Demonschool - QandA

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RPGFan posted a Demonschool Q&A:

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Demonschool Q&A with Creative Director Brandon Sheffield

I had a great time with the Demonschool demo over the summer, so it was a pleasure to interview the school's principal game's creative director (and founder of Necrosoft Games) Brandon Sheffield. We conducted the Q&A over email, where Sheffield revealed some fun and intriguing insights into the design concepts and aesthetic inspirations that informed Demonschool's appealing blend of Shin Megami Tensei's horror-tinged demon hunting, Persona's social management, and air-tight tactics combat. You'll even get some horror movie recommendations.

RPGFan: What are some of the main themes that informed Demonschool's overall design and narrative? How did they inform the development process?

Sheffield: The core design of the battles came initially from a tactics puzzle prototype - I was trying to devise the smallest tactical game I could. Things evolved from there to where the focus became a tactics game where you don't have to make a lot of clicks or confirmations. That's how I landed on the idea of moving your character and having them automatically do whatever sort of action is applicable when they reach an enemy, or an empty tile, or a trap, etc.

From there we defined the visual style by thinking of a fictional game console and trying to stick to its "rules." Essentially if there had been an update to the Sega Saturn, a Saturn 1.5 or so. Giving ourselves bounding boxes helped the game feel true to its own universe. We also devised a loose conceit of the human world being represented by 2D, and the demon world being represented by 3D. When weaker demons come through they are flattened into our dimension, but stronger ones come through in full 3D, representing their threat and unfathomableness, which probably isn't a real word.

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