In late 2023, I interviewed Jack Guffey and Dan Maday of Heavy Thought Studios, an independent, Chicago-based game studio. Jack and Dan are the team lead and producer, respectively, of The Office Type, an upcoming dating simulation game about anthropomorphic office supplies. Our interview was split into two parts: one about Doki Doki Literature Club’s influence on the visual novel genre and one about their own experience writing and developing The Office Type.

 

Jason Fennell: What it is about visual novels that appeals to creative writers? What are the advantages of the genre when compared to other, more static forms of literature?

​

Jack Guffey: Visual novels are sort of in-between books and movies, but the average writer doesn't have the resources to go out and make a movie. If they can show their story through little bits of art and character portraits, that’s one step up from just reading a book.

​

Dan Maday: The gamified element is interesting, I think. The depth of a visual novel does require there to be more interaction, and [as a writer], you can play in this very fun, ambiguous space. When writing a novel, you’re creating discrete characters. When making a visual novel, you can have the player character be in a gray area.

 

JF: On the other side of that question, what is it that appeals to people who play visual novels?

 

JG: It can make a story more real. As Dan was saying, you can put yourself in there and become part of the story and change things the way you want to experience them.

 

JF: Visual novels are a unique genre in that they’re typically less interactive than most video games. Creators have more control over the player’s experience in a visual novel than in, say, an open-world adventure game. Given this control, where do you see the genre fitting into the wider game industry?

 

JG: It feels like visual novel developers are creating their own space within the industry. There are all these big AAA games with giant stories and crazy mechanics, but a visual novel can be shaped around one idea – like a certain art style or a certain mood.

 

DM: Again, it's the in-betweens. I keep thinking about Baldur’s Gate 3 compared to a traditional D&D game. There’s plenty of similarity there, but people go to them for different things. In Baldur’s Gate, you can customize your character within certain parameters, but if you're playing D&D with paper and pencil, your character can literally be anything.

​

I think a visual novel is similar. When you're reading a book, you're imagining it in your mind. A visual novel already has the visual component there, but a lot of the interaction and emotion is still generated by the player.

 

JF: What changes or trends have you observed in the visual novel genre since Doki Doki Literature Club released in 2017?

 

JG: I feel like visual novels have become more mainstream since then. DDLC was a girly high school experience that turned into psychological horror. That grabbed people and got people paying attention.

 

DM: It evolved the visual novel genre to be something far broader than just dating sims.

 

JF: Like you said, Doki Doki Literature Club is subversive in that it's a psychological horror game in the guise of a guileless dating simulator. Your own game, The Office Type, is described as a comedy dating sim. I’d say it grazes the fourth wall; it sort of winks at the player with subtle references to game mechanics and lines like that. So here you have DDLC subverting the conventions of the genre in a sinister, dark sort of way and The Office Type subverting the conventions of the genre in a more light-hearted, funny sort of way. As writers and developers, how do you mess with the audience’s expectations?

 

JG: You're going through a visual novel for its story, but during that predetermined story, you're also trying to get to know these different characters and their different personalities as well as whatever personality is added to the player character. If you're just going through a regular story with no twists and turns and no jokes, it feels kind of boring. Why not just read a book?

 

DM: On the point of subversion, one approach that I like to take with some of my writing is something I call ‘wholesome deception.’ Whereas Doki Doki has a lot more of the horror elements, a lot of our character interactions involve pleasant and delightful surprises that make you challenge your assumptions. One of the characters, for instance, keeps referring to who you think is a roommate and later learn is just a dog. It's this idea of constantly reassuring the player that the world can be more innocent than you think it is and work doesn't have to suck. It's really a more idealistic view of the world and what it can be. I would say it's kind of ‘hopepunk,’ where you're just trying to reject that everything is evil and grimdark and out to get you.

 

JG: It’s a game about an office, so there's the traditional depiction of capitalism and your average worker is not having a great time, but we filled it with all these characters who are just trying to be the comedy relief in their own lives. They’re creating their own happiness and sharing that with the player, which in many instances is just funny.

