Earlier this year on February 6th, 2025, visual novel players got the 1st episode in the 5 part detective cybernoir visual novel, of the Devil. In just under a month, the game received over 500 glowing reviews, praising the game’s mystery, pacing, cinematography, characters, and more—despite only episode 1 being out. Now, episode 2 has been slated for release on December 18th, 2025.
Today, I’ll be sitting down with part of the team at Nth Circle about their process for developing of the Devil!
Arimia: Thank you all for taking the time to talk about of the Devil! Can you each introduce yourselves and what you do at Nth Circle?
kyoni: Hey, I’m Brian “kyoni” Mulholland. I write, direct and develop visual novels at Nth Circle Studios.
aarenders: Hi! I’m aarenders, one of the environment artists and the 3D prop artist at Nth Circle.
Bug: I’m Bug, Art Director and character designer/illustrator at Nth.
Arimia: How did you each get into visual novels?
kyoni: My first VN was, appropriately enough, Apollo Justice for the DS. Other “formative” stuff that defined the medium for me early on include 999 and Super Danganronpa 2. I’d list Uchikoshi and Kodaka as inspirations first, but I’ve probably had the most total “exposure” to Nasu’s work over the years across his many works and adaptations. That might be why I enjoy writing long-winded encyclopedic lore and starting sentences with “…But.”
…But even so, I don’t regret that.
I created my first visual novel in Ren’Py in 2020. It was a modified form of a short story I had recently written about a lawyer showing up very late at night to an interrogation room and helping a young man prove his innocence when the police accuse him of being a serial killer. It had a twist ending that would be pretty familiar to anyone who’s played of the Devil.
I’d never done any creative writing prior to the COVID19 lockdowns- I was actually a theater kid. But I feel like that background in acting has, over time, proven itself to inform how I write; Characters have their “marks” in a scene that they need to hit for the story to progress, but the space in between each of those points is full of possibility for the character to develop themselves. Eventually I pitched that Ren’Py demo around to some friends of mine, hoping it would serve as proof that I had an idea worth working on. Fortunately for me, they saw something in it. As we started exploring how we’d go about creating of the Devil, we began working in Unity and Naninovel, from where we found the Devtalk server where we’d go on to participate in the Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam and then Spooktober VN Jam 2023 and 2024.
My favorite VN is Umineko, which is a choice I imagine many people who both read and create visual novels would echo. Umineko is a story about storytelling, and it holds special appeal for anyone who’s sat on both ends of the board in the mystery genre. There’s no bells and whistles in Umineko‘s original release- it’s a very “pure” visual novel, and you can finish it with just one finger on your space bar. It’s just sprites, backgrounds, a handful of sound effects playing double roles (locking a door and holstering a gun sounds eerily similar on Rokkenjima), a couple of dissolve effects and a great soundtrack, so it’s “carried” entirely by the execution, the craft.
Of the small sliver of this vast medium that I’ve been fortunate enough to read, for me, line-for-line, Umineko “says” the most. In the spirit of Umineko, here’s a twist you can put in red:
I didn’t finish reading it until after of the Devil Episode 1 released.
Thank you to the beta reader who compared Episode 1 to Umineko and encouraged me to finish it.
aarenders: My introduction to visual novels was back when I was back when I was a freshman in college, and a good friend of mine lent me their copy of 999. The game hooked me immediately with its puzzles, characters, and mystery- I just couldn’t put down the game and before I knew it, I could see the sun peeking through my dorm window. When I met up with my friend the next day, I was so excited to tell them that I got the true ending, as well as talk about the other endings I encountered. I probably should have saved some of that excitement for class, but hindsight is 20/20! Afterwards, I became more interested in other visual novels, which included Danganronpa, Hatoful Boyfriend and its sequel, Holiday Star, and the Ace Attorney series. Each of these games appeal to me for different reasons- Danganronpa‘s campy and bombastic premise, Hatoful Boyfriend‘s intense and gripping writing, and Ace Attorney‘s addictive and rewarding gameplay. While it’s been many years since I played it, Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star will always hold a very special place in my heart as my favorite visual novel.
I got into developing visual novels because of Brian, actually! A few years back, he pitched a shonen manga-type series to me and a group of mutual friends. I’ve been obsessed with shonen series since I was a kid, so this felt like the natural first step for me to start learning about how to make visual novels. I volunteered to work on it, making some character concept designs and prop modeling, and in the end, we released Kodokuhime! I was really happy to work with friends and create something that we were all proud of, and had fun making. A little after that, I joined Nth Circle formally as an environment artist and 3D prop artist, working on of the Devil and Märchen Line. It’s been so wonderful to work alongside such talented friends, and their skill and craftsmanship always drive me to improve my own work. We all work very hard to bring out the best in each other!
