the book is called Case Zero because apparently “LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE FUCKERS” wasn’t suitable for the cover.

anyway. i have a clipboard now. i found it. it is mine. the corner has been tasted.

today’s extremely official agenda:

• decamark has a plan
• luckstruck has concerns about the plan and whether she’s eaten
• emcee has opinions and a grocery bill with its own boss music
• several video games have built a little nest in my brain
• somebody is getting a brownie. we are working on the logistics

also. i can hear you every time you smell.

you’re doing it right now.

anyway. about the book.

---

Hi, folks. I want to start sharing more consistent updates about what I’m making, how the pieces fit together, and why certain decisions matter. There’s a lot happening around The Game of Chance, and I’d like you to see more of the characters, ideas, and work behind it.

If you’re new here, The Game of Chance is a narrative mystery RPG set in East Golden, a coastal country where supernatural abilities are publicly known and civilian use is restricted. You investigate contradictions, argue over evidence, fight alongside the Inquisitor’s Faction, and get to know the people behind its operations. Memories and official records don’t always agree, so figuring out what deserves your trust is part of the work.

The big thing I want to talk about today is Case Zero, a prequel novel following Decamark’s perspective, set before the events of the game.

It’s a chance to spend time in the world before EMCEE arrives: to see the circumstances that bring people together, the choices that become the Faction’s rules, and the person Decamark is while she’s still figuring out how to carry all of that.

Also, yes. I have given myself another thing to write.

The clipboard did warn us.

A novel gives me room to stay with Decamark’s thinking. In the game, you mostly encounter her through what she says, how she acts around EMCEE, and what you uncover. Prose lets me follow the thought she keeps to herself, the assumption she hasn’t questioned yet, or the moment after a conversation when she realizes it went differently than she intended.

By the time EMCEE meets her, she has an organization and responsibilities. She can seem remarkably comfortable deciding what needs to happen next. Case Zero lets me explore how she gets there, including the help she needs and the mistakes she has to learn from.

The early story concerns disappearances, exploitation, and records that make vulnerable people easier to overlook or misidentify. Decamark has to learn how to challenge that, gather evidence, and work with people whose skills and experiences differ from hers.

Being observant can tell you something is wrong. Doing something useful with that knowledge takes other people.

That’s one of the reasons I’m especially excited about Decamark and Luckstruck’s dynamic.

Luckstruck’s place in her life goes back to being her history teacher and later becoming her guardian. Their relationship develops alongside the beginnings of the Faction, which gives their work together a lot of emotional history.

He has known her before there was an organization to lead. He has reasons to recognize her intelligence, reasons to take her concerns seriously, and very personal reasons to worry when she walks toward something dangerous.

She knows someone who has already chosen to stand beside her. That gives her a foundation to build from, even when accepting help or admitting uncertainty is difficult.

I think there’s something really cool about the different kinds of trust that have to exist between them.

Luckstruck has to respect her judgment while caring about what her decisions cost her. Decamark has to learn that relying on someone can be part of leading. They can work toward the same outcome and still disagree about how much risk is reasonable, how long to keep pushing, or when someone needs to stop and recover.

That disagreement has weight because they care what happens to each other.

His experience matters. Her ability to see a pattern matters. Sometimes he may understand a practical danger she hasn’t accounted for. Sometimes she may recognize something that his experience has taught him to dismiss. Their relationship gives me room to let both of them be useful, stubborn, protective, and occasionally wrong.

The former teacher and student element is interesting here, too. A teacher is used to explaining, checking reasoning, and helping someone develop confidence. As Decamark grows into leadership, that relationship has to grow with her.

There’s a lot to write in the moment where somebody who once guided you starts trusting you to guide an operation.

There’s also a lot to write in the fact that the same person may still notice you’ve been awake too long.

I love that those things can coexist. Decamark can make a difficult call and still need someone she trusts to check on her afterward. Luckstruck can follow her lead and still have all that guardian instinct running in the background.

It also gives his more relaxed, resourceful side something to sit against. A person who handles contacts, distractions, identities, and exits can make a situation look manageable. From his perspective, though, that easy manner may involve keeping track of every way the people he cares about could get hurt.

A good escape route becomes much more personal when you know exactly who you need to bring home.

And from Decamark’s side, I want there to be room for how much she values him. She can be capable, ambitious, and determined while still caring intensely about whether he believes in her, whether he’s safe, and whether she’s asking too much of him.

That makes the Faction’s beginnings feel personal. Its principles come out of relationships where trust has already had to survive pressure.

Rules about voluntary participation, protecting uninvolved people, preserving evidence, and refusing to abandon someone when helping becomes inconvenient should have experiences behind them. Case Zero gives me space to explore why those commitments become important to the people trying to uphold them.

It also helps explain why perspective changes so much of this story.

EMCEE enters the game without knowing the events of Case Zero. He has to judge the Faction from the people standing in front of him. A reader who comes to the game after the novel may understand why a precaution exists or why a particular subject makes someone guarded. EMCEE still has to find his own way through that conversation.

This is also why the game would feel different if I built it around another member of the cast.

