For Mother Matron 1st Anniversary: Looking Back and Looking Forward
Hello, everyone! Hopefully the past year has been treating you all well, and if it hasn’t I hope things improve soon for you.
In 2019, I had been working on a visual novel named Together Never, but had started to feel trapped in my own head with it. I’d started working on that game as a collaboration between myself and my wonderful friend Coco during college, based on a loose premise I’d whipped up. I got in over my head though, and could not figure out what that story was meant to be about, if that makes any sense. I had no grasp of the themes, barely a grasp on what direction the story was heading. I kept bashing my head against the wall trying to push forward, but nothing was happening.
Then around March, NaNoReNo caught my attention: a month long game jam where you make a small visual novel in a month. “Perfect,” I thought, “I can use this as an opportunity to learn more about Ren’py while still taking time away to clear my head!” Even better, I didn’t have to worry about the scope. I only had a month, after all!
And so, with grand excitement, I set off on the jam, ready to make a scary game all in one month!
1.9 YEARS LATER, For Mother Matron was released. Since then, it’s been downloaded by over 100 people, and even Let’s Played on Twitch and Youtube! Even better, most people who gave feedback seemed to overall enjoy the experience. Phew! I’m quite happy about that, even if I can’t help but want even more people to play it. I am forever thankful to those that played it, and I’m especially thankful for the following people who helped me make the game a reality:
TCDA / Shelly (Character Artist)
Maddie Matsumoto (Voice of Lizzy)
Reece Bridger (Voice of Pux)
Daniel Peet (Voice of Rich)
Katie Brown (Voice of Katie)
Katie Otten (Voice of Janine)
HollyberryVA (Voice of Meaty Marissa)
Renee Sielaff (Voice of the Mother Matron)
Brittany Ann Phillips (Co-Voice of Bugs)
Elizabeth Novotny (Co-Voice of Bugs)
Nicholas Petcosky (Co-Voice of Gnasher)
Michael Edwards (Co-Voice of Gnasher)
Angela Tran (Co-Voice of Flaps)
Vincent Fabbri (Co-Voice of Flaps)
Lizzie Ray (Voice of Lizzy’s mother))
Jana Höning (Composer of the credits theme)
All of these people were kind enough to lend their amazing talents to the game, and it absolutely would not have been possible without them.
Reflecting on For Mother Matron
Self Critique & Self Back Patting
The primary inspiration for For Mother Matron’s design was a niche horror title called Death Mark (which I HIGHLY recommend checking out), a horror adventure visual novel where you explore creepy locations and try to solve puzzles. There’s a lot of things I wanted to ape from the game, but in particular what I wanted to play with was the idea of timed choices in the context of a dangerous encounter. In Death Mark, you have a cumulative timer that persists for the whole chapter, which remains paused until danger presents itself. On top of losing the time it takes you to just make a choice, you also can lose time from making bad decisions, assuming said decisions don’t get you killed. This provides incentive for the player to pay attention to the text, and the pressure to make good decisions fast helps provide tension good for a horror experience. Differing from Death Mark, I removed the cumulative timer and instead defined the timers individually based on the context of the scene. Certain situations would provide you with different time frames to react, such as a monster charging at you from far away vs. a monster surprising you from right behind.
There’s some inherent problems with this design that FMM also shares. The first of which is simple: any tension that could be induced by the timer is evaporated with a walkthrough, or even simply just a repeat run. It also is not a friendly design for people who read slowly. Also as a game mechanic it’s… well, incredibly basic. That’s not exactly bad; there’s nothing wrong with simplicity. it was my first project and visual novels usually are more about being novels than being games, but I want to make things with more complexity in the future both for players and for myself.
I also would have loved to do more with the Danger Scenarios (which is from here on out what I will call the scenes where you confront monsters). I got two fairly fleshed out situations made with multiple paths to survival, but both could have used more visuals to accompany them. I had also planned to have more decisions in Act 1 (the beginning of the story to the point you enter The Crepuscule) that would give you advantages / disadvantages in the danger scenarios, but I settled on just the one and used it as a tutorial of sorts mostly for the sake of time. I also really wanted to make an even more challenging final Danger Scenario to serve as the cap off to the game, but I honestly was desperate to reach an ending to the game. I’d felt exceptionally guilty that such a small project took me so long to make that I had to make some sacrifices at the end, but now I’m wishing I’d taken longer and seen that idea through. Maybe in an update or something in the future:? Who knows.
Despite my issues with it as a game, I’m very satisfied with the end result when it comes to presentation and style. Along with TCDA / Shellie’s art and some creative editing and combining of stock photography, I was able to properly depict the uncomfortable nature of The Boarding and The Crepuscule and provide a good creepy atmosphere to last throughout the game. The monster designs seemed to be quite successful too, as people were often scared or massively uncomfortable looking at them both in the game and outside of it, which was a massive relief! Hard to make a decent horror game if your monsters aren’t scary.
