Flirt with Death? Inside the World of A Date with Death!
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to flirt with the Grim Reaper? Well, A Date with Death makes that wild fantasy a reality! This cozy and clever chatsim has you texting, teasing, and maybe even falling for the aloof yet surprisingly flustered Grim himself. We had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Gabby, one of the brilliant minds behind the game, and learning all about the inspiration, the challenges, and the exciting new DLC that’s on the way. Let’s jump in!
Gabby: “Absolutely!”
“First of all—hi! I’m Gabby, one of the two directors at Two and a Half Studios.”
“Two and a Half Studios formed back in 2018 at the announcement of our first game, The Divine Speaker. We were and have always been a two person team who got into the indie scene because we love storytelling, narrative-focussed games and visual novels.”
“Since then, we’ve released 7 games and a few more DLCs. One of our latest games was A Date with Death, a romance chatsim where you flirt with (and sometimes bully) the Grim Reaper.”
“There’s a lot of challenges to being an indie developer. In the early days, that’s things like funding and juggling your time—there’s only so much time in a day, and we were working full-time jobs.”
“Now, we’re happily at a point where making games IS our full time job. I think indie game development is a series of hurdles that you get better at jumping the longer you do it.”
Gabby: “We were working on another one of our games, Dreambound, when the idea for A Date with Death came to us. We wanted to work on something different—still a narrative story, but something more casual, with banter and silly jokes.“
“But, we were also working on other big games at the time, and didn’t have the manpower to make another 3+ year long project. So, we settled with the idea of a chat simulator with just a single love interest.”
“It was a format that was very fitting to what we wanted to do. Compared to a traditional visual novel (which we love making, and won’t give up any time soon!) it was a lot more casual to write, which made the writing process a lot faster than our previous games.”
“As to what exactly inspired the story and choosing to center it around the Grim Reaper… we love fantasy as a genre, so when we end up doing more modern games, they always are a little supernatural or magical leaning. If we ever present you a modern game, know there’s something hidden under the hood we’re not telling you.”
“In many of our previous games, they deal with characters who are immortal and the struggles they go through. I’m a big fan of mortal x immortal relationships and the pain they cause, so we knew we’d be going down that path very early on.”
“So… if we’re already dealing with one character dying before the other, why not take it a step further and make the immortal character the one TRYING to have the mortal character die?”
“And thus, we landed firmly on the love interest being a Grim Reaper, and A Date with Death was born.”
Gabby: “From the beginning, we knew we wanted to keep the story mostly light. Despite the setting of the game, A Date with Death is a cozy, fun, banter-filled story. We were always trying to lean towards a more romantic atmosphere, rather than “I’m about to die and this man wants to kill me”.”
“Saying that, we still wanted to make sure there were times when imminent death could be felt. There’s two bad endings in the original game where your character can die—a short one in the middle of the game, and one at the end of the game. There’s also a time when your pet gets sick. A lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when they turned out to be fine.”
“The atmosphere in the last few days of the original game also gets more solemn at times. There’s opportunities for the player to be more accepting of their death, or deny it outright.”
“But, as I said, we knew we wanted to balance the game towards being more lighthearted and romantic. It should feel like a romance game first and foremost.”
Gabby: “Before even deciding that A Date with Death would feature a Grim Reaper love interest, we knew the personality the love interest would have.”
“We actually based Grim’s personality on Leos, one of the love interests in The Divine Speaker. They share a few traits—being arrogant, yet easy to tease. We really enjoy characters like that, so we used Leos as a starting point for Grim.”
“They’re also incredibly different from each other, too. Where Leos is a lot more grumpy and bad-tempered, Grim is much more cocky and self-confident.”
“It was only after we began writing him that we got his “babygirl” angle down. There’s something incredibly satisfying about making the Grim Reaper flustered.”
Gabby: “A lot of the world building came to us while writing. Unlike in many of our other projects, which have dedicated world building bibles, we began working on the game with only the beginnings of ideas related to the wider world of A Date with Death.”
“It was only while writing that we made decisions about how the world worked and what was included. The two of us would write something funny, then come up with an idea from that, and talk about whether it worked or not in the world. Most of the time, the answer was yes!”
“I think this discovery-based development worked really well for the genre. There’s not a lot of room for large amounts of exposition when a game is really only dialogue between two characters, so having little tidbits come up in conversations over time works well for both the player AND us.”
“As a few examples—Grim mentions once that his cat is on fire, so he has to go. The man can’t lie, so it’s canon now that the Underworld has fire cats. Another conversation in Beyond the Bet goes into tooth fairies and Grim’s opinion on them—they’re canon now.”
“There has been times when our world building has been more deliberate, though. Specifically for an upcoming (very soon!) unannounced project, we did a lot of work on what the Underworld looked like, how everything worked there, and how Grim Reaper’s are trained. Beyond the Bet also goes into some of these topics, so please look forward to it!”
Gabby: We worked with our amazing artist friend Fuyuure on the character art for A Date with Death. We’ve been working together for more than 6 years now, and we’ve loved every moment of it.
“Since the beginning, I’d say we’ve been quite influenced by the overall aesthetic of anime for our character art, so we always tend to lean in that direction. We wanted character art that stood out from the backgrounds, but still overall felt “cozy”.”