Bug: My introduction to VNs was reading the first Danganronpa, back in the fan translation days. While I was instantly hooked, I was actually not a believer in the medium at first—my thinking was something like “wouldn’t this be better if it were just a comic, or a book, or a “real” video game”? I took a single course on video game design in college, and had played with Twine a bit, but it just bounced off me for whatever reason. It wasn’t until later on that my partner introduced me to a few games on itch.io—more Twine games, and lots of Ren’Py VNs. Playing We Know the Devil, somehow, something clicked: visual novels are their own thing!! I had some epiphany, and from there, I played many more. So, in a way, I guess you could say I got into visual novels to impress a girl. The Danganronpa series is still probably my favorite. I especially love Danganronpa v3.
As for developing my own games, I was one of the lucky friends to read that Ren’Py demo Brian mentioned. I knew he needed an artist, so eventually I said to myself “this sounds fun” and pitched a few character design documents to him out of the blue. From there, I’ve been on every Nth Circle project so far except Kodokuhime.
Arimia: Umineko is definitely my favorite visual novel, but there’s many mystery VNs out there I’ve been inspired by like Ace Attorney as well. They all bring something unique to the table, different ways of viewing the mystery presented to you and how to work through it.
Nth Circle has done several game jam visual novels before, like the aforementioned Kodokuhime. What is the process the team goes through to decide to enter a game jam?
kyoni: Kodokuhime came about from a couple of things lining up:
- We had recently developed new tools for working in Unity that allowed us to move cameras in and around backgrounds whereas they had previously been limited to one shot per environment. I wanted to experiment with the new kinds of blocking this would allow for on a project with generally more limited scale.
- of the Devil was going through some re-tooling after its itch alpha as we created new visuals and gameplay, meaning there wasn’t much writing to be done.
- I was really into Bleach at the time.
So Kodokuhime was, relatively, spur of the moment: while Bug and mcf were working on of the Devil, I propositioned some friends with experience in doujins/artist alleys about working on the visual novel equivalent of a manga “one-shot.” Going into the project with that specific and restricted scope kept it from sounding too intimidating for people who were, at the time, completely new to game jams and game development in general.
Model Employee was a little more “targeted.” We knew that Spooktober VN Jam was the biggest competitively judged visual novel game jam around, and we wanted to use it to “re-introduce” Nth Circle to the English VN scene as we had formally founded the studio by that point. To that end, we added in little Easter eggs that established Model Employee as taking place in the same time and setting as of the Devil, hoping that folks who played it might then take notice when of the Devil Episode 0 debuted a few months afterwards.
Game jams have been great experiences for us at every stage: if you’re just starting out, it’s a structured but low-pressure format to help you form connections and get some completed titles onto your resume.
If you’re more experienced, it’s an exercise: forcing yourself to flex creative muscles in new and awkward ways. By working with restraints on time, resources, and thematic elements, you can come back to your long-term projects with renewed energy and a widened skillset.
aarenders: I would highly recommend entering game jams! From my experience with both Kodokuhime and Märchen Line, game jams allowed me to learn about new modeling techniques, understand the game development pipeline, and create a fully formed visual novel without feeling overwhelmed by feature creep or scope. There are times where having no deadline and limitless ideas can end up stalling a project indefinitely, so I think having that external deadline that everyone is racing towards is a big plus. It forces you to look at what you’re making with a more critical eye, cut out what isn’t necessary, and build upon what works. Both of the game jams I’ve been a part of have had a timeline of around 1 month, so once concepting is over, it’s really pedal to the metal.
[Game jams force] you to look at what you’re making with a more critical eye, cut out what isn’t necessary, and build upon what works.
Arimia: Game jams really have that unique combo of setting a deadline for you while also forcing you to be specific with what you make—they can also be really fun!
Each of the Nth Circle jam games are very distinct but still feel like they have a similar core. How do you approach designing these short games with such different concepts?
kyoni: Thematic similarities can more or less be blamed on me. Regardless of genre or medium, there are certain ideas that I find interesting that are going to keep cropping up in my writing whether I’m conscious of it or not because that’s just what I like to yap about: dehumanization, commercialism, isolation, censorship…lots of ellipses. I’m not ashamed of any of that, but I’m glad I can rely on my collaborators to bring their own ideas to the table and add variety to the flavor of the characters we develop and the worlds we explore.
