Behind the Liminal Pt. 4: Comedy - The Cast

The more I make games, the more I realize it’s the cast that matters the most to me. These characters are the core of your game. For a very brief moment, they are going to be the player’s best friends. For a genre as character-centric as a RPG, well-written characters, whether heroic or villainous, could very well carry the game. A poorly written character, on the other hand, will probably make you crave death. It does for me, anyway.

Even if for a jam game less than an hour long, I wanted to take the opportunity to forge a memorable cast and practice writing different characters. I also wanted to write not just from their personalities but from their perspective on the Liminal and how and why they want to leave. Big props to mf_WillBlack’s improv seminar on character voice and perspective in the RPG Beta Testers server, which I archived in a Google doc to keep on hand for myself and the community. (pls come back jeff)

Reminder to play Stuck in the Liminal if you haven't yet because there are plenty of unmarked spoilers in this one!

Reid

Reid is the same as we know him in Stuck in the Past. He's a clean-cut albeit generic hero who would do anything for his own world. Unfortunately, his cockiness comes at a cost which he truly realizes in Stuck in the Liminal. He also has a short fuse when paired with the wrong partners, which unfortunately happens yet again in the Liminal. This stacks on top of his anger of finding himself trapped in yet another world where he can’t fight while a demon is probably destroying his home. In general Reid is pretty much defined by straight up not having a good time.

A lot of the character traits and development in SITL popped up on the fly. Even if I planned for this to be a SITP sequel from the get-go, Reid realizing the consequences of his own stubbornness and actually learning something from Harold by the end was an improv move I’m super proud of. It makes the straight man funny man dynamic from SITP feel far less black and white.

Kasey

Kasey was chosen just because I needed a yellow character and wanted to represent a MZ actor who Reid would know from Emvi. My idea was for Reid and Kasey to have a deep bond throughout the game and stick together no matter what, which gets turned on its head later on. She’d ideally be a little more panicked than Reid since she's freshly banished and probably hasn't spent time in another world like Reid. I wanted to strike a balance with Kasey; scared but not helpless, close with Reid but not overly reliant on him, and someone with passion and potential despite her fears. I hope I nailed it.

Funny tangent; turning Reid and Kasey’s dynamic on its head came out of necessity. While my idea for their relationship was to stick together no matter what, Violet Spinel’s ending idea that made it into the game divided the entire party. Obviously I didn’t want to completely trash Reid and Kasey’s relationship on a dime, but thinking about Violet’s approach led to Alex bringing up how not everyone makes it out of the Liminal and Reid and Kasey realizing there’s a chance they’d be split up again. It ended up being a representation of how I was challenged by other perspectives and forced to revisit my own. On top of that, I think it makes the story better!

Alex

Alex is loosely based on a joke Stuck in the Past sequel idea I had where Reid gets trapped in a bad RPG Maker 2003 game. His speech patterns and mannerisms were based on this concept and this was originally all he was going to be. However, as the oldest of the pack, I also wanted to take on the idea of Alex being banished to the Liminal so many times that it doesn’t even faze him anymore. Talking with NatePlays95 about his portrait sprite and seeing him as more of a Saitama-type character set his character on the course it took. His role as the lore-builder developed naturally as I toned down the 2003-isms, which I feel would come with age. In retrospect, this was an absolute godsend and a testament to combining two different layers to make a memorable character. Alex went from slowly killing me with every “lol” I wrote to being someone I genuinely love in retrospect. He’s the fan favorite of the party so I think I might have done something right here.

Ralph

Ralph is one of the deepest references in the game; his behavior and backstory are references to my first ever test game in RPG Maker VX Ace! These tie into a character that has no idea what the Liminal is but only wants to get out and kill everything in his path to do so. This was also how I planned to characterize Harold in Stuck in the Past before falling in love with the lovable idiot hero portrayal the RPG Testers community embraced. He was also an easy red choice, just as Alex was for blue.

Unfortunately I feel like he ended up a little one-note, which pisses me off way more than it should. One of my biggest character writing pet peeves I see in the RPG Maker community is “Hi I’m (character), this is my surface-level personality, this is my one character trait, I will only talk about this character trait and never deviate from my surface-level personality” and I just kinda Did That. In my defense, it’s tough to do much when your character has that little screentime. It also works since all you really do in the test game is kill a boat, so assuming it’s the same guy that’s all he really has to his name. I’m still pissed I let that happen though, even if the rest of the cast does feel a bit more fleshed out. If you ever see me doing this again, take me out behind the woodshed.

Harold

Harold may be created by Enterbrain and characterized by Human and the RPG Beta Testers community but he is my baby. As I mentioned before, my original interpretation of Harold was more like what Ralph ended up becoming, but playing past Harold Jam entries by Human and Loriesquare made me love the well-meaning idiot portrayal way more. In Stuck in the Past, Violet and I combined this with the limited technology of his world making him way more insufferable than he should have any right to be. Needless to say, he was an absolute blast to write. I mention this because SITL Harold is the same exact Harold we know from Appold. Writing his dialogue was a hell of a victory lap. The way he practically damns himself to the Liminal to give his friend his sword back encapsulates both his golden heart and his non-existent brain in one fell swoop. I hope he gets out soon.

Say, who drew those gorgeous portrait sprites? Up next, Stuck in the Liminal’s Art Collective where the entire team came together to define its aesthetic! Look for it later today!