SCHOLOMATCH
ScholoMatch is an unmatched visual novel in terms of design and inclusivity. In this game, you’re new to magic school and ready to impress your classmates with your magic and romancing skills. With immersive writing, you quickly fall for the characters and understand their personalities.
This is also, of course, a magic school. You learn how to cast spells through a matching game, where you can apply different skills and cantrips. To further the experience, each character has a unique spin on the game. For example, my favorite character, Amara, has you make matches of 4 or more instead of the standard three or more. This keeps the game from becoming just another boring Bejeweled game but instead makes you think about your plays (and whether or not the hot mean girl is worth romancing).
Plus, you don’t have to choose just one character to love in this game. The rules of this world are a bit different, and toxic monogamy is a thing of the past. You can romance all the characters of all different colors, genders, and fantasy races if that’s what you want to do in ScholoMatch! Or, you can simply make them your friends, too — without the jealousy that other romance games have built-in.
ScholoMatch by Dire Kitten is currently available to wishlist on Steam, which is something I highly recommend doing. I cannot wait for a demo and full version of this game to be released so I can sink even more hours into it — I already spent two hours of my convention time playing it! This visual novel certainly isn’t one to be missed.
Sarah: All right, it is Sarah here from GeekFest, and I am interviewing for an amazing game that I sucked about two hours into somehow. So tell us, who are you? What are you working on? What's your deal?
Stephen: So, my name is Stephen, my partner in crime here is Brittany. We’re a two-person studio, and we're making a game. It's about dating wizards. It's a match-three game. And the basic premise of it is, if you like the idea of like romance and connections, and relationships, and meeting people in video games, we are trying to make a game that really gets at the heart of that it makes it extra approachable with very sort of deep, nuanced characters, rich storylines, all that sort of thing. In a very sort of, like, compelling frictionless environment where we sort of get things out of your way, and let you dive into sort of the characters you're most interested in, and sort of the storylines that you're excited about without having a bunch of other mechanics and that sort of thing that sort of get in the way and dilute the experience.
Sarah: So what got you into indies and working on this?
Stephen: So Brittany and I are both professional devs that have worked for other companies, I've been at Amazon and EA and stuff like that. We love that work also. But you know, there's all sorts of like smaller, more personal things that creative folks want to build that don't really fit into that sort of like larger scale corporate environment with larger teams. So I don't know, Brittany and I, our work complements each other very nicely, we get along and want to build largely the same thing. So a few years ago, we got together and started trying to figure out the world of indie games, which is very different than big-budget studio things. And I don't know, we're just sort of on a journey to figure out exactly what I want to build and the right ways to build it in the right way to let the people who would love it know that it exists, which is a whole other scary thing.
Sarah: Yes, that is a whole hullabaloo. What are you most excited about for your game?
Stephen: I'm excited about, I mean, there's a bunch of things that I'm excited about that are sort of the nuts and bolts of it in terms of like what the experience is and the feelings it gives you. The thing that I'm actually the most excited about, though, is the reception that we've gotten from sort of less represented marginalized communities has been much more than I expected. And it's really, really gratifying. Like we've gotten feedback from some people that have gotten sort of behind the scenes to play a bunch of it, and gotten a lot of responses that are not only is it like fun and delightful, but it was really meaningful to people, that it created an experience they had not gotten to have in other games. Which is rad, right? I mean, it's a thing we wanted to build. But I think the best feeling as a creative is just seeing people respond to it with, “Oh, wow, that's something I'm going to remember, and it's not something I've gotten to experience before.” And I think I mean, it's hard to tell until you, like, get out there in the world and get hundreds of thousands of people playing. But from the small group that we've got, it feels like we have the potential to have made something really special for a significant number of people. And that feels great.
Sarah: It is pretty… it's sad that it's groundbreaking, but it is pretty groundbreaking that you have a game that has like all sorts of genders, persons of color, that has elements of polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, you know, that is something that is still really new in the visual novel and just kind of the world in general. So we were super excited to see that about your game.
Stephen: Yeah, we're super excited to be making it. And it's also a little bit nerve-wracking only in the sense of limited scope and all of that. At launch, we're gonna have 11 characters, which in some ways is, you know, for a dating game, kind of a lot of people to date. But when you think about it in terms of like, well, we want to represent all these people and create all these different experiences, it's not that much. But I'm a little nervous about like, oh, well, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are going to come to the game and, you know, exactly the thing that they want to interact with is not quite there, but we're doing our best to sort of create sort of a wide palette of experiences that people can have.
Sarah: Yeah, you seem to have a little bit for everyone, and I love it,
Stephen: Doing our best.
Sarah: Alright, last question. And it's kind of a weird one. If you could go back in time and change something or give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Stephen: In general or related to this project?
Sarah: Whichever, I mean, preferably related to the project, but I will always take some life advice.
Stephen: The thing I would go back and change about this... I think the thing that I would change is going back and learning more about the marketing and community side much earlier. Because where we are right now is a lot of the game is pretty done, like a lot of our content is set, a lot of our features are set and now we're working mostly on like art and audio and that sort of thing. But we're only now starting to really dive into like, how to effectively get wishlists and how to do social media and all that sort of thing, which it turns out is pretty critically important. Brit and I are both, like, reasonably experienced devs who know how to make games, but we neither of us has any experience in, like, the the incredibly difficult step between a good game and a successful game.
Sarah: Yeah.
Stephen: And I think we'll get there. But I wish that I had started that process, way back when I was prototyping the game and not this close to sort of being done part.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, I will give you a platform then. So give us your good plug. What's your game? What's your studio? Where can we follow you? All that good stuff.
Stephen: Yeah, so we're Dire Kitten Studios, you can follow us. We're most active on Threads, but we're also on Twitter, you can find us around on various things. And the plug is, if you like, the aspect of games that has to do with interacting with NPCs, whether that's in a platonic fashion, or romantic fashion, or any that sort of thing, and you're looking for an experience that really dives into that and has really heartfelt thought out characters that are more than just sort of like, you know, an image and a few lines of characters that hopefully really resonate with you as people, then you know, check it out. We'll have a demo out soon. And hopefully people will be excited about it.
Sarah: I am definitely going to be adding Scholomatch to my wish list. I know I am obsessed with one of the characters already– Amara, she is mine. But it was so great to hear from you. I cannot wait until you guys have your demo out and your game!
Stephen: Thank you so much. It's great talking to you.
