(WIP) Night at the SPAA

Hey all, I’ve been working on a WIP on and off for a long time. I’ve had this idea for ages, but now I’m ready to put out an early demo; to share, get feedback, and to get a move on it now that people know of it’s existence.

Plot Summary

You’re a regular janitor at St. Peters’ High School in the major (fictional) US city of Sunport. You’re barely making due thanks to poor wages and sky high cost of living in the inner city. If that wasn’t bad enough you’re suddenly out of a job.

Not too long after, you get thrown into the world of the supernatural. Zombies, vampires, werewolves, and way more. After being introduced to all this The S.P.A.A. (Supernatural Public Awareness Agency) take you in.

Given few other choices you’re given a job and assigned to cleanup crew US13 which filled with people from all walks of life. The supernatural, a morally grey world wide agency, and a team of potentially dangerous individuals is a lot to handle all at once. That’s not even touching on the mysterious crime streak that has been going on in Sunport.

Features:

  • Janitorial skills
  • Multiple romance / friendship options
  • Plenty of branching scenes with the characters to reveal backstory or push the main plot
  • Fleshed out character creator with flavor text differences
  • Modern fantasy setting with rigid politics
  • QoL features that show romance choices and stat choices
ROs

Arlo/Aris Summers
Eyes: Light blue with green near center
Hair: Wavy, black hair
Build: Toned
Height M/F: 5’10 / 5’6
Usual Dress: Stylish modern
Skin: Lightly tanned, some tattoos
The flirt and loud mouth of US13. Often the charmer of the group that uses their joking and flirty nature to talk their way through any situation.

Cyrus/Cynthia Wright
Eyes: Bright blue with golden sheen
Hair: Straight, white hair
Build: Lithe
Height M/F: 5’11 / 5’7
Usual Dress: No go-to
Skin: Very pale
The leader of US13. Known for being a bit of a slacker, Wright has been a part of the SPAA the longest of any member of US13. Known for joking around, but caring deeply for their team members.

Daniel/Danielle Miller
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Straight, auburn hair
Build: Husky
Height M/F: 6’8 / 6’1
Usual Dress: Comfy flowing clothes with lots of jewelry
Skin: Deeply tanned with freckles
Danny is the mother hen of US13. They’re kind to just about anyone and has the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Jason/Jasmine Harper
Eyes: Grey
Hair: Dark brown, coiled hair
Build: Muscular
Height M/F: 6’2 / 5’9
Usual Dress: Utilitarian
Skin: Deep chocolate with lots of scars
Harper is cold and blunt, making it difficult for them to make new friends. But, overtime they become fiercely protective of those in US13.

Lucy/Lucien Chilton
Eyes: Black
Hair: Black, straight hair
Build: Thin
Height M/F: 5’7 / 5’2
Usual Dress: Professional with some accessories
Skin: Ivory
The calm and hard-working force of US13. They may seem mean initially, but they simply try their best to work with efficiency first and foremost.

Changelog
  • 5/17/23: 60,500 words, Prologue + Chapter 1 + beginning of Chapter 2
  • 5/21/23: Save bug fixed, small typos and grammar mistakes fixed, coding errors fixed, plot hole fixed, some small flavor text added.

Play the demo here!

203 Likes

I really like the idea.

The writing ist good, being a cleaning Team member refreshing different. I am really looking forward to ready more

4 Likes

Might be a little spoilery

Summary

I love the premise of this game, I love the options of personality regarding the MC too. And I am really excited to interact with the love interests. But I must say that the “join us or we kill you” isn’t something I particularly like in a game. It is your intention to make us antagonize the organization from the start? It made me lose all the interest in interacting with the ROs after, because I was just pissed with those people. Again, that can be your intention.

If the main point of the join us or die thing is to make MC accept and move forward on the plot, and not make us hate the Agency from the start, maybe one option could be the leader of the team joining our meeting and if we try to refuse, he interrupts us and says that we will join them, and after we ask Cyrus/Cynthia about that and they say we would be killed otherwise?

There is a little story after the MC refused and is killed, but is like a bad end, right?

12 Likes

That was actually a good read. The plot reminds me of Men In Black movie which is very interesting. I hope you continue working on this one!

This story has my curiosity. I will give it a try soon.

I think the Intention might bei that we should hate the company, but not our direct colleagues, because they went through the same thing, as we did.

6 Likes

Interesting plot and good writing,I will watch this thread with great interest.

I really enjoyed this and quite liked how unique the concept is aka supernatural janitors lol
I look forward to more updates :blue_heart:

That probably is the intention, but I’m saying this as a person who always play friendly/optimistic MCs:

MC loses their job
MC is attacked / almost killed
Shady agency coerces MC who is still hurt and don’t know what is happening into join them
It was dificult not lash out on the guy who says “hope you’re doing alright”… like… really?

5 Likes

This always happens. It’s so common that you have to have this.

Wayhaven (?, not familiar with the series)

Keeper of Sun and Moon (gorgon attack, Astrid saves you, evil organization called Frostbite)

Mega Man X1 (Vile attack, Zero saves you, evil organization called Mavericks)

Honor Bound (???)

