Pivot of Hearts: Love, Growth, and Nerdiness
We had the opportunity to sit down with the team behind Pivot of Hearts, an upcoming romance visual novel from DragonRoll Studio that’s a mix of nostalgia, nerd culture, and a deep exploration of relationships, identity, and non-monogamy. With a charming cast, a Tarot-based choice system, and more than a few anime and tabletop RPG references, this game is as heartfelt as it is geeky. We spoke with Wil (developer), Maki (sound director), and Livia (art director) about their game and their expirience making it.
Wil: I’m Wil. I work with programming, but all three of us write for the game. Since we are a very small studio, we also have to do lots of things outside game developing so we all have many hats. But I’m mainly the programmer.
Livia: Hi, I’m Livia. I’m the art director. I did most of the illustrations and character sprites in the game and also wrote a lot of scenes. I have a background in animation and storyboarding. And yeah, I always wanted to do a visual novel.
Maki: I’m Maki, I’m sound director for the game and I did all the music and sound effects. I also write the script since all three of us do that and we also do the translation for the script in Portuguese. And I also made the UI design.
Wil: The protagonist, Wen, is a Taiwanese-Brazilian programmer going through a dark, lonely time in his life. He gets invited to play a parody of Dungeons & Dragons, reconnecting with an old friend he has unresolved feelings for. At work, a new colleague joins his dev team, and they connect really well. The story unfolds between these two relationships.
It’s a nerdy, introspective narrative about friendship, regret, and personal growth, packed with references to anime, gaming, and the things millennials grew up with.
Livia: Absolutely. The whole “write what you know” thing started as a convenience, but it became a core design choice. We poured in references we love—Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, that kind of thing. Some are subtle, but people who get it, get it. We also included lots of little things Brazilian millennials would recognize.
Wil: We wanted to be generous with him. If you’ve played the demo, you know he wasn’t great to Etsuko in the past. But he was young and emotionally unequipped. So we show him struggling to grow, not being perfect.
We also built that into the card mechanics—they reinforce how hard it is for him to connect. He carries the cultural pressure of being Taiwanese-Brazilian, with expectations around success, marriage, and reputation. That pressure plays a big role in the narrative.
Livia: He seems rational and serious, but he’s full of instinctive reactions. He often surprises himself—blurts something out he didn’t mean to say. He also has these weird dreams, which show another side of him.
Wil: Etsuko is the friend from the past—the one Wen ghosted years ago. Their route is very emotional, about rebuilding trust and asking, “Can you still love someone who hurt you?”
Cauã, on the other hand, is newer. Her route is more grounded in the present, with a dynamic of two tired adults trying to be honest with each other. It’s about comfort, boundaries, and open communication.
They’re polar opposites, but they each challenge Wen in different ways.
Lívia: We also wanted to show different relationship styles. One is more about history and vulnerability. The other is about negotiating boundaries and figuring out what works now.
Wil: Okay, so she keeps doing crazy stuff and Wen is there like ‘no, stop that’. This is the the surface dynamic they have but deeper down they are actually always there for one another. So Barbara’s always keeping an eye out for all of her friends, especially Wen.
She sends him a message at start of the game because she knows he’s isolated and she wants to help him reintegrate with other friends. She’s always trying to keep him close because she knows that if she does not do that, he will drift away and never come back.
Livia: I think their bond is pretty important to the story because nothing in the story would have happened if Barbara didn’t like reach out to Wen. She’s kind of the sparking incident and I think it’s really important to show that their bond of friendship is just as important as Wen’s possibly romantic interests.
Wil: Yes, it starts getting to the topic of non-monogamy because there are actually many kinds of non-monogamy and some kind state that it’s important to value all relationships we have and find a balance in all of them. And that is something we try to convey through Pivot of Hearts, especially in cases like Barbara being a good friend and supporting some key parts of the story. But then again, also through the card mechanics and other stuff we want to drive home this idea that we need many people in our lives to really have everything we need.
Wil: So ,the idea of using cars as a part of the game aesthetic first started with the game’s name itself. So, Pivot of Hearts, the word pivot has a certain meaning in non-monogamy, which is the person that has more than one relationship, so that person is like a pivot in that group of relationships.
And then we came up with the name Pivot of Hearts because it sounds like a card like King of Hearts or Jack of Spades. And we made some research we brainstormed some ideas. We had some inspirations from other games that are farther away from visual novels but still very narrative heavy games.
The way we tried to make that balance work was that there are two kinds of choices in the game. There are a few exceptions, but they’re basically two kinds of choices. They are the choices that give you points in a suit when you spend your free or work time doing one thing or another with a person.
That gives him these emotional points that he spends on hard decisions when one has to get out of his comfort zone to do something that he thinks is important. He has to spend the suit points he got so far and maybe he won’t have enough or the player will want to save those points so they can always choose to be lazy.
Wil: They can expect more dreams, they can expect actual RPG scenes, so there’s a few in the trailers and the teasers. Like this little moments of playing Smash Bros and playing Ragnarok, so lots of cool nerdy geeky moments. We really wanted to show these people they really like games.
Wen’s past will become much clearer. It’s very spread over the chapters but the pieces of what happened will arrive one by one. In fact, if I remember correctly, they are even out of order so it will be a little puzzle for the players to solve.
Wil: I hope you really like Pivot of Hearts, give it a try. If you’re not sure, play the demo. Just really hope that when you play you can get to understand the characters and get in their shoes and face this hard conversation that is non-monogamy, and take it seriously like don’t dismiss it.
Maki: For me, I’d say I hope you all like the soundtrack. I made it with a lot of care and I hope you have fun.
Livia: I hope people opened their hearts to the game and maybe learn a couple of new things about Brazil that maybe you haven’t heard of before. I think people will connect with the game and see all that’s familiar but also learn new things and open up to new ideas and stuff. Please wishlist, and play the game when it comes out.
As part of an exclusive reveal, DragonRoll Studio shared a screenshot featuring a massive, Godzilla-looking Queen Slime standing menacingling in the middle of São Paulo’s iconic Paulista Avenue.
You can download the demo here and follow the game’s development, as it’s soon to fully release on the 21st of May. Whether you’re here for the romance, the Tarot, the representation—or just to watch a sweet disaster of a man grow up—you’ll find something worth holding onto.
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