“For our backgrounds in particular, we went in a different direction compared to many of our previous projects. The style we used is something you’d usually see in animation, rather than visual novels. It was actually very tough to get this exactly how we wanted, and we spent a lot of time going back and forth on the specific style for our backgrounds.”
“In the end, we found our two amazing background artists, Jenny Li and Nichole Isip, who both did fantastic work on the project.”
“Changing topics ever so slightly, the art for A Date with Death was a lot tougher than our previous projects for many reasons, but mostly because having a custom created player character meant that the CGs had to focus on just Grim. Working out exactly what each CG would show and how it would add to the storytelling was difficult work!”
“We’re very happy that in Beyond the Bet, we have some CGs that show parts of the main character. We hope the players enjoy them!”
Gabby: “None of these features were really planned from the start. I’m the kind of person who likes a challenge when it comes to programming, and I always end up playing around with different games and features in my spare time.”
“For A Date with Death, I knew the game would be set (mostly) through the main character’s computer. That meant we had the opportunity to add in some little easter eggs and fun tidbits. None of them were planned—I’d finish one thing, then go “hmm, I wonder if I could make this next thing work?” and go from there.”
“There were a lot of things that didn’t work or would have taken too much time. I wanted to make a visual novel you could play on the computer, but the assets alone would have been very time and money consuming. A visual novel within a visual novel does sound funny, though.”
“While these were all unnecessary additions, really, for us it was about making the game feel like a home away from home. In between chats, you could always come back to your room, play with your pet, listen to some music, read a book and play a minigame on your computer.”
Gabby: “I really can’t believe our one year anniversary is this December! How time flies.”
“I think the community’s reception has been very consistent. We had a lot of hype going into release, and it’s only expanded and grown since then. There’s been more fanart than I can count (I love seeing it!), lots of adorable fan merch, and SO many posts about the game all over the internet.”
“As someone who tends to stay away from fan theories and interpretations for creative reasons, it has still been wonderful seeing how much people have come to love Grim and latch onto him. I think the various endings of the game have left the story open to going in lots of different ways, and fans have used that chance to decide for themselves what comes next.”
“In particular, I really enjoy the heartache that comes from a lot of the endings—your player character is still mortal in most of them, while Grim is not. That leads to a lot of pain down the line, and I like seeing people explore that.“
“I’m very much looking forward to players’ interpretations of the new endings in Beyond the Bet, and what it means for Grim and their character.”
“If I had to point out one particular fan theory I saw and enjoyed (which was already being written into Beyond the Bet), it’s that Grim has sensitive hands. He does indeed! That should make for some interesting scenes.”
Gabby: “Beyond the Bet expands the original story of A Date with Death and adds a lot of new fun elements to the game. We’ve had a lot of people ask if it comes after one of the original endings or how it works, so I’d like to quickly go over that.”
“Beyond the Bet is a separate storyline that branches off from the original game. After you’ve finished one of the original endings at least once, you have the chance to unlock it. By making some specific choices on Day 5, you’ll be led to a completely new Day 6 and play onwards until Day 10.”
“This new DLC will feature four new endings (three good and one bad), and it’ll touch on subjects like Grim’s past and the truth around Grim Reapers. You can expect lots of new art, including CGs, two new sprites for Grim, and two new backgrounds.”
“But also, you can expect a lot more of the same. Goofy conversations, teasing, romance, confessions, heartbreak (we worked hard on that new bad ending). We wanted to give the players lots of new things, yes, but also more of the stuff they played the game for in the first place.”
“At the same time, we’ll also be releasing our free adult patch for the game. This will add two NSFW scenes to Beyond the Bet that are totally optional. If you don’t want to play them, you don’t have to install them. You can also install them and choose to skip them in game, if you’d like.”
“We really enjoyed this chance to give the players something they’ve been asking for literally since release date.”
Gabby: “To everyone who has played A Date with Death and fallen in love with Casper—thank you. To those that haven’t yet tried the game, I hope you get a chance to pick it up and give it a go. Being free, it’s very accessible to new players!”
“Working on A Date with Death for the past two years has been a blessing. It feels strange to be at a point where we’ll release our new DLC and the game will be done.”
“I hope that, into the future, we can entrust our Grimmy to you. After the game ends, there’s still plenty of story for you to experience and a life for our lovebirds to live through, as long as you’re there to imagine it.”
“Since many people have asked us the best way to support us, that would firstly be through sharing your love for the game with the world. Secondly, buying our games or supporting us on Patreon. We hope to make many more games in the future!”
“Lastly, we will be holding the A Date with Death Anniversary Week Celebrations on social media from December 6-12. We’ll have new content releases, merch, events and giveaways, so we hope you check it out!”
As part of our interview, the team behind A Date with Death generously shared an exclusive glimpse into the upcoming Beyond the Bet DLC. This teaser offers a behind-the-scenes look at concept sketches for props featured in the new locations— It’s a wonderful insight into the creativity that goes into crafting these fresh setting.
Whether you’ve already fallen for Grim’s charm or are just discovering this romantic chatsim, A Date with Death definitely has something in store for you. Don’t miss the chance to experience the base game and get ready for even more heart-pounding moments in the upcoming Beyond the Bet DLC, which you can wishlist here on Steam!
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