Rorasuketo Dev Blog

I wanted a tribute to some of the very cool European teams out there. When I was still playing roller derby, there was beginning to be a bit of an outcry that all of the major events were being held in the United States, despite flat track derby being more and more of an international affair. This created hardships for European skaters who had to travel overseas to participate in damn near anything. That's no longer the case. But before there were Continental Cups, a lovely team from Norway visited my little corner of the States. The leagues in my area were pretty evenly matched with them. They also wanted some experience playing different teams and to get a solid footing in the rankings. (If I remember this all correctly!) They had the most adorable pre-game rituals involving traditional children's songs - think "Ring Around the Rosy" or "Duck Duck Goose." I must admit I also put A-ha's  Take On Me  on the jukebox at the afterparty and enjoyed watching ...

It's been brought to my attention that I am incredibly disorganized! So I've been getting intentional about making lists and flow charts to make sure, as the game starts to come together into one long strand, that everything is accounted for. So I started a new document where I laid down the entire story, highlighted by themes and subplots, to make sure the colors were well-spaced, well-represented, and resolved. I say the game is "story-based," and I would like to think I am correct. After doing this particular activity, part of me worries that I'm trying to cram too many subplots into a 4-hour package. Then again, some of them are optional or possibly subtle enough for some of the first beats to fly under the radar. I don't see a ton of replayability in Rorasuketo for the casual player; the explorer type might want to have another go or two to try other friend or story options. So I think it will be good to intertwine a variety of threads! I'm happy to s...

I had my adoring husband Jerry do a playthrough of the approximately hour and a half of linear, uninterrupted gameplay, and one of the great compliments he gave me was that the dialogue wasn't "cookie cutter."   This pleased me. I'm working to make sure Rora  feels lived-in and fresh. I want the world to be something you  want  to explore and interact with (and a world that rewards you for doing so).  I feel a bit sheepish describing an hour and a half of gameplay. That's it? That's all I have to show right now? But I stress to myself that it is the linear component. It doesn't count minigames, dates, towns, and other elements that come down the pipeline later. See, I've just been working in chunks, building certain portions when they tickle my fancy. Maybe altogether it's more like 2 hours. The game itself will be probably about 3-4 hours, now that I take a cold, hard look at things. I read somewhere recently that approximately 100 hours of RPG Ma...

Who remembers opening that crisp cardboard box - or, in many cases, that plastic clamshell from the used game store? And that instruction manual would tumble out (in the latter case: if you were lucky). I have especially fond memories of the FFIV instruction manual, which actually gave explicit directions on how to defeat one particular boss. No need for a Nintendo Power or strategy guide there, thank goodness.  "Why not give Rorasuketo a 1990s instruction manual?" I thought to myself. So I treated myself to a little side project.  I wanted to recreate that sitting-on-the-floor feeling, so we have a carpet backdrop. I debated throwing some (very tangled) black controller cables in the background, but we'll see. Rorasuketo is a weird game. My target audiences are: 1. People who love JRPGs, but probably don't know anything about roller derby. 2. People who love roller derby, but probably don't know anything abut JRPGs. There are some in-game tutorials, with addit...

More about the art museum:  It was fun picking (and getting suggestions for!) different works of art to include, and I wrote up brief descriptions of each to give the player some interpretive context. To cover my ass, there is a patron who says the descriptions on the plaques are nonsense. Anyway, the goal is to pick the art that you think resonates with your chosen teammate the most. Kind of a fun exercise, if I may say so. My co-storywritter Tiffany also introduced me to Nneka Jones, who does incredible mixed media portraiture with embroidery. And when searching for art depicting strength, I discovered an artist named Hiba Schahbaz. I went with a piece from each of those artists also. And so a lot of the art ended up centered on women and womanhood, which I guess is fitting for a roller derby game; roller derby is considered first and foremost a women's sport. Which is great, except that can be a little intimidating for those who don't fit the traditional, binary idea of what...

I played roller derby from about 2015 to 2019. It was pretty well understood that roller derby was predominantly white and North America-centric. (I'm white and from the United States, myself.) While exceptions exist, of course, it was something of an elephant in the room. There also were/are those in the community working to expand accessibility to roller derby, but I'm just speaking to how things panned out around that time in my scope of vision. So when it came time to design teammates for a roller derby team, I knew I wanted it to be more diverse than what I'd seen in my own region. It's my made-up world, after all, so I can make it whatever I want. Furthermore, when you're looking at seven different characters wearing uniforms, a little variety in skin tone, for starters, makes them easier to tell apart. Progressive or practical? ¿ Por qu é no los dos? The teammates started out with their own little tropes, simply enough. The gym rat, the party girl, the geek....