From EMCEE’s perspective, you’re entering an established group. Other people share references, habits, and history that you don’t have yet. You’re trying to understand what you’ve joined while dealing with your own place in a world that keeps becoming harder to trust.

From Decamark’s perspective, that same arrival could be a question of responsibility. She has to assess someone new, decide what to share, consider the team’s needs, and live with the consequences of putting people together.

From Luckstruck’s perspective, an improvised solution that feels triumphant to EMCEE might also be a terrifying near miss. He may be thinking about the contact who could have helped, the exit nobody checked, or the person who nearly didn’t make it out.

Feather-Touch would notice different patterns and failures, particularly around the systems the team relies on. Sawtooth could bring the physical and practical needs of the group into focus: who’s hurt, who needs feeding, who’s pretending they can keep going.

Even the same joke changes depending on who hears it and what happened before it.

Those different perspectives help me think about what each character notices first, what they take for granted, and what they choose to leave unsaid. They also remind me that EMCEE’s interpretation is one person’s interpretation, shaped by what he knows and how he feels.

That’s part of why he has a personality of his own, even with player customization.

You can name him, and player choices matter, but he should still have habits, preferences, ordinary ambitions, and a recognizable way of reacting to the world.

He notices things. He can be skeptical, impatient, sarcastic, and awkward. Sometimes a joke helps him regain his footing. Sometimes it buys him a few seconds before he has to admit he’s frightened. Sometimes he just thinks something is funny.

Every joke doesn’t need to be a symptom.

A lot of his appeal, to me, comes from the distance between what he can identify in a situation and what he can comfortably do about it. Spotting an inconsistency is one skill. Challenging someone with power over you is another. Accepting an uncomfortable answer is another again.

He can be right about the evidence and wrong about someone’s intentions. He can recognize that an explanation is suspicious while desperately wanting it to be true. He can offer an excellent observation with absolutely terrible timing.

Apollo Justice, especially in his first game, is one of the inspirations behind that energy. My interest is in the effort involved in being heard: the earnestness, the frustration, the internal commentary, and the feeling of someone trying to hold his ground while the room keeps becoming more ridiculous.

For EMCEE, that influence helps me think about someone who pushes back even while he’s unsettled. His confidence can be something he gathers in the moment. His objections should have reasons behind them. And when his sarcasm lands badly, another person should get to react.

Nexa Verglas, EMCEE’s voice actor, is another direct influence on his vocal character and personality. Nexa’s energy is part of the reference point I’m working from as I develop him, and I want the writing to give that influence room to come through.

That means thinking about delivery as I write: how quickly a response arrives, where a sentence loses momentum, what a muttered aside does to the scene, and how much effort it takes him to say something plainly.

There’s a difference between a sharp response he’s ready to throw at someone and a sincere admission he almost manages to disguise as a joke. The dialogue needs to make space for both.

EMCEE also needs desires that exist outside the central mystery. He had a life before the Faction. He has tastes. He can imagine a future that involves making something pleasant and useful. If the plot puts that future at risk, I want you to have some idea of what it would mean to him.

A few of those everyday details come from his species.

EMCEE is a Goldpaw, also called Kla’auw within the setting. Visually, the species combines maned wolf and Alexander Archipelago wolf influences: long limbs, prominent ears, a distinctive mane, and wolf features developed into a supernatural species for this world. There’s room for different builds and bodies within those proportions.

The important everyday detail is that Goldpaw need a lot of meat.

A LOT.

Their diet is heavily meat-based, and keeping them properly fed takes substantial portions. Physical exertion and transformation make those demands even more noticeable. That appetite should affect grocery shopping, meal planning, recovery, and the very ordinary problem of having enough energy to get through a day.

EMCEE’s food budget has enough presence to qualify as a recurring antagonist.

The enhanced senses and transformation traits also give me ways to make his physical experience distinct. A crowded room can be overwhelming. An involuntary reaction can reveal more than he intended. Picking up on something unusual still leaves him with the job of figuring out what it means.

Goldpaw have sensitivities to things including chocolate and sapphires, while EMCEE’s egg allergy is an individual issue. Those details give the world practical texture: what somebody can eat, what makes a place uncomfortable, and what the people around them learn to remember.

That’s enough of the species discussion for this update. There’s more to develop, but I’d like you to encounter some of it through the characters’ lives.

Especially when one of those lives includes a bakery.

A scene I’m working on has EMCEE looking around the Faction’s bakery front and admitting that he’s imagined himself in a place like it. Sawtooth initially assumes he means the hideout.

He means the bakery.

Here’s a revised version of that work-in-progress exchange, with both dietary restrictions accounted for:

EMCEE:
…welp, I always imagined I’d see myself in one of these.

SAWTOOTH:
A hideout?

EMCEE:
No, a bakery. My sweet tooth’s been kicking my ass lately, and I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I’d be some kind of baker or chef.

SAWTOOTH:
…anything y’ever wanted to make?

EMCEE:
…well, obvious one’s brownies, but I can’t have that.

SAWTOOTH:
Because of the chocolate?

EMCEE, embarrassed:
…and eggs.

