A reluctant hero, a stubborn thief, and the difficult decision to make him finally face the fight.
Fix Stories is a developer-authored series. In this story, Kit, founder of Artificium Games and lead designer and creative director of Oops! You’re the Hero!, shares how his own relationship with responsibility shaped the Thief — and why one of the game’s biggest design decisions came down to whether its reluctant hero should fight at all.
I’m not really a big fan of doing day-to-day things.
I don’t like getting up early. I don’t like going to work. I don’t like commuting. The responsibilities and expectations of what’s a necessity to be alive can be a drag. They still need to be done though. Every single day. Completing those tasks aren’t really considered ‘heroic’ though.
It was the same when I was younger. I did not enjoy going to school every single day. So when I created the original idea for Oops! You’re the Hero! while I was that age, I think there was an underlying element of me disagreeing with the things I had to do, and the things I was expected to do. At the time, it was the expectation of going to college. Now, I’m Kit. Founder of Artificium Games, lead designer and creative director of Oops! You’re the Hero!. That’s a lot more responsibilities.
As I grew up, and the idea of the game grew up with me, I had to wrestle with the idea of what being a ‘Hero’ in this particle world would be, how that would reflect in the main character, and how to keep the consistency of him rejecting his ‘Hero’ title throughout the entire game. The Thief was born out of love and an attitude, and I had to walk the line of making him an anti-hero since I felt like those eventually accept their role, but when I originally started the concept and wrote the game’s script, the Thief was so stuck in just being a jerk that when I read back over it, he was a bit insufferable to listen to. I didn’t want the players to be hanging out with that for however long the game would be, so I ended up rewriting some of the more crucial moments and dialogue for the Thief.
I wrote a devlog a few months ago that focused on the connection of the player, and the Thief they play as in Oops! You’re the Hero!. My main focus was explaining how I wanted the Thief’s personality of avoidance to be a part of the mechanics I designed and that the player can use in multiple aspects of the game. The teleportation and rope mechanics I implemented were reflections of ‘getting ahead’ just enough to beat or run away from something. With both the dialogue rewrites and the mechanic changes, I had created what I feel is a more rounded-out character, with his goal never changing. But there was something I left out of the devlog, where it wasn’t just the player and Thief intertwined, it was me and the Thief. How I wanted to show that there was more to that character than a stubborn ‘non-Hero’, and giving the players an opportunity to see that side of him when choosing which paths to take in the game. The different paths (choosing to fight the main boss of the level or find a path to avoid them) was something I added after the initial demo was created. I needed something that gave the players a feeling of choice, and allowed them to follow a ‘Thief’s’ path and be avoidant (with knowing the consequences of those actions), and that was the smoothest transition to keep the game in the time length I wanted to keep it in.
With all this development of the Thief’s personality, I came across one of the hardest decisions of the game:
Should the player fight the last boss fight?
Which is usually really easy! This is the pinnacle of any hero’s journey, what they’ve been working towards the entire time. Their last battle to give it all and save everyone. That’s not the Thief’s story though, his was to get rid of the thing that gave him all this trouble. So would he even bother fighting something if it would be for others?
I wrestled with it for days. Would I be betraying the Thief and his designs by forcing him to fight? Or would I be subverting the message of the story, and limiting who I think the Thief could be by allowing a way around what’s supposed to show who he is? Letting the players go around would mean different endings. Making the fight a requirement may mean someone skips every other fight up until this one. I had to actually make a list of pros and cons to figure out which way I would go! I spoke about it over and over with my partner, I sat with the Thief and listened to music tracks I associated with him, I tried everything I could to make it easier.
I then came to my decision. The Thief would fight the final battle.
My choice came from this:
Sometimes, you have to take care of responsibilities that you really don’t like. But like the rest of the game shows, just because you are placed in situations where you have to do a job doesn’t mean you ARE that one role. Especially if that role/expectation was assigned to you, or if you thought you would excel in one thing and ended up stuck in another. And after spending so long with the Thief and writing out his dialogue, he wouldn’t be someone who always ran from what he could. I came at it from what the Thief could be, just a simple guy who would do what needed to be done to accomplish his goals. He still gives away his ‘Hero’ title at the end.
I hope that when the player is fighting these bosses, or the final boss at least, they understand why it was needed for their journey. Whether it’s going to a boring day job, or facing down a monster in the way, these actions may not always be ‘heroic’, but getting them done is no less important. And the Thief gets through it, one way or another.
And that’s all it needed to be.
Oops! You’re the Hero!
Developer: Artificium Games
Fix Stories gives developers and creators a place to share the stories behind their games in their own words.
Story written by Kit of Artificium Games.
Edited and published by Ronny Fiksdahl, Founder & Editor of Fix Gaming Channel.
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