When designing games for jams, we feel it’s important that we design the game for the jam. That means matching the theme and any requirements, of course, but it also means trimming story and scope early on. Jamming a bigger idea into a smaller suitcase is just setting yourself up for disappointment: you can’t possibly fit in everything you want and your audience be more troubled that you forgot the toiletries than that you gave them four winter coats to choose from. Of course it can be difficult to know a game’s scope or length while it’s mid-production. An outline can look pretty trim when it’s just bullet points, but sometimes characters like to talk.
To help with that, we try to structure of our jam games after existing models. For Kodokuhime, we looked to “one-shot” manga chapters. They’re about 40 pages, establish a protagonist, a setting, a conflict, and hint at bigger things to come, but are capable of standing on their own. Later, that one-shot might become the first chapter of an ongoing series. If a ton of things work out right, it could get adapted into the first episode of an anime. So with all that in mind, we knew that Kodokuhime should come in at around twenty to thirty minutes, with a burst of action around the five minute mark and a high-intensity finale that leaves room for about two minutes of denouement.
Model Employee, by comparison, was modeled after a slasher horror movie. There should be about five to six characters, each memorable, who start getting picked off at around the thirty minute mark.
You start lighter in tone, have a fakeout death around the point things start feeling formulaic, and save the heavy gut-punches for the end.
Märchen Line took inspiration for its setting and premise from sci-fi movies like Aliens or Starship Troopers, but was always intended to lean more heavily on the dating-sim and stat-raising subgenres, so it’s pacing had to incorporate the “structured time” elements of those games. But of course, there’s dozens upon dozens of existing visual novels who use early slice-of-life antics to punch up the horror of late-game twists, so we weren’t adrift at sea when planning out Märchen Line‘s arc.
Overall when taking part in visual novel jams, our guiding principle for selecting ideas, writing scripts, and designing experiences has been this: try to tell the kinds of stories that benefit from being in, rather than are limited by, the medium of visual novels.
Arimia: Working as part of a studio & on game jams requires a lot of collaboration and working together. Were there any growing pains or things you had to learn to work well with others on games?
kyoni: For jams it’s important to remember that everyone is essentially a volunteer- eager to help, but with varied levels of experience and availability. Before the jam starts, it’s best to make sure everyone’s clear what the time commitment will look like, and ideally, you should have a conversation with them about how much direction they’ll want or need. And while it may sound boring or stressful, we’ve seen how important it is to have weekly check-ins with as many team members as possible to discuss progress and set goals for the next seven days (and it should probably be done vocally as opposed to through text). Finding a day of the week and time of day that all team members can commit to for each week of the jam is very a clerical process, but you’ll be glad you got it sorted out before the jam begins.
Bug: Totally. Our jam entries pull in a lot of additional work from our friends–and we’re friends first, and business/creative/etc collaborators second, so there’s a lot of balancing the “having fun and developing our ideas and skills together” aspect with “for real we need to finish this thing.” Or, rather, it’s balancing the fun and friendship with the brass tacks. I’m lucky that I enjoy being a little bossy, so when it comes time to make those more manage-y, directorial-y calls (“We’re cutting X amount of the requested sprites” or “This workflow isn’t optimal for our deadline” or “This outfit isn’t working for this character, we need to change it”), I’ve learned to put my foot down sooner than later. Having at least one person comfortable with that kind of role, and hopefully a little experience (or willingness to learn) the more “boring” project management techniques necessary to get a project done in a timely fashion is key for managing stress levels and coming out of the project with your relationships intact.
aarenders: Like any project, there will always be things that went well, and things that could have gone better, and that’s OK! Like Bug said, our team and the vast majority people who volunteer with us for jams have been friends for many years, so we know what our skillsets and work style is like just through those friendships. That said, having a structure is quite necessary for developing these games, like having designated meeting times to check in on progress, and having an art director so we’re not spinning our wheels in pre-production. It’s always important to remember that, even while working with friends, you have a responsibility and people are relying on you to complete what you promised to work on.
Arimia: Let’s talk about art for a bit. of the Devil is one of the most stylistic visual novels I’ve ever seen, but each Nth Circle game feels really polished in the art direction department. How does the team go about designing the games?