SAWTOOTH:
Well, shit. I already use applesauce instead of eggs in some recipes. We can figure something out for the chocolate.

EMCEE:
Wait— what?

SAWTOOTH:
I can make you something, if you want.

The emotional movement is the part I’m excited about.

EMCEE shares an ordinary ambition. He’s embarrassed about a limitation. Sawtooth answers with something she knows how to do, and suddenly a thing he’d ruled out becomes possible.

Her offer is casual enough that he has to stop and catch up with it.

That establishes something useful about both of them. Sawtooth’s work as a sous chef gives her a specific way to care for someone. Her protectiveness can show up in a kitchen as naturally as it does in a dangerous situation. EMCEE gets to want something small and be surprised that another person takes it seriously.

From there, a later scene can remember it. A recipe changes. Somebody sets a plate aside. He realizes she paid attention even after the conversation ended.

I want that kind of continuity across the cast. Relationships can develop through shared work, friction, missed signals, apologies, practical help, and changes in what people feel comfortable saying.

That’s also where a lot of my game inspirations meet.

The Game of Chance is a love letter to all the games I’ve ever played. Some influences are easier to name than others, but the wider feeling comes from the time spent exploring strange places, caring about characters, learning a battle system, getting stuck on a puzzle, and remembering one surprisingly ordinary conversation long after the plot moved on.

I want to put that affection into the work.

UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE are important to how I think about characterful encounters, party interactions, comedy, and the emotional weight of paying attention. A room can become memorable because of who’s in it, what they say, or what happens when you come back. The cast’s reactions help give exploration and battles their personality.

EarthBound and MOTHER 3 are part of the tonal foundation: the everyday details, the strangeness sitting comfortably beside them, and the warmth that makes difficult moments matter. A ridiculous person, a small errand, or a familiar place can become something you care about. That feeling is useful for a world where ordinary life keeps going around extraordinary events.

Ace Attorney and Danganronpa feed the investigative side: the pleasure of catching a contradiction, the pressure of presenting an argument, and the way a revelation makes you reconsider earlier conversations. I want the player to feel involved in working toward an answer. Relationships affect how evidence is interpreted, particularly when trusting someone would be easier than questioning them.

Persona, especially Persona 5, influences the importance of spending time with people between major objectives. The Faction needs room to talk, disagree, eat, make plans, and become familiar. Those quieter encounters change what a later mission means because you’re bringing people you know into it.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a reference for expressive combat, participation, and the personality a battle can carry. Fighting is a major part of The Game of Chance. I want the characters’ behavior, teamwork, and reactions to matter to how those encounters feel. Comedy can come from action and timing as well as dialogue.

Drawn to Life helps me think about the relationship between going out on an adventure and returning to a place inhabited by people you care about. Coming back gives the player a chance to notice consequences, reconnect with the cast, and understand what the next trip might put at risk. That rhythm is useful for the Faction’s home and the time between cases.

OMORI, particularly the unsettling spatial and emotional qualities associated with BLACK SPACE, is one reference for how familiar surroundings can become difficult to interpret. As time distorts, I want small changes to draw on the player’s own familiarity with a place. Something can feel wrong because you remember how it used to be.

There are influences outside games, too. Doctor Who is part of my interest in time stories where a change in events also changes what people remember, what they’ve lost, and who understands what happened. Those questions fit naturally into a mystery about unreliable records and personal identity.

What excites me is how these influences can support one another.

Imagine returning from an investigation. You’ve found something useful, fought your way through a problem, and learned a little more about how a teammate acts under pressure. Back at the bakery, a conversation gives an earlier moment a different meaning. Later, a familiar detail changes, and now your memory of that ordinary conversation becomes part of why you notice.

The investigation, battle, downtime, and distortion all have a relationship to the same people.

That’s the kind of connection I’m working toward. A quiet scene can establish a habit you recognize in combat. A joke can tell you how someone handles stress. An argument can expose a misunderstanding that matters when you examine the next piece of evidence. Returning to a place can give you a reason to notice that reality has started treating it differently.

Those connections help the shifts in tone feel like part of one experience.

The warmth gives the danger something personal to threaten. The humor gives the cast room to be expressive. The mystery gives you reasons to look closely, and the time spent with people gives you reasons to care what you find.

That’s also why Case Zero feels worthwhile to me as part of the wider project. Following Decamark lets the novel explore the decisions and relationships that exist before EMCEE enters the room. The game then gives you the experience of meeting those people through his particular mix of curiosity, suspicion, humor, and hope.

Each story should stand on its own. Reading both should let you recognize more, feel differently about a familiar moment, or understand why someone needed a little longer to answer a question.

As the writing develops, I’d like to share more of those decisions through actual scenes: what someone wants, what gets in the way, and what changes when another person chooses to help.

Sometimes that means an investigation into records that should never have been trusted.

Sometimes it means someone asking what you’d like to bake.

Thanks for reading, folks.

— Nae / WishDraconic

p.s. if we ever made a sequel, the game of seduction is right there.

every dialogue option is [Flirt]. including during cross-examination.

the judge has asked us to stop.