DON’T FRAUD MY HEART
When I was walking through the row of dating sims at MAGFest, this one caught my eye. I’m a big fan of Doki Doki Literature Club! so naturally I was drawn to this game. Not long after approaching Dogwood Gaming’s booth did I realize the difference between this game and the popular indie horror dating sim. Eseme, the lead programmer, filled me in on just how unique the development of this game is: Don’t Fraud my Heart is a groundbreaking dating sim created entirely in Powerpoint. Yes, Powerpoint. I still can’t wrap my head around how a piece of software used for presentations in boardrooms and classrooms could somehow be used to create a dating sim but Dogwood Gaming is doing it.
Don’t Fraud my Heart has fun little mini-games full of numbers — the player character is an accountant after all! Combined with a host of adorable characters and other small details in the story that will leave you feeling uneasy (which is just what I like to see in a game like this). The issue with the elevator keeps you on edge and the connection you make with Sepia-Chan, an adorably high-strung hot mess, shows you that every decision you make matters.
I recommend you give this game a try because the artwork is gorgeous, the story is unexpected, and the developers’ medium is unique. This sensual and spooky game is definitely one to keep an eye on if you’re a fan of dating sims.
Sarah: This is Sarah, interviewing… I'm terrible at names, who am I interviewing again?
Eseme: Eseme. Or you could just call me Sam if it’s easier for you.
Sarah: Sam? OK.
Sam: (laughs) No he’s Eseme, I’m Sam!
Sarah: Sam, Eseme.
Sam: Yes.
Sarah: OK. And what studio are you guys from? What are we doing?
Sam: Um, Dogwood Gaming.
Sarah: Dogwood Gaming.
Eseme: Based in Rockville, Maryland.
Sarah: Oh, so you guys are pretty local to MAGFest.
Sam: Yeah we’re about an hour away. We come here every year.
Sarah: Do you guys normally like, travel to other conventions? Or is it just like a MAGFest local thing you guys show up to?
Eseme: Um, I would say this is the fifth year that Dogwood has had a presence at MAGFest, but we don't do too many others. We did Otakon this past summer, um… but yeah.
Sarah: I missed you guys at Otakon, I was there!
Eseme: Really?
Sarah: Yeah!
Sam: Oh yeah, we’re with our artist, who's also here with an artist booth.
Sarah: Ohhh.
Eseme: When we're done, we need to get you our cards so that–
Sarah: Yes.
Eseme: –we can just, if we’re at some of the same events–
Sarah: So I don’t miss you guys again. (laughs)
Eseme: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. We appreciate you.
Sarah: Yes, of course! OK, so. What do you guys do in your positions, what is your part in your project? What are you guys currently working on?
Eseme: Well, currently our biggest project, Don’t Fraud My Heart, is a visual novel dating sim that is completely programmed within Microsoft PowerPoint. Usually I am an artist, whether it's concept artist or 3D artist for our projects we work on, but for this project I am exclusively working on the programming of the actual game within PowerPoint.
Sarah: And then Sam, what do you do?
Sam: I started the company with my friend seven years ago. I've worn pretty much every hat in the industry doing this, but we were working on a totally unrelated Unreal project. And Eseme told me he learned how to make PowerPoint games and… it's really blown up from there with this game.
Sarah: I love that. I remember making… I had a tech class back in like, middle school, we had to make a Jeopardy game on PowerPoint. And I feel like that's probably where it all started with you or something along those lines, just…
Eseme: Absolutely.
Sarah: …bored little kid and found something to work with, you know? I love that, I'm–so just, I guess interview disclaimer: I love doing the thing where I don't play the game and I interview you guys and then I play it after so I'm like totally blind. But I'm very excited to see how–because I've heard great things about the game already–kind of see how that works with PowerPoint and how like, it all seams together, so that's really exciting. What originally got you guys into indies, or what you're doing? Sam, I guess I'll start with you because you started the company. So what got you into this?
Sam: So I was in college for political science. I was in my last semester and I just, I really didn't enjoy it. It was… It came easy to me but it really wasn't what I was passionate about. And my friends were like, ‘Oh, we should try and make a video game!’ And seven years later, we're still here doing it. But I was very fortunate that I went to this cafe called Sam's in Rockville for years. And just all kinds of talented people would come in and they got to work with me. And Eseme, who I went to high school with, we reconnected at Sam's and he's one of the first people who came on with me, but he is entirely self taught. He has done everything from 3D modeling to concept art, to now, he is the full developer of this project! So…
Eseme: And I tie my own shoes! (laughs)
Sarah: That’s really– I actually didn't even tie my shoes this morning, I think I've left them tied from when I got them from the Vans.
