We Are OFK is an odd and fantastic factor. The newest brainchild of Hyper Light Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief, the undertaking is billed as a music biopic recreation slash interactive e.p. that blurs the strains between fiction and actuality by turning a digital band into one that may launch music, publish on social media, and maybe sooner or later even play gigs.

Sitting down with Dief forward of the sport’s launch, the We Are OFK  director, author, and lead singer explains how the unique intent was to launch one thing akin to a sitcom based mostly in Los Angeles, largely as a result of Dief needed to lean into the outdated adage that tells folks to “write what you recognize” in a bid to create one thing genuine.

Dief spent the primary six months of the undertaking narrative prototyping, constructing out every of the band members as people with their very own distinctive character traits and views earlier than making an attempt to mesh a them collectively as a part of a broader, cohesive storyline.

Who are OFK?

“[At that early stage] there was a bunch of character growth that went on for arguably too lengthy,” Dief says, explaining what it was like feeling their manner into the undertaking throughout these formative months. “The good factor about engaged on a recreation is you’ll be able to simmer in your story after which pivot and work on mechanical stuff and it by no means feels such as you’re fucking round. You know, I used to be being productive though I used to be afraid of doing a second draft of my character sheets.”

Dief says they needed to emulate sitcoms by giving the actors taking part in every character the liberty to tell how each would take form. Although it was unimaginable to emulate that course of on a 1:1 foundation — as a result of in tv they’d be producing episodes and releasing them on a cycle — the OFK crew determined to forged their actors earlier on within the course of so they may do rehearsals and “discover the Venn diagram of […] how we hear the character, and the way the actor is listening to the character.”

“That made it simpler to ask ‘what would this character say, and the way would they are saying it,'” Dief explains, noting how in addition they sought to make texting in-game really feel extra genuine by deciding on distinctive syntaxes for particular person characters and questioning whether or not they would use correct English or slang based mostly on their established personalities.

Dief additionally notes how the music in OFK informs its roster. In an early draft of the script Itsumi Saito (one of many first characters we meet) performed the cello. Eventually that was switched as much as make her the band’s keyboardist as a result of it made extra sense based mostly on how the tracks themselves have been creating.

Tracks would even be shuffled round in every episode to higher replicate the emotional state of these characters within the highlight. Dief explains they have been extremely centered on making certain OFK excelled when it got here to each pacing and delivering authenticity, and generally that meant somewhat little bit of trial-and-error.

“Episode Two particularly was the place the construction modified most strongly. The second single ‘Fool’s Gold’ has extra gravitas than I believed it might and so it wanted extra build-up,” they clarify. “It was initially performed somewhat bit earlier in that episode, after which within the edit I moved it a lot later as a result of it hadn’t been earned but. It was like ‘oh shit, this music is fairly severe’ and we hadn’t gotten into the darkest place but, so let’s not go speeding in.”

Music sounds higher with you

Another constraint born from OFK’s musical ambitions was that, for all intents and functions, these characters exist in our world. Dief explains that the final word goal was to launch a band, so when writing the narrative they could not go all-in, Mass Effect-model, and begin hitting gamers with seismic decisions and twists.

“We cannot be like ‘is the band going to interrupt up or is somebody going to die?’ as a result of they’re already on Twitter — they have been on Twitter two years in the past, so there needs to be a confluence of who they’re and the alternatives they make within the recreation,” Dief provides.

The OFK  director says that mantra knowledgeable how the music movies themselves have been carried out with interactivity in thoughts. OFK is a musical recreation, not a music recreation, and meaning gamers will not be requested to play — and doubtlessly flub — tracks once they’re launched in-game.

“One of the constraints that I needed to arrange for the music movies was that we’re not testing your musicality,” Dief says. “We are inviting you into the music, proper? You shouldn’t have the chance to smash the music such as you’re taking part in Guitar Hero or Rock Band or one thing.”

That design alternative was additionally made in service of approachability, and whereas Dief concedes it demandand sure necessities be met when designing the interactive mini-games and reactive audio beats baked into OFK’s musical moments, it additionally offers extra folks the chance to expertise the sport and have enjoyable with it.

“There have been initially some music sequences that happened exterior of the correct music movies — and we nonetheless do have moments the place we tear aside the stems of the songs and feed them into the story somewhat bit — however we’re probably not a recreation that asks gamers to look at the songwriting course of unfold. That’s not our focus. Our focus is on the folks and the areas between.”

During our chat, Dief particulars how preserving OFK lean was a prime precedence from the outset. The episodic nature of OFK — the title is being launched as 5 episodes — is designed to maintain gamers engaged with out burning them out. In the phrases of Dief, as of late “shorter is often higher.”

“Everybody’s drained, particularly folks coming from exterior of video games — they are not used to sitting down with something for longer than an hour,” suggests Dief. “[It’s the same] with individuals who play video games. I like lengthy video games, however I do not play any recreation that is longer than six hours anymore.”

That dedication to trimming the fats with pinpoint precision led to loads of cuts and design tweaks all through growth, with these robust decisions in the end being made to streamline manufacturing, ship intentional pacing, and guarantee OFK was as approachable as doable.

For occasion, in OFK gamers are sometimes invited to interact with the narrative by selecting tips on how to reply to a textual content or reply to conversational prompts. To guarantee these moments do not trigger large pacing hiccups, Dief and the OFK crew encourage gamers to impose an optionally available 10 second window on themselves when making these selections — although, in fact, some may determine in opposition to that for accessibility causes.

“Originally, each alternative had a bespoke timing setup, and that is frequent in narrative video games. There’ll be narrative video games which have resolution timers constructed round completely different speeds of alternative, however we minimize that [from OFK] as a result of though it was an attention-grabbing narrative design alternative, it wasn’t an sincere reflection of the participant expertise,” says Dief.

“Our participant expertise is one during which you are requested to work together about as soon as a minute or twice a minute, apart from the music movies. So we won’t be like ‘oh, right here comes a fast resolution! Make certain you are still paying consideration’ as a result of that will punish gamers for doing precisely what we would like them to do and calm down. You know, possibly their buddies are there they usually’re speaking. So we determined to make a common rule and add these 10 seconds as a result of we felt it might give them sufficient time to reply with out utterly killing pacing.”

Script adjustments have been additionally made to maintain manufacturing on observe, with Dief selecting to reign within the variety of environments OFK’s forged of characters would go to and scrap sure interactions to alleviate strain on the undertaking’s artists and animators.

Dief explains how all the scenes in OFK are constructed from scratch, and admits to being “caught unexpectedly” at how a lot tinkering it might take to make sure each hits the correct mark. “So a lot of the visible design is guide,” they proceed. “Every character is repainted for various lighting environments, very similar to they’d be in animation. Every atmosphere is totally repainted for various lighting setups. None of the environments are 3D, they’re all hand-painted and characters are folded into them. 

A diorama of a scene in We Are OFK