 

JF: As you mentioned, visual novels as a whole are gaining popularity, but I would say that there aren’t a lot of specific titles that bleed into the wider gaming space. How does being a largely indie-centric genre allow creators of visual novels to explore spaces that they perhaps couldn’t if they had larger budgets and more eyes watching?

 

JG: It allows them to create games in the first place. If you don't have a whole lot of money as an indie creator, you can still throw up a background and an image of a character and write your own words and then you’ve got the basics. Of course, you can develop that and expand upon it, but it's sort of the first step up of being able to visualize an idea of your own.

-

JF: How did The Office Type begin development? How did you decide to make this game?

 

JG: Everyone always asks me the question of, “How did you have an idea about dating sim where you’re dating office supplies?” One day I was just at my writing desk and I saw a pen and a pencil next to each other and thought, “What if these were brothers?” I had played games like Hatoful Boyfriend and there’s this whole genre where objects or animals turn into people and you date them and The Office Type grew from there. Placing all the characters in an office environment let them have different careers and ages and situations, which led to different stories and personalities. It grew into this huge idea and we just started writing.

 

DM: And kept writing!

 

JF: And Daniel, how did you join development?

 

DM: I have a lot of fun doing this because I made a technically adjacent but huge tonal shift in my writing. I had actually been working for CTA doing curriculum development and technical writing. I was writing troubleshooting guides and technical manuals – very, very dry stuff – in an office. During COVID, I left that job for a number of reasons and was looking for other projects to get involved with in addition to teaching. [Jack and I] met up at a picnic and talked about the game and I thought, “Oh, this sounds like a really fun idea. I've been looking to do more creative writing.” I just fell in love with the whole concept and then I took on a character and over time got more involved in the business side of things.

 

JF: Jack, you're supervising a lot of different disciplines – voice actors, artists, programmers, etc. As the team lead, how do you find people who share your vision for the project?

 

JG: It's a little difficult at times. A lot of it comes from my own connections at DePaul; I'll reach out to a professor or another game developer or screenwriter or something and say, “Hey, I have this crazy idea, do you want to help me make it?” I don't know if it's the idea or me, but people were enthusiastic about joining. Once I had saved enough money to offer pay, that drew in a lot more people as well.

 

JF: There’s a lot of variety in each playthrough of The Office Type; there are 24 total characters but the player will only interact with 8 in each individual run. What was the appeal of having so much variety between different players’ experiences and what were some of the difficulties that arose from that?

 

JG: We get asked about the 24 characters often because, yeah, it seems like a lot. But that idea started from my feeling that there was always something missing in visual novels. Like, they’ll usually have you go after one person and you can’t be friends with one person and date another. What if you wanted to date a pencil and be friends with a stapler but the genders didn’t match your preferences? So, we decided to keep all the objects, have different genders for each object, and make them all unique characters. Of course, we condense it into 8 characters per playthrough for a more manageable experience, but you still get that variety and that freedom to explore the exact office environment that you want.

 

DM: By giving players so many options, we’re trying to avoid being too prescriptive. We want to emphasize discovery instead of having a ‘correct’ way to play the game. There are 30 unique dates per character, so that’s 720 dates total. It is a comical amount of text. I think the real beauty of that is we felt that we couldn't cut any of the characters. Going back to your earlier question, that is the unique advantage of the visual novel in this indie space. Any established studio would have told us to cut, to condense, to put this into DLC or multiple releases, but instead we're able to make the game that we want to play and that will hopefully influence other indie creators to be more experimental.

 

JF: Often, when people think of game developers, they only think of programmers, but I’ve met a lot of people throughout my college career who are specifically interested in narrative design. As game writers yourselves, do you have any advice for people aspiring to that field?

 

JG: If you have an idea that you really believe in, don't let people say that it's never going to work. It might take a lot of time and a lot of money to make it work or the idea might change over time, but if you want to create an idea that is yours and share that joy with people, there's going to be a lot of people who don't want you to share that for some reason.

