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British indie developer Failbetter Games has been making a name for itself since their 2009 release of Fallen London. Known for deep story-driven games with a dark style, the company’s latest title Mask of the Rose released on June 8th and is described as “A marvellous romance with a hint of murder”. We were able to have a quick word with Hannah from Failbetter to elaborate a little more. And if it sounds like it might be your cup of tea you can grab it right now on Steam.
Could you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into the game industry?
I’m director of communications at Failbetter, and I came to games 1) quite late on, I was 30! and 2) after a couple of other careers as a bookseller and doing digital work for charities, museums and galleries. All of which taught me a lot that I’ve gone on to use in games. The majority of us at Failbetter have diverse backgrounds outside of games, and we err on the side of academia, historians, actors – we’re a bohemian bunch!
Briefly describe Mask of the Rose for those not yet familiar.
Mask of the Rose is a marvellous romance with a hint of murder! It’s a visual novel, but might not be what you expect of the genre. We’re known for games rich in choice and consequence, and while we set out to make something simpler than our past work, somehow it ended up with a complex social simulation and huge amount of player freedom? The game takes place in Victorian London… a few months after it was dragged beneath the earth by a flock of bats. At the heart of the story is a murder: when the respectable David Landau is poisoned, your housemate Archie is the prime suspect. Death works differently in the Neath, though, and when David returns (understandably annoyed) from the grave, the race is on (maybe) to prove Archie’s innocence and identify the real murderer. Or, honestly, you can focus on something else instead. There’s loads to do and it’s designed with replay in mind.
The game features a beautiful visual style with detailed characters. What influenced this bold artistic direction?
We thought of Mask of the Rose as a kind of high definition version of our browser game, Fallen London. Fallen London has been around since 2009 and leans more towards simpler art: silhouetted icons and skylines, bold graphic style on the in-game icons because they’re pretty small. Mask of the Rose is set in the same city, but we’re able to bring in the art developments we’ve made in our other games (Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies). Painterly character designs, and backgrounds that we modeled in 3D and painted over to give them depth and richness.
What was different about the approach to Mask of the Rose compared to Failbetter’s previous releases such as Fallen London and Sunless Sea?
In tech terms, Mask of the Rose is made in a different story engine, which makes it a far more procedural beast. Fallen London and Sunless Sea were both created in a system that we design and maintain called StoryNexus which involves a lot of hand-writing stories; Mask of the Rose is built in Ink (created by Inkle, who made Overboard! and 80 Days) which enables us to do things like generate short stories from player inputs on the fly. It’s a conversation game, so there’s far less description of the goings-on in the city; it’s a much more intimate and personal story, about how a community copes with a catastrophe.
Were there any surprise challenges during the development process?
We’re a pretty seasoned team these days so I don’t think much came out of the blue for us! We did get some fun feedback at review stage about “why would I want to romance that awful thing in the cloak?” Which our players are extremely keen to do, so… we kept that option in!