Bug: It’s a lot of bouncing back and forth. We’ll review the script and plot out the nitty-gritty (how many characters are there? How many props, backgrounds, bespoke models will we need?) Then, Brian might give me a prompt like “character A needs to look similar to character B, their background is X and Y, here’s fun trivia Z” or a mood board and a few key points/layouts to the environment/background team. We’ll come back to that with a very roughed-out draft–maybe one “first pass” at a character for a vibe check, for example. If that stage passes, I’ll come back with maybe five disparate options–we narrow it down, find a direction we like, and then just polish and polish and polish it until it’s exactly right.
Happy Birthday to the most impartial judge a courtroom could ask for! "On a literal, technical, factual level, I'm not a Libra, but what you have to take into consideration is c'moooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnn 😭🥺😭"
— of the Devil (@nthcircle.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 7:11 PM
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Because we’re a tiny team, there’s a lot of gaps in “formal” knowledge–but between us, we have a really wide variety of interests, backgrounds, and visual lexicon, which helps a lot in bridging the gaps in our skillsets (and, critically, we aren’t shy to ask for some external help from friends that do have that knowledge). We’ve got a massive backlog of inspiration to pull from–and critically, a lot of that inspiration is from things that aren’t games (film, literature, anime, comics, fashion, architecture…) Wide horizons mean you can pluck inspiration from an unlikely source, which can make for surprising and memorable design.
aarenders: Our main starting point is looking at peers/trailblazers in our genre- for Märchen Line, we looked at Starship Troopers, Warhammer, Star Trek, etc. as environment inspiration, but we didn’t stop there. We looked at luxury cruise ships, the Paris catacombs, Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, to help us nail down the direction we wanted for the environments. What’s really important is to not just look at media, but to observe the outside world and engage with it- for of the Devil, I have a folder in my phone of pictures I’ve taken while walking around cities and towns. Cool electrical wires, HVAC systems, pipes on the side of the building, even something as mundane as a crack in a sidewalk. All of these help me think about what I could add to an environment to make it feel a little more real, a little more lived-in. This mindset can also help with interior backgrounds- what would a character leave lying around their room? Would they leave anything out in the first place? Where would they put their keys after coming home? All those little details help to create a story within the environment itself, and also help with telling the overall story of the game.
For 3D props, I like to think of the character that owns it and their relationship to it. Is the character a sentimental type who received this item from someone? Do they use this item every day? If it’s a common object, would they take the time to customize it? Once I nail down that relationship, I draft up some black and white sketches of what the prop could look like, present it to the team, then pick a direction based on those sketches, and start modeling!
Arimia: Episodic releases are usually a tough sell, but it looks like it’s worked out well for of the Devil. What made the team go for that model?
kyoni: In recent years, early-access games have become more broadly accepted and widely adopted, showing that players are willing to “take a bet” on certain games so long as the developers communicate their plans clearly.
…But the early release model succeeds or fails based on whether you can quickly gain and maintain confidence from your audience, and at the time we were planning of the Devil, none of us had ever put out a game before. With an episodic structure, players are never paying us for what the game could be- they’re only ever paying for what they’re getting. Combined with Episode 0 being free, we seem to have struck a nice balance where anyone who isn’t up for five more episodes of a serial killer protagonist can dip out before they’ve spent any money, discouraging them from feeling “burned” and leaving negative reviews. The episodic structure also reduces risk for us at Nth Circle- rather than spending a few years working part-time on a game that could either succeed or fail on a coin-toss, we can spend a few months on each episode, gauging audience reactions and iterating on feedback in between releases.
Thank you all for helping of the Devil reach over 1200(!!!) Steam reviews! 99% of players say: "you need to hop on peak NOW😈"
— of the Devil (@nthcircle.bsky.social) August 15, 2025 at 3:04 PM
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Bug: Episodic releases are a tough sell–maybe the biggest objection we get from players is the “I’ll just play it once it’s all out!” and “what’s the point if you guys might just abandon the project before you finish all the episodes?” While there will always be naysayers, we can take those objections on the nose. I really don’t see any other way we could have made of the Devil, let alone make it right, for similar reasons Brian’s outlined.
I do think our genre, as a mystery game drawing a lot of pacing and existing cultural zeitgeist from crime/court procedural, has helped with the “sell” as well. While of the Devil has overarching drama, it’s also a much simpler task for readers to stew on stand-alone mysteries chunked out in this way than it might be for other stories.
