blowing up Bomb Dolls
Bomb Dolls! one of Girl Software's most iconic and beloved games.
(which is impressive, because it's really hard to set it up and convince people to play)
princess created the girls, but their world and the game as we know it is the result of a collaboration with Girl Software's other half, jessica.
in 2017, Girl Software didn't exist yet, and Bomb Dolls was just another one of princess's experimental prototypes. it looked like this:
it was called Gay Road Trip Game
there were 2 players, and the whole thing was keyboard-controlled, which... didn't work. (did you know most keyboards can't recognize more than a few simultaneous keypresses? princess didn't know that.)
princess used clipart to make a very small design document
it's not easy to build a large space for a procedurally generated road trip, so for a while the game took place on a barren postwar moon colony.
it was called Moon Girls. it's a cute look! we should revisit this someday
later it became a little more colorful, with palm trees and weird eyeballs. this version never got very far along because princess was busy.
the visuals were partly inspired by this one Wonder Girls video
in 2018, princess was thinking about fury road and wanted to make a game called Bomb Dolls about mutant animal girls driving around in a wasteland.
the one on the far left was supposed to be a firefly but we never made the antennae
we settled on these 3 designs as our favorites:
Xoxo, Azura, and Lindsey. their names contain XYZ and theirs colors match the XYZ axes in Unity! also Xoxo has XO eyes, Azura is blue, and Lindsey almost rhymes with lamprey. there's a lot of layers to this
then we had a thought: maybe this is the gay road trip game we've been waiting for! we made a simple proof of concept, a 3-player road trip simulator where you drive a car, collect pills and guns, and shoot eyeballs.
it's worth noting that driving the car did NOT feel like driving a car
everything was as basic as you can imagine
basically the whole world looked like this
that was it! the game was done!
...until playtesting revealed that the keyboard controls were impossible, and also that the game was repetitive and boring and not much fun.
jessica came over and played Bomb Dolls and was like "let me make this bigger and better." she cofounded Girl Software as Creative Director, which means she had a million cool ideas and it was up to princess, the Producer, to execute those ideas and/or veto the ones that were too hard.
that's when Bomb Dolls blew up.
it got really really really big
we started scripting AI, navmesh behavior, projectiles, audio listeners...
there were a lot of bugs but they were usually pretty funny
jessica wanted a day/night cycle, custom cars, cute outfits, more snacks, more weapons, bigger crystals, barbed wire fences, flaming barrels, toxic lakes, oil rigs, and more distinct areas. she helped with lighting and particle effects and drew concept art for new critters like slimes, crystal crabs, and the huge destructive machines we call "dragons".
we both drew concepts for enemies; jessica designed the crabs here, and princess did the fairies
jessica made the lightning for the storm
dragons were conceived as the most scary and threatening enemy but they're just cute
princess modeled everything, and she added smokestacks, wind farms, mushroom fairies, and cyborg girls. the game started to take on a very different look. it was more magical and more apocalyptic.
we were leaning further into the "road trip gothic" mood
imagine if jessica wasn't involved and Bomb Dolls never had a night mode lol
jessica helped us solve the keyboard problem by reworking the control scheme to support a variety of game controllers. this was a new experience for princess, who was used to making games with nothing but a tiny laptop. now we were testing with Joy-Cons, multiple computers...
when we realized the colors of the Joy-Cons matched the characters we were SO HAPPY
idk what's even going on in this photo. why is there half a laptop over there
we decided there should be an ultimate goal besides not dying. we both liked the idea of collecting the souls of lost girls, so jessica drew concept art for a desert goddess who would receive the souls.
it was really fun to adapt this character into the 3d princess style
we call her the "death milf"
she singlehandedly turned this game into a roguelike
jessica modeled some buildings, which princess then simplified and optimized for easier navigation and smoother lighting performance. (jessica also wanted more dramatic lighting and bloom effects, which made the game a lot heavier. but we pulled it off and it looks amazing.)
we ended up generating some powerful scenes, like these lost souls browsing the aisles...
...motels surrounded by minefields...
...people in diners...
the buildings were useful as landmarks, plus they were a nice way to break up the flow of gameplay and enhance the road trip vibe.
deep lore: there are 2 competing electric car-charging stations called CAR CHARGE and CHARGE CAR
at this point, Ada Rook, rook&nomie, and Black Dresses had already agreed to let us put their music in the game. then Black Dresses asked princess to make a video for their upcoming song DREAMS COME TRUE!
the video was a fun opportunity to do all the weird stuff we couldn't do in-game
princess used iMovie
princess recorded and edited most of the video in about 3 days. jessica helped with OBS, and devi added some final touches to make it perfect.
DREAMS COME TRUE was literally a dream come true. it was the most fun and exciting crossover event we could have imagined, and people loved it.
but now there was pressure to finish Bomb Dolls and publish it while the hype was still going! jessica announced an estimated release date of Summer 2019, and princess committed to that. it was stressful. we worked too hard. deadlines are no longer allowed at Girl Software.
these little animated scenes on the menu are inspired by sonic mania
but in retrospect the timing was perfect, because we got to show Bomb Dolls at Bit Bash 2019 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago! and then later at BITXBIT and some other cool events. a party in Australia or something. we didn't go to that one, but it looked fun.
anyway, covid lockdown started 6 months after the release, which wouldn't have been a great time to promote a couch co-op party game about sick girls dying in an apocalypse, so... yeah. it worked out.
we were the sick girls all along! (we got long covid, it was bad)