help in not only finding bugs but improving the smoothness of storytelling. I guess the most important part of QA is ALWAYS GET HELP.
Your questions are very insightful. Are you majoring in or a professional in writing or game design? Thanks to you I'm having some time reevaluating my game. I hope my answers are helping you as much as they are helping me.
I majored in creative writing in college and am hard at work on my own YA fantasy novel (and have been for a long time!). Your game moved me in a way I hadn't been moved since Doki Doki Literature Club, and before that by Undertale. I am impressed at how the symbology is neither subtle nor ham-handed: it is there to be seen if people want to see it. It takes a certain kind of confidence to say, "Yes, I will have my character hide in the literal closet," and then let the more subtle aspects come from what leaving the closet looks like (the player must not be seen leaving, but they *must* leave).
I was impressed by how masterfully this game uses the nature of the medium to its advantage. The diaries are obviously by different people, but everybody "knows" that anything established in the first five minutes of a game is canon, and the first five minutes of the game implies that the two diaries are the same. This aspect is particularly what I've been thinking lots about: what level of thought went into the introduction of the two diaries to make them *imply* being the same, without ever actually saying so? What configurations did you try before saying, "Okay, yes, this sets up the expectation I want."
I knew it : ) I've always admired those whose speciality is literature, and I am honored you took interest in my writing. One of my biggest challenges was how to make use of the narrative powers only a game possess without being too 'direct or descriptive'. I was fascinated by games like the Portal series, Undertale and A Way Out for their creativeness of telling a story in a way that only a game can achieve. In a similar sense, I wanted to deliver symbology that only a gamer could experience, although reading is the main instrument of story telling in Love, Sam. For example, after obtaining the camera, I designed my game so that the players have to continuously press the shutter in order to progress. This was an attempt to help players empathize with Kyle who frantically took pictures to achieve his goals. And of course, the part where you exit the closet is also one of my attempt to deliver symbology in a game. I was really concerned if those attempts was too subtle, and you have no idea how relieved I was when the streamers exclaimed "oh he came out of the closet". To be honest, the "trick" of two diaries was not difficult to orchestrate. This is because of the nature of the subject i tried to talk about: love. The two diaries are different in many ways: the writings' tones are different, the paper designs are different, and even the hand writings and drawings are different. But I wasn't too worried about the readers suspecting that the two diaries are written by different people, even if Kyle's diary has a more 'obsessive' characteristics while Sam's diary gives a more lovable aura. This is because both Kyle and Sam's feelings are, in a way, the same. At first glance, the two diaries seem to portray different feelings for Brian; one is love and the other is obsession. However, many people don't suspect that the two diaries are written by different people despite a number of hints suggest that they are. This is because we naturally accept that Sam's sweet feelings can always turn into something ugly like Kyle's. Some say Kyle is a psycho, but his feelings are not that different from Sam's. It's just that his anger and frustration was too much for him to bare. Remember that I said I wanted to talk about the fine line between love and obsession? This was my way of saying it. |
Hello again! I wanted to let you know, I'm going to be on DamageBoost Podcast talking about "Love, Sam" and what it is that makes it so effective. Would you be interested in being interviewed on the podcast? I really think it's criminal that there aren't more essays/thinkpieces/content people who love this story can read.
It's nice hearing from you, cynkatie! First of all, thank you for asking. It would be an honor to participate in such a meaningful discussion.
However, I must warn you that I am not used to talking in interviews, and since English is not my first language, I'm not really confident in my English speaking capabilities. Is there a chance I can take a peak at the topics we will discuss, or questions that I might have to answer on the podcast? If i'm really doing this, i want to be prepared as much as possible and practice a bit.
Lastly, how are you guys planning to do the interview? There is a small chance I can't use certain podcast services since I'm in Korea right now.