Arimia: While working towards the release of episode 0 and later episode 1, what were some of the marketing beats the team planned?
kyoni: of the Devil was first released on itch.io in a format that has, overtime, shown itself to be more of a “proof of concept” than a beta version. That game had the same story content as the Episode 0 anyone can play for free today, but it had no fail-states, no dynamic cameras, a much narrower soundtrack, and no gameplay to speak of. We were overjoyed by the reactions players had to the story and characters and world, but we could see the numbers and they weren’t lining up. After a few (brief) conversations with some potential publishers, we decided that while of the Devil was the story we wanted to tell, we needed to tell it better. So as we sat down to overhaul the gameplay, presentation, UI and every other aspect, we had time to review what did and didn’t work with our prior marketing.
Setting aside that changes to Twitter’s ownership at the time changed how engagement and advertising worked on that platform, we accepted that without a large marketing budget or some spark of incredible luck, the game wouldn’t reach many people. We couldn’t acquire a large marketing budget overnight, and we couldn’t plan for “getting lucky,” so we had to change our approach.
In the lead up to Episode 0 and especially Episode 1, we stopped playing coy about Morgan being a serial killer. We try to state plainly and as often as we can that this is a game where you play as a “killer lawyer” using her unique intellect to solve mysteries and engage in battles of wits- because even if it’s a spoiler, that is the appeal. Some of our oldest fans (playfully) disagree with this decision and urge others to play the game “without looking up anything about it.” But if you wanted to convince someone to read Death Note, well, they’ve probably already heard about it- but would you really hesitate to tell them what Light is like as a character? What he gets up to as Kira?
In an ideal world, people really would drop everything to take a chance on our game knowing nothing about it- and every day, some people do. But of the Devil isn’t on Netflix or Tiktok; You can’t download it onto your phone or bookmark it and play it in your browser later. No matter how good the game is, we need people to open Steam, find our page, download the game, and actually start playing for them to see that- and the reality is that that’s asking a lot when the vast majority of people have never heard of us.
So we aren’t shy about our “hook,” and we’re increasingly un-shy about our game’s inspirations. If of the Devil‘s artstyle looked exactly like Komatsuzaki Rui’s work, we wouldn’t have to tell people that our game is like Danganronpa, but it doesn’t, so we do. If the screenshots of Morgan in the courtroom were framed exactly like Phoenix Wright, we wouldn’t have to tell people that our game plays similarly, but they aren’t, so we do.
It’s not very “fun” to have to come out and state these things plainly, but little about marketing is- and it’s a price we pay gladly, because we’re convinced that more people need to be experiencing this story.
Arimia: Recently of the Devil was ranked in the top 50 games based on Steam user reviews on Steam for 2025. Has the reception been surprising?
"New card. Whaddya think?" Thank you to all our players for rating "of the Devil" in the top 50 of all games to come out on Steam in 2025! You got in on the ground floor.
— of the Devil (@nthcircle.bsky.social) November 1, 2025 at 7:19 PM
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kyoni: The reception has been incredibly flattering. We do ask for folks to leave reviews, of course, but the percentage of our players who choose to do so is really incredible- and that high level of enthusiasm and engagement has helped us place highly in player-review-based rankings. None of our games have “gone viral,” but that’s something that happens to a game, not something you can make happen. We haven’t been reviewed in many publications, but that industry is struggling, and everyone’s working hard to meet their audience where they’re at.
We can’t make anyone play our games- we can’t even make people read our tweets. But we can ask them to, and we’re grateful to every single person who obliges us. If they go on to leave a review or tell their friends, we really can’t ask for more.
Bug: For me, yes, absolutely. Knowing that we’ve made something great is one thing, our friends and family assuring us we’ve got something great is one thing, but for us to have achieved the reach we’ve managed to, at our size, is shocking. That initial itchio “beta”, “proof-of-concept”, whatever we want to call it, was an incredibly humble start for us, and being where we are now, with such passionate and excited fans, I have trouble finding words for how grateful I feel.
aarenders: I’m one of the newer members of the team, but I’ve watched of the Devil‘s development for many years. It’s been a long road for the founding members of Nth Circle, and I’m so happy that all of their hard work and dedication is paying off. All of the support and fanart, the streams and reviews, we take none of it for granted. It’s always exciting when someone tells us that they got their friend/spouse/family member to play one of our games. To see people engage, enjoy, resonate with, and share our work is a really wonderful and humbling feeling. Word-of-mouth is how we got to where we are now, and we’re eternally grateful for all of the support from our fans. Thank you so much to everyone who helped us get into the top 50 for Steam user reviews!