5 Likes

So, it’s obviously not been explored right now due to the demo not containing much of the SPAA. But, I wanted to take a more grey-tone look at these types of shady agencies. It’s a really awful decision and it’s meant to feel that way. I fully intend on letting the MC feel angry at the SPAA because of what they did. And I tried (and will continue to try) to make it apparent that members have their own feelings on the agencies methods.

18 Likes

Like @RockmanX points out, Keeper of the Sun and Moon does EXACTLY this, with the added grievance that one of the ROs is the one that rats you out to the agency in the first place.
In Wayhaven this doesn’t become a thing, because you’re never given a chance to tell the agency to bugger off and die, but THEIR standarrd procedure is to brainwash people. That wouldn’t take with the Detective, so I guess it’d be nightmare coma prison for you.
In Golden, not only do they instantly try to brainwash you, they are actually considering killing you right off the bat, and only give up on that idea because there’s other murders happening and it’d draw too much attention.

Secret organisations that keep secrets are always bad people, because the only way to keep secrets is to do bad things to people who know them and the organisation doesn’t control.

8 Likes

Sounds interesting gonna play soon

Woah cool story so far and for some reason it give me a Wayhaven chronicles vibes. 9/10

“This is… basically what we expected to hear Mx. Yu. Do you have any ideas of why you may’ve been attacked?”

My visibly queer afab asian mc: :neutral_face:

3 Likes

It really is. An awful decision that at least for me made me want nothing to do with them OR their members, even if they don’t agree with their methods (as for now we don’t have the means to know that). Maybe I’m so crossed with this because it ended with this sour tone and there is nothing we can do about it because it’s where the demo ends :rofl:
Thinking about it, the thing that made me write the first post and got me really angry was the scenario when I refused and they killed me after that. You put a dialogue where I think you tried to humanize the two guys who just killed the MC. Like “Oh they just killed you, but they are not so bad because they don’t agree with the agency’s methods”. Well, they just killed me, I think they are bad enough :frowning:
I will keep reading your work, because I really liked it - after all I’m trying to protect a MC that I know for less than 4 hours :rofl:, and see where this takes the poor janitor. Minimum wage and death threats, poor thing can’t catch a break.

In Keeper I didn’t though much about this because at first it was a school. But yeah, that was awful, but what the poor MC went after that was even worse. I keep trying to play this game with a good MC just to torture myself with those awful feelings of helplessness, I guess.

Actually… if a thing isn’t an option, I prefer that this thing isn’t an option in-game. I wouldn’t mind if MC just accepted their offer. She was jobless, she need protection again those things, I wouldn’t mind the reasons. I think I’m not very fond of bad endings.

In Golden, I got really angry at the brainwashing thing but iirc the kill the MC thing isn’t something that MC knows, and it was discussed but we never know if they would really kill the mc because of plot reasons. Again, this isn’t less awful, but at least I don’t have to see that :pleading_face:. (I know, the problem is me)

7 Likes

I don’t mean to try and justify their actions, but make it clear they’re not generic bad guy who kills mindlessly. I have my roots laid in D&D so I really like in-depth and humanized characters. Also, I love The Exile, I the Forgotten One, and Fallen Hero, so I also like a lot when the MC kinda of goes through it :sweat_smile: Not sure how much I’ll actually incorporate into my writing though.

9 Likes

Why is Alex provided as a name option if there is already a charecter named Alex? Was confused reading the last bit

2 Likes

Good catch, I forgot to keep track of the listed name options. Thanks!

1 Like
Click me for stoffs

Missing an “s” in that option there.

Typo:

That “dirty” shouldn’t be capitalised. The “his” at the end of the highlighted section should.

Just so we’re clear, it takes Evan FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to go to his fridge to get two beverages? O_o


Oh, ok, no, the forty-five minutes thing is supposed to be the time it took for a bunch of stuff that takes place in the next screen, meaning you got a tense problem. The highlighted part (minus the two paragraphs describing Evan, which I suggest moving to after the highlighted part) need to be in the past perfect, not the simple past:

Also, holy shit, garlic bread, MINE! I’ll fight Evan for it if I have too! :drooling_face:

Mucked up code for italics.

Mucked up code.

JFC, this luck. Did I piss off a leprechaun or something? O_o

“Your”

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s due to the choices I made, but I don’t recall anything in the encounter that would make the agency take action on me. Sure, there were a couple of oddities, liike the soundlessness and the smell, but it doesn’t really feel enough for the drastic measures they take.

This sentence doesn’t make sense as-is, feels like there’s a bit missing.

Asking about the smell appears to lead immediately into the decision, even if you haven’t asked the other questions.

Wow, I like these people less and less with each passing screen.

Dunno if intended, but the way you react to C doesn’t change their friendship score. Didn’t check for Evan.

I’m liking it well enough to continue to check it out in the future. I hope there’ll be a distinction between the MC’s opinion on the supernatural and their opinion of SPAA. E.g., that we can be excited about learning about the first while loathing the second.

7 Likes