 

DM: And on the note of sharing – [writing] is a team sport. You need to have other people involved. Even if you end up working on a game as a solo project, consult with other people and get their perspectives throughout. Not just their ideas of what to change and what to add but identifying strengths as well. I think that's a thing that a lot of people miss out on is trying to get specific feedback of what elements work and how they make people feel. A lot of people will say, “It's fun!” Fun’s nice, but what about it is fun? Are you feeling power versus achievement versus relational joy?

 

JF: You mentioned Hatoful Boyfriend. Are there any other specific inspirations for The Office Type, whether they’re from video games or visual novels or any other sort of media?

 

JG: Boyfriend Dungeon by Kitfox Games is a big one. In that game, you're going through a dungeon and you get a weapon that turns into a person who you get to know. That same concept carried over to our game – the funny idea of, “Why would you be dating this object?” Hatoful Boyfriend inspired some of the quirky comedy and we took art style inspiration from Dream Daddy; our character artist is actually the same person who did that game. So, all of those things blend together into The Office Type.

 

DM: Going beyond media, we’re inspired by real people and experiences. One thing I'm consistently impressed by is how dedicated we are to making sure we're representing things accurately. We’re working with a sensitivity consultant right now to make sure we're accurately representing different identities and all the characters have different office jobs, too, so we consulted with experts in those areas.

 

JF: Once developers are on board, how do you communicate your vision with them? What does the feedback process look like?

 

JG: As Dan said, it's a big team effort all the way from the very beginning. I might have an idea that a fountain pen is hoity-toity, for instance. That instinctive thought about an object expands into an outline of what their personality would be. Through the dates, we would also go into their career, their hobbies, and how they’re changing over time. That’s the structure for each character’s story. If you apply that to all the characters, you have a game.

 

JF: And when do the artists come into the process?

 

JG: Very quickly.

 

DM: Much earlier than is standard. It presented a unique challenge but I'm happy with how it worked out because I came in as a writer a few years into the project and most of the art for my characters had already been created. I was also given the basic plot threads and general characteristics of the characters, but it ended up being a conversation. There were a number of things I pushed back on. [Jack was] very amicable to feedback; we even changed one of the characters’ names and I think it really strengthened not only that character but our approach towards other characters, too.

 

JG: We created all this art - a lot of the backgrounds and a lot of the characters - mainly because it's cool to see it fleshed out. But you also need those art assets to create a trailer to get funding, so we used that for our initial Kickstarter run.

 

JF: And finally, the last question that I’ve been asking everyone who I’ve talked to: Do you have any general advice for students looking to enter the game industry?

 

JG: I would strongly advise you to learn the business side of things. Learn what goes into creating a company and the legal liability stuff behind that. You're either going to find yourself working really hard to make the game yourself or you’ll find funding to make it faster with a group of other people. I would recommend getting funding if possible, but there's a lot you can do by yourself, it will just take time.

 

DM: I came at game development from a different angle. I had more of the business background, so I had very minimal technical knowledge at the beginning but a strong desire to do some creative stuff. Something I found helpful is to find people who will hold you accountable in the long-term. Schedule things out months in advance and just break it down into parts because you can easily get overwhelmed with all the things that pop up.

​

As far as general advice for people designing games, whether it's visual novels or something else, my advice is to follow that Agile3 format of making a minimum viable product and expecting to revise it, revise it, revise it. Repetition can be exhausting but it does ultimately make a better product. It can be hard to remember sometimes that it is a game and we're having fun, and I've really been trying to advocate for people to know the difference between taking yourself too seriously and respecting yourself. Your game will never be perfect. Full stop. But is it something that you can be proud of.

 

JG: If you are enjoying your work, that's what's going to drive you. You should work on something that you want to work on, and it’ll be so much easier.

 

DM: When it comes to doing more creative projects, whether it’s for your career or just something you're interested in as a hobby, the secret to making good art is making a lot of bad art. Crank things out. Chase every little goofy idea you have, even if it’s just drafting it a little bit or putting it on paper. Really lean into the more playful side of discovery.

​

It's so helpful to have a philosophy of, “I am doing this simply for me because I want to remember this idea, not because I think anyone else would like it.” There are so many things I've discovered that I would have deleted if I had thought they weren't good enough.