Arimia: There was the mention of revamping the original of the Devil demo to include gameplay segments, giving us the version we currently have. How did the team decide to pivot towards gameplay versus a more standard visual novel experience?
kyoni: I think we always knew we wanted to have some sort of gameplay, even if it was just choices and menus. That can be enough: Ace Attorney and Your Turn To Die have really thrilling arguments composed of just choices and menus! But when we first started we felt like we could limit “gameplay” to the courtroom entirely, just like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa do. Those games have investigations, of course, and other mini-games, but generally speaking, all their core gameplay is designed to take place in a specific location: on the witness stand, inside the class trials, etc., and all the UI and game systems are built specifically for that setting. We thought we shouldn’t bother trying to add that kind of gameplay to Episode 0 because it took place entirely at a police station.
We were wrong. You need to give people a taste- ideally, as fast as possible, but at the very least, before the end of what you’re calling your introduction. So we developed a theater-of-the-mind, card-based system of proposing and countering theories that, through stylistic presentation, could be used in any setting. From there, we emphasized Morgan’s risk-taking mentality and developed a variety of additional gameplay set pieces that emulated casino games in one way or another.
It can be tricky to sell those concepts to players. Murder mysteries only ever have one right answer- there’s no randomness, no chance. That’s the opposite of spinning the roulette, and if we ever introduced randomness, even once, the way that typical video games do hundreds of times a frame, readers would feel betrayed. So rather than using “random chance,” we try to encourage players to “take a chance”- make educated guesses with risks reflective of their own confidence levels and try not to play like a perfectionist, saving and loading before every decision in order to answer everything perfectly the first time.
Arimia: What was the thought process behind the character dynamics in of the Devil, namely between Morgan and Emma’s rivalry?
kyoni: of the Devil’s structure is most directly modeled after Ace Attorney; you have a recurring core cast of lawyers and cops going through a series of self-contained murder mysteries that introduce new suspects, victims, and killers. So there was always going to be a prosecutor character that the player would face multiple times, and that naturally lends itself to a rivalry.
Still, even if of the Devil was structured radically differently, I probably would’ve shoe-horned in a rivalry anyway. I love that stuff. Light and Kira, Suzaku and Lelouch, Hannibal and Will Graham… Two characters on the same side of a conflict that just butt heads because they’re stubborn doesn’t do much for me: I want to see two characters completely opposed to one another who clash because of their ideals and their personalities, despite the fact that they’d get along well under different circumstances. To me, it’s timeless the same way star-crossed lovers are timeless- you want the forces pitting them against one another to be as massive and immovable as fate itself, not as petty as shonen power-scaling discussions.
I especially love when rivals meet off the battlefield- bonus points if the don’t know each others identities. Many characters will “tell” each other that they could’ve been friends in a different life, but it’s so much cleaner to just “show” the audience exactly how well they’d mesh, and the kinds of slow-paced, low-stakes slice of life scenarios that some might derisively call “filler” are perfect for establishing that. Obviously this is present in Emma and Morgan’s relationship, with Emma not realizing that the killer she’s been hunting obsessively is the same defense attorney she’s been dismissive of in the past, but because the two of them are fairly realistic lawyer characters who don’t take the adversarial process personally, any time they meet outside the courtroom becomes another opportunity to show different sides of their personality.
Video games as a medium are uniquely positioned to sell their audience on a rivalry. Other media can show or tell, but video games can make your face feel hot when you lose to Vergil or Jetstream Sam: they give you a rival instead of showing you a rivalry. This is achieved through a variety of means and can be done any number of ways, but there are a few beats that I specifically wanted to hit for Emma and Morgan.
- The rivals should face off multiple times. This might sound obvious, but it is important for video games specifically. A player may die dozens of times to the same boss, feeling more frustrated each time and then overjoyed when they finally prevail- but they won’t see it as a rivalry. The boss is gone from the story once they’ve beaten them once. Rivals need to keep getting back up, and each time they do, the gap between them and the protagonist should shift.
- The rival should win the first time. Players often vent frustration at any kind of forced loss, especially “losing in the cutscene,” and that’s valid- but it’s also exactly what the developers wanted them to feel. If you don’t get that initial frustration, you don’t feel like you have something to prove. This is actually done twice in of the Devil. In Episode 0 when Emma first appears, the player is given three possible responses to her argument, but regardless of which response they choose, they’ll get overrun by Emma’s reasoning. She literally buries your answer by slapping her own cards down on top of it, besting the player and Morgan in a way that Reyes, your opponent for most of the episode, was never able to. This establishes Emma as an intellectual threat and instills in the player the desire to best her. This is then reinforced in Episode 1, when at the start of the trial Morgan speaks out of turn and Emma objects, costing the player a small penalty. This acts as a tutorial on how Credit can be lost during trials, but it also builds up in them the anticipation to punch back at Emma with their own Objections. You can see the same thing happen in the very first case of Ace Attorney– the first character to make an Objection is actually the prosecutor in that case, and not Phoenix Wright.