Sam: I have slip-ons, it’s–it’s–it’s too much.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, I just, I solely wear Vans, and then I leave them how they're tied and then I just slip them on from there. So honestly, that is pretty #$%@ impressive! Oh, sorry, whoever's editing this, I don't think I'm supposed to curse. OK! So Eseme, how did you get into all of this? Or, you guys knew each other in high school, you met at a cafe… What's your story before and, I guess, leading into this?
Eseme: I mean beforehand, I've always been someone who's really liked to have a casual interest in art, drawing, 3D art, digital art… and I honestly was seeing Sam asking all our other friends if they would like to participate or if they want to work, and I felt very jealous. So Sam didn't recruit me as much as I went up to him and say, ‘Sam, give me work to do, and I'll do work for the company.’ And then a couple of years later, I said, ‘Wait, does this mean I'm employed?’ And the rest is history.
Everyone: (laughs)
Eseme: So it's very much me sort of wanting to just find another thing I got really excited about, and working with this game, working with Dogwood, learning different tools and trades and skills has been something I've had the great opportunity to get really excited about working with.
Sarah: That is amazing. I love that. We went to a panel about working in video games and so much of it is that knocking down–even if you knew each other–knocking on doors and saying, ‘This is what I know, this is what I can do for you,’ and really like jamming your foot in the door, not just like stepping in. It's like, ‘No, I'm gonna kick this down!’ So what are you guys most excited about with this project? Is… Is it a fully completed game, the Don’t Break Your Heart…?
Sam: So we're, it's– We've almost finished the first romance path right now.
Sarah: OK.
Sam: But we are– This is something that really hasn't been done before at all, so there's a lot of gray area as to what's going to happen with it. Like, we will one: be the very first PowerPoint game ever on Steam, and also I think it’s currently longer than the record for longest PowerPoint slideshow ever. And we're not even done with the first romance path. So this is like, I really… Eseme and I both feel the same way: we really want to see other people do this. This is something that you just need Microsoft Office, and you could make an entire game out of it.
Sarah: Were you doing a panel on this? ’Cause I feel like I saw a panel for it in the schedule.
Eseme: Yes. Absolutely. It was on Thursday from three to four. I had done a panel for this, and I really regret not rescheduling it now, because a lot of people have stated how much they really wanted to check it out, they just weren't here at that time. Like Sam has stated, there's a really incredible educational base for it. And I really like how the path video games in themselves have gone, just recently in the last decade. The barrier of entry is really being lowered and shortened. And something like Microsoft Office, that everyone–or if not, similar, Google Slides–has access to, knowing you can make games, make a functional user experience within either of those applications is amazing.
Sarah: Yeah! That is something that I had a brief–when I was trying to figure out where I wanted to be in the gaming world, I had a brief stint where I was like, ‘Maybe I want to like program or design,’ and I think I downloaded Unreal. And it was on this laptop that I now use and just carry around with me because if I lose it, it's not a big deal. And it was just like on fire, I couldn't do anything, and I just didn't know where to start. So knowing that this is something that is possible that people are doing–well at least you're doing I don't know if anybody else is doing it–but that you are doing, is really cool. Something really awesome! …Sorry, I was looking for my next question, sorry Frankie or whoever's editing this… So what made you guys decide to do a dating game, visual novel in particular?
Sam: Um, It really fits like you know, I mean, it is PowerPoint. So like we are limited and a lot of what we can do, but it lends to doing that kind of style. I mean, Eseme can go into the finer details about it, but I mean, it's being able to have like text, animate on screen and show up and skip through that and all the mini games are all things that you could normally do in PowerPoint. I think Eseme can talk more about specifics.
Eseme: PowerPoint doesn't like variables. I won't really count anything for you. So a lot of it is a guided experience. But like with many guided experiences, as long as you curate in a certain way, the player doesn't necessarily feel that as much. So from the boatload of selections of games that exist, we drew from a lot of different ideas and got to visual novels and dating sims because they are so much of branching pathways and selecting things, similar to Jeopardy games that people play or or make, or similar to how when you're playing and or like using PowerPoint, you might hyperlink to a certain slide just to make sure that you skip through certain things. So it really just seemed to mesh through with what we knew and understood and what we've experienced before in PowerPoint.
Sarah: Awesome. Give me just a second ’cause I got a phone call, I want to make sure it did not stop your recording, cool, It did not stop your recording. So what makes your dating sim unique? I heard it compared to kind of to Doki Doki, I don't know if that is just something that Emily threw out of thin air or if there is some reasoning behind that.
Sam: That's more so like, that's how we want to monetize it is that it's gonna be free to play for everybody. And because we're working with an artist who we met at that same cafe, who–he's not officially like a full-time employee of Dogwood, but he does all of our concept work as a contractor–so we have so this is a way for us to hype up his merch shop and actually get his stuff out there as well as all the stuff related to the game.
