Midwest Goodbye

Midwest Goodbye was an entirely student-led summer project developed by Nonstick Studios in preparation for our final year at Bradley University. 

CONCEPTION

While there were no requirements when we began conceptualizing what we wanted to work on, being limited to the months of summer meant that our scope had to be as well. After forming an idea pool and discussing options as a team, the idea of combining a more narrative approach with deckbuilder gameplay eventually came out on top.

Why did we choose to call it “Midwest Goodbye”? Many people on Nonstick (myself included) come from the US midwest, and for those unfamiliar with the term, a “midwest goodbye” refers to the midwestern habit of beginning to leave, but continuing to talk. Since the story centers around several conversations with family members, our hope was that by the end of game, you’d have wished you had spent more time talking and less time trying to do everything else. Even so, we didn’t want to hinder the player if they decided to take a more apathetic approach, so keeping that in consideration make for a unique constraint as we went forward with the project.

CONTRIBUTIONS

The initial design process was, as you can guess, coming up with the rules for the main card system. We tossed around several iterations during the first weeks of development, deciding on different modifiers (or “Stamps”) that the player would be able to utilize, along with what parameters we would be using to determine NPC responses. The final version of the system ended up using the “social energy” that I proposed, which the player would spend in order to play cards of certain Tones and Intentions to affect their relationship with an NPC. These decisions would, in turn, lead them down handwritten dialogue branches and impact the finale of the game.

Outside of game design, I also played a part in crafting the narrative for the project as well. A lot of work went into writing the different responses, as well as with making sure each character’s voice remained unique and consistent across all levels. The Uncle was a lot of fun to write for!