- The rival should be stronger “on paper.” Punching down gets old fast. Even if video games are designed to be beaten, and their story structure necessitates that the player “canonically” wins every challenge in order to get to the end, players want to feel like they’ve got something to prove. At the start of Ace Attorney, Edgeworth has never lost a case. By Episode 0, Morgan has lost against Emma on nine previous occasions.
- The rival should have the same skillset. This is most obvious in character action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta where the rivals usually end up playable in one form or another, but it’s important for rivals to mirror the player’s own tool box. If the enemy you’re facing is ten times your size and swings a giant sword down on you, you’ll expect it to hurt. If the enemy you’re facing is the same size as you, swinging a sword the same size as yours, and when they hit you and half your health bar is gone, you’re taught in that moment exactly how wide the gap is between you and them, and you feel the urge to close it. This is fairly easy to accomplish in of the Devil since Morgan and Emma are just normal humans trading words, but it’s important to keep in mind when designing various visuals. In terms of what they make happen on-screen, Morgan can interject, cut-in, draw the camera in, change the lighting… so Emma needs to be able to do all of that as well. For a murder mystery specifically, this aligns fairly well with Knox’s rules for detective fiction- since Morgan and the player are acting as detectives, Emma should act as a detective as well- and neither she nor Morgan should have access to information that the player doesn’t just to provide a surprise. I missed the mark on this when Episode 1 was first released, as I considered the fact that salt water could be used to induce vomiting common knowledge and therefore did not feel the need to introduce that to the audience. Thank god for patches.
- The rival should have the opposite personality as the protagonist. This is probably the most obvious thing that comes to mind when people think of rivals in general, but the contrast is heightened by the previous criteria. When so many of the character’s abilities line up, differences in personality stand out even more.
Arimia: Speaking of the marketing, what was one aspect of promoting the game that went well? What was an aspect that felt the least effective?
kyoni: Touting our Steam review count or posting direct screenshots of user reviews seems to evoke a reaction. Because we aren’t an “established” studio and we don’t have the raw follower counts to tell a random visitor to our pages that we’re legitimate, the words of actual players or the sheer number of them that’ve taken the time to review us positively seem to go further with strangers than a screenshot or character reveal that they have no context for.
We do see people every day stating plainly that they won’t try of the Devil until all the episodes are out. That, of course, feels like a lost customer, but the reality is if we did wait to release of the Devil as one game, that individual still wouldn’t be trying of the Devil until it’s all out, so you could interpret it positively as someone who’s “teetering” on the edge of trying the game and looking for a push.
I don’t know if it counts as marketing per say, but the title… ugh. Searching “of the Devil” on a social media site will give you thousands of pages of people having episodes and being incredibly bigoted. #oftheDevil and #otDevil do better, but using hashtags seems to be generally falling out of favor if you aren’t already an extremely active fandom.
I hate SEO. I want to give games the names they deserve, not names that please algorithms that are literally afraid of The Devil from the Bible. But this is a cyberpunk story. Having to fight against some techno-corporate pushback is, at the very least, fitting.
Bug: When people say nice things about your game, leverage that word of mouth. When you get a good review shared on social media, or fanwork, there’s no need to be shy about encouraging that kind of sharing.
I absolutely do not think the vast majority of devs/studios/games need some kind of big Discord server with moderators and one million channels to foster word-of-mouth or fan communities, but having some kind of showing (on social media, for example) that there are other people out there saying the game is good, that there are other people enjoying it, that you should try it too–people like to see that. Especially when you’re a tiny team like us with a slim marketing budget–if people want to shout out and share their real positive experience with your work, amplify their voice.
Arimia: Here’s a curve-ball. Who’s your favorite character from any of the Nth Circle games?
kyoni: It’s hard for me to pick favorites with characters I’ve written. I feel like every character I develop is cultured from a biopsy of some part of myself, so I don’t love them the same way I would with characters from others’ stories. But some characters do stand out.
I think Caterpillar is the best designed, best looking character we’ve developed, in terms of the tech involved, the art, and the story payoff. Riley has the funniest sprites. Penny is probably the character who I wrote with the least filtering. Morgan is certainly the character I think about the most. That’s a given, since she’s the protagonist and narrator of the biggest story I’ve ever worked on and it’s still ongoing, but even so.