Sarah: Awesome! Any comments from you?
Eseme: Um, may you repeat the question please?
Sarah: Basically, what's making your game, I guess, unique?
Eseme: Well, I would say a big part of it is that the setting is a tax fraud agency.
Sarah: Oh!
Eseme: And you are trying to figure out the different tax forms these companies and organizations are turning in, whether they are trying to commit fraud and how they're committing fraud. And having that sort of setting a dynamic around it is really interesting to a lot of different people. I think we've had near forty people come up and say, ‘I'm in accounting,’ or…
Sam: ‘I’m in the IRS.’
Eseme: Yes. This is like really interesting that you're carrying and sort of like making fun of and nods to this career path and I have that I haven't seen in any other game try to do or try to write towards or connected with. The other side of the point is that this is done in Microsoft PowerPoint, which is just an amazing advertising tool to say like this is unique and special, but also as a practical example for people to sort of grow and sort of learn from developing something like this makes it really important. So for the entertainment piece, but also like a potential teaching tool.
Sarah: Yeah.
Sam: We also so all of the romance options are based on different sets of office equipment.
Sarah: Ohhh!
Same: So we have a Rolodex character, a calculator character, a fax machine, a CRT monitor, and it's been a lot of fun because I, so because we're an indie studio, I've had to do the studio's taxes since we started. And business taxes are stupid, and it's a lot of work to do for one person, but so all the mini games and jokes are all based on my experiences of doing our taxes over the past few years.
Sarah: I love that, and I love that it's not just like everything's either fantasy-based or like high school dating sim.
Sam: No this is set in 1997 in Gary, Indiana.
Sarah: Amazing. I love that. All right, so kind of my last question for you guys: if you can go back in time and change one thing about your journey in this org and yourself piece of advice or both. What would it be?
Sam: Start with Eseme, I need to think about that.
Eseme: I would say I should have tried doing more things in preparation for sort of working with this company or working with video games. I think the greatest benefit I've had is that I've done a little bit of drawing, I’ve done a little bit of digital art, I'd gone into learning stuff about 3D modeling and learning a little bit about code here and there. And there are many times where even though I'm not working on a project myself or this isn't the aspect of the project we're working on, someone has an opinion or an idea or even just a problem. And it's easier to talk out or explore and then branch out what I'm working with and sort of my expertise, and it works vice versa, where like a lot of the tax or document information that we pulled for this game or from different people's perspectives of what different businesses do for taxes, what different people have to go through when applying and sort of curating their expenses. And so just going wider in my life and trying more things would have really helped just make everything I do more diverse.
Sarah: All right. And do you have an answer now?
Sam: Yes! I would say like this is really for anybody that wants to make video games is I 100% recommend doing conventions like MAGFest way earlier in your career and anything else.You know, I was very fortunate that when we first started Dogwood, we joked around that ‘Oh, maybe we can get free tickets to E3!’ And then we literally did and like, it opened all kinds of doors, all the people we met. I mean, I came here yesterday and went to a panel about VR. And then they invited me to speak on the panel with them three hours afterwards, you know, and like those are– You know, making games is a huge part of it, but like being able to talk to people makes such a huge difference.
Sarah: I keep telling people I've kind of said we've had a similar journey with conventions where there was just one day I said, ‘Hey, Pax is looking for press, we should just do this thing!’ And the answer’s always ‘no’ if you don't try. And honestly there are so many opportunities that you will be surprised what you can fall into just from showing up to a panel or saying hi to the right person or being nice and shaking a hand.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: So it is super important to I guess try everything kind of like both of you said. Tie it all back in there, I guess. Well, thank you both again, for interviewing with me. It was a pleasure. You guys are a blast and I can't wait to try out the game.
Sam: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Sarah: And just give a reminder to the fans, the listeners: who are we talking to again? What do you do? Plug yourself socials, your site, all that good stuff.
Eseme: My name is Eseme Koge, I'm right now programming with Dogwood Gaming. You can find us Dogwood Gaming on Twitter, Facebook, and on Twitch on Saturdays we do developer streams working with my current project Don’t Fraud My Heart. So if you want any input into how we're making the game and just see how PowerPoint works as a game engine, please check us off on that and we also have a discord as well that you can find through our Facebook and our Twitter.
Sarah: Awesome. And anything extra you want to plug, Sam?
Sam: Just I'm I'm Sam Martino from Dogwood Gaming and we really love helping people to try and get into this industry. So all of our socials, like Eseme said, Dogwood Gaming, you can reach out to us, and if you join our Discord we're all in there and when we can we love being able to talk to people that want to make games.
Sarah: Thank you guys again.
Sam: Thank you.
coverage by
SARAH BEE
transcription by