I’m especially proud of the score, as it was the first OST I’ve ever made for a game. I think it helps that horror music should sound uncomfortable and wrong, so my skill level ended up being perfectly acceptable for the task.
Partially Explaining The Plot (Spoilers)
The most effective kind of horror, in my opinion, is the kind of horror that leaves you questioning and unsure about the true nature of what scared you. As such, while the monsters were front in center, I wanted the horrible nature of the setting. What was Meaty Marissa even selling? What exactly turns people into Mumblers? Where did the Mother Matron come from? That kind of thing.
That said, some parts of the story that I DID want to be more obvious ended up being obscured, so here’s a quick summary explaining things (based on what’s in the game rather than the full answers in my head) in case you were confused and wanted a more direct explanation!
-
For Mother Matron is a short story centered around The Boarding, a town full of children & young adults surrounded by a thick fog. They worship The Mother Matron, who is the leader and caretaker of The Boarding. Revered as kind and watchful, she is treated with an almost religious fervor. She occasionally selects people to take on missions for her, usually involving The Crepuscule. Few return from these missions, and the few that have are insane mumbling wrecks.
Lizzy, Pux, and Rich are selected to descend to the depths of The Crepuscule to slay monsters and repair the water system in the underground dam. Along the way, they come across a journal that suggests that the tunnels of the Crepuscule were actually dug out under what used to be a rehab center. Later on, they also find a document that details a horrible ritual that seems to imply it involves removing the tongue.
These details were meant to hint at the origins of The Boarding: The events of the game are at least partially the fault of a cult, though the full nature and extent of their actions is deliberately unclear. This is why you see that circle Z symbol both on the Matron’s letter to Lizzy and the sign for the Society of Innate Relief’s Subsurface Dam; it’s the symbol of the cult.
At the end of the game, if you have not already figured out that the Mother Matron is more nefarious than her followers think, she spells it out for you in a long speech (she likes hearing herself talk). She (?) is a monstrous entity that feeds off of human misery, and The Boarding is meant to be a giant misery farm where its denizens are constantly on the brink of breaking down to make them all the more scrumptious for the Mother Matron. She captures Lizzy & Pux (and Rich if he survived), and does some unspeakable horror to them while presumably feeding off the misery they felt discovering the true nature of The Boarding.
We then see a flash back of a woman consoling her baby, which is revealed in the credits to be Lizzy’s Mother. What exactly is happening to her there is meant to be unclear, but she laments her fate and the fate of her infant daughter. Why? She was roped into the cult, and came to regret her involvement as she wanders through the blood filled hospital, fearing for her daughter’s future.
You might still have questions, and that’s okay! I may or may not have written the game this way so it may be expanded upon or followed up in the future…c:
Random Stuff That Did Not Make It Into The Game / Trivia
The original concept of the game was going to involve Lizzy having the ability to touch a dead person and see a vision about how they died, which would have been used to give players advice on how to handle each situation.
Almost all the assets in the game besides the character artwork was made using stock photography and lots and lots of image editing, including the monsters.
Pux’s name is actually a nickname! His full name is Punxsutawney, named after the town.
Flaps’ original design essentially was a flapping pair of ribs, but this looked really stupid and I ended up scrapping it in favor of the current design.
The Credits sequence is all pre-made images that I just cycled through, it was quicker to do then actually coding a credits sequence and was easier to get looking how I wanted.
The Future Of For Mother Matron
I have some good news and some mildly disappointing news!
The GOOD NEWS (unless you disliked the game in which case BAD NEWS) is that there is MORE coming! The world of For Mother Matron is one that grew in my mind like a fungus, spores of ideas developing into interesting and weird things that I absolutely want to show the world. I tried to keep the original game to a small scale and thus a lot of those blossoming ideas had to be cut back or ignored, otherwise I’d have probably been unable to finish the game. That’s not even asking the question of whether or not I was capable of implementing them.
The MILDLY DISAPPOINTING NEWS is that i have no idea when it will be ready, and i also do not have anything particularly of worth to show you. The design work at the moment is essentially pen and paper and sketches. As soon as I have something I feel is worth your time, you’ll see it. No estimate on release as of yet.
Here’s a very small consolation in the meantime: some wallpapers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s just as good as a trailer, right??? Right…?
….pls be patient I’m working on it
What’s Next for Velvetique Games?
Simple: MORE GAMES!!!
But what games specifically?
My focus currently is on Black Box Prisoner, a new horror experience set in a cyberpunk dystopian setting. Similar to For Mother Matron, this game was also originally a game jam project that sorta grew on me. It was originally going to be presented almost entirely through a computer terminal text printout, but it’s expanded into something more involved and interesting.
Similar to the follow up to FMM, I do not have anything to show as of yet, but you’ll see it when it’s ready. This project should release sometime during 2021.
In Closing
I want to once again thank everyone who helped bring the project to life, the people who gave my little game a try, and my loving & supportive family who continue to support and encourage me to follow my dreams.
Love you all, and I hope this year and the next year bring youendless joy.
The Mother Matron loves you even more.
- Velvetique