I’d say Aidey is the “surprising” one, in a lot of ways. She was developed and added to the story in between Episode 0 and Episode 1’s release, making her so far the only character we’ve added to the cast “mid-production.” In the original scripts for of the Devil I didn’t see much point in the judge being a real character at all; there was an Adjutant but they were a much more literal robot judge who didn’t interject or speak much outside of the beginning and ends of trials.
I think I was hesitant to add a dedicated “comic relief character” to a courtroom that was, in-world, such a deadly serious place. In my mind all the various Monokumas and Ace Attorney judges out there were regardly unfavorably by most fans, considered distractions or obnoxious. I’m glad I revisited those games before Episode 1 released because it made me re-evaluate them, and I came to appreciate the importance of those characters in balancing out the cast and moving discussions along. By thinking about Aidey not as an obstacle but instead as an audience-stand-in, writing her became effortless: “She’s literally watching the trial. What does she have to say?”
She also bravely takes on the responsibility of delivering jokes and references I can’t find anywhere else to put, so I owe her deeply for that.
aarenders: It’s gotta be Farah Reyes for me. I love the way she carries herself way too seriously, how she reacts so honestly and earnestly to any provocation, but also how that earnesty and honesty humanizes her as well. She’s strict on everyone, including herself and her ideals. I also really love how we get glimpses into some vulnerability with her, like when she comments about how people told her she had her dad’s eyes growing up. That line especially always stuck with me, giving away a “memento” (for lack of a better word) of her connection with her father in order to do her job better. It’s a haunting feeling, and her opening up about it in the smallest of ways with Morgan made me love her even more.
Bug: I spend a lot of time with Morgan on my screen, and she has a lot of my favorite qualities in a fictional lady. And she’s very cute at times.
I also really like Caterpillar, for similar reasons. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to draw animals or monsters in my Nth Circle projects, even though I do really enjoy it. And making something as crazy as Caterpillar’s rig, drawing all those legs and claws and barnacles…I feel like I know him very well! And he’s just my type of crazy twisted guy. Maybe I’m shallow for focusing on their looks so much, but it’s my job.
(I’m not spoiling the Caterpillar’s design here. Go play Märchen Line instead. — Arimia)
Arimia: As we’re nearing the end, what’s 1 piece of advice you’d give to other visual novel developers?
aarenders: Don’t wait for your skills to develop before you make your game- just get in there and do it. It’s much easier to make a bare bones product and iterate on it than wait until you know everything you need to in order to start. Sure, R&D is important, but don’t let it stifle you. Let the joy of creation flow through!
Bug: Put yourself out there! Even if you’re a solodev type or a really tiny team, having some kind of community of people whos opinions you trust is so clutch when you’re stuck or making a tough call. Sharing your work is also a great way to start forming connections with other people who you want to make stuff with.
kyoni: Writers probably know they should be reading, and VN devs probably know they should be playing VNs.
I’d add to that that anyone working in visual novels should watch a lot of movies, read a bunch of manga and watch a bunch of anime, too. Inspiration, of course, can come from anywhere, and it’s always great to have a diverse palette to draw from. But use of sound, changes in color, when to cut out the music, where to stage characters, how to make someone look threatening, how to convey passage of time, how to convey motion or speed… These techniques are acquired through demonstration, and I feel like the mechanics of the VN medium have more in common with those of movies, comics and animation than they do novels- and even a lot of videogames.
Novels have to convey everything with words alone, but none of us are making novels. We’re making Visual Novels. And it’s hard to make a great visual novel without taking full advantage of every tool in our kit.
Arimia: And finally, why is Morgan so cool?
Bug: Probably the smoking…
aarenders: It’s definitely the cigarettes (:
kyoni: I think it’s a combination of great art and the fact that she stops talking sometimes. It’s hard not to talk when you’re the protagonist and the narrator, but she still manages to find poignant moments of silence to soak in the audience’s attention.
Also, she looks like Shadow the Hedgehog, so there’s that.
And there you have it! Thank you so much to kyoni, Bug, and aarenders for sitting down with me despite being so busy with the release of Episode 2 of of the Devil. You can play of the Devil right now on Steam and I highly recommend it even though it’s not “finished”—every episode feels like a complete story in itself and is extremely enjoyable to experience.
You can follow Nth Circle at these places:
Meanwhile, I’ll be busy clearing out my schedule to play Episode 2…
— Arimia