A Minor God with Major Feelings — Inside of “To Grant a Wish”
In this highlight Q&A, creator Cami Arnold-Carriedo dives into To Grant a Wish—a story where you play Zephyr, a minor deity of the Breeze who must grant a wish to repay a life-giving offering. A fading god, a meaningful offering, and the people who turn duty into connection.
Otome Games Podcast covers choose-your-companion options (Bells is always non-binary, with masc/fem presentation; Leo/Callan or Sam/Lorelei at start), the D&D-born charm of Bells & Chimes, the older-sibling-turned-caretaker arc with Leo/Sam & Oscar, and the slow-burn push-pull of Callan/Lorelei. Cami also breaks down symbolic offerings, plus EXCLUSIVE notes on a free DLC with extra endings, and a CG art-style choice for visual consistency.
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Highlights from To Grant a Wish Podcast
Cami: I’m Cami. I love visual novels, D &D, and I have a love-hate relationship with writing. To Grant a Wish came in the middle of the night, funnily enough. I’d been reading a lot of Percy Jackson at the time, I think, and thinking about gods and this idea of kind gods being very human at their core. But kind of having like really different perspectives and experiences because of the nature of kind of a really long lifespan and the nature of being a god.
And I remember I was like lying in bed with my thoughts kind of ping ponging around as they do whenever I’m trying to go to sleep. And the idea just kind of came to me and almost like the entire first chapter. And I just like shot up and went to my phone notes and started typing it all up. and then went to sleep straight afterwards.
Cami: So in To Grant a Wish you play as Zephyr, you can change the name, they’re a minor deity of the Breeze who’s been out of touch with society for quite a while because they’ve been fading away due to a lack of offerings. And then one day they get given an offering by one of the currently free routes. And it’s about trying to grant a wish to the person who’s left you this offering, to repay this gift of energy and time that you’ve been given and the story and struggles that kind of arise from that.
Cami: This is quite funny because I was watching somebody play the game the other day and when it first came up with the two choices for Belle’s they thought they were choosing the player character and I was like oops I’ve not explained this properly and that’s something I’m gonna have to fix a little bit later. So yeah I wanted people to be able to choose kind of like how the love interests present whether it’s kind of like more masculine more feminine. Belle’s is always non-binary but they can still look kind of. more masculine or feminine presenting. And then with Leo and Sam and Callan and Lorelei, you choose kind of either the masculine Leo and Callan or the feminine Sam and Lorelei at the very beginning of the game so that you can kind of choose who you would like to date.
Cami: So, Belle’s is the route that has kind of one of the funniest origins, I think, because Belle’s and Chimes started as a D &D character. Belle’s was a bard. Because I’d given Bells the urchin background, it comes with a pet rat in game in fifth edition. And that pet rat became Chimes the Mouse. And I was kind of thinking about the relationship between Chimes and Bells. And in the game, I’d have Bells talk to Chimes all the time with the the speak with animals spell because they were like quite lonely and looking for a connection.
I had quite a bit of fun with the idea of chimes, like not really understanding a lot of what Bells is talking about in terms of like money or fashion because chimes is a mouse. And it slowly kind of became the dynamic you see in the game with kind of like this funny, fussy and like sassy mouse who firmly believes he’s the one taking care of Bells who’s got all these foolish concerns … And I think that just leads to a really fun little thing, especially because I think as the player character is a god, they also sometimes don’t understand these kind of more human values, so then you’ve got kind of Chimes and the god as the medium and then Bells.
Cami: Then this shift to a dynamic that’s a lot more like caretaker of having to look after someone, of having to be the responsible one and kind of the friction and upset that that can cause. Because, and I think it’s something that a lot of kind of older siblings, where there is this kind of larger age gap, can have to deal with in real life. But for Leo and Sam, it’s something that’s somewhat new. to them for reasons that you find out in the story and I think it’s quite hard for both them and Oscar to navigate this new dynamic to their relationship and then you add in kind of the upset that comes from money problems and stress from being kind of a single caretaker but I wanted the core of their relationship to always be like love from both of them and I never wanted it to be like in doubt that they kind of loved each other but it’s just kind of about how about like trying to keep things kind of peaceful with all this kind of grief and stress and changing dynamic and how that was always going to cause like a lot of problems Especially because Oscar is a kid who doesn’t understand why things have changed as much as they have.
Cami: Callen and Loralei were quite hard for me to write at first because I wanted to strike this balance of like a character that warms to the player quite slowly because they’re very like self-reliant and they want to kind of handle things on their own.
Cami: Each route I wanted to kind of have its own, its own kind of like smaller themes and things, but I think a really big one that ended up kind of working its way through all the routes was kind of like found family. I’ve always loved kind of found family stories myself.
And I think kind of in my game, it ended up being quite kind of like, You know, really like choosing the people that you surround yourself with and kind of rely on and having like this support system and I guess kind of like the connection between people and I think, you know, for the player character to even kind of from the beginning of the game to grant the wish for each of these people it ends up being that the player character has to get to know the person that they’re trying to grant the wish for.
And this is kind of the case for all of the roots where it’s kind of like I need to understand them so that I can grant this wish properly and kind of build this connection. yeah, I think this idea of the connections we make and how this can grant us meaning and purpose is something I really want. kind of to come through in my writing.
Cami: So for this I wanted the offerings to be something that was both kind of like very meaningful and show you something about the characters because I didn’t want it to be kind of just like a small gold coin on the shrine I wanted because this is something that’s kind of very meaningful both to the player character and it’s something important to each of the characters that have given this object up and I wanted it to have that kind of importance and be… and just like a little hint almost about the character that’s given it to you whether that’s kind of like, a shark pirate toy to show you kind of like Oscar’s playful kind of nature and… maybe some little fun hints of what’s to come and then you can kind of like learn in the routes about why these items are so important to the characters that gave them up and maybe even why they chose to give them up.
Cami: I’m non-binary myself. So that’s a huge part of it. And I always get like genuinely quite excited when a game allows me kind of the choice, to be non-binary or to have kind of a more neutral title. Whether it’s kind of Lord Lady Leige, that kind of like choice. And so it was always like quite important to me. that I wanted to give players the choice going in, players the choice of who they wanted, what gender they wanted to pursue, what they wanted to be as a deity, that kind of stuff. And even kind of with small choices, because I don’t necessarily tend to like when games kind of have choices like I want chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream and then that has an impact. kind of on the relationship or the points because my thought is always kind of like why does that affect how the character feels about my character over what dessert I’ve picked or something so I tried to leave a lot of choices like that up to just what the player prefers and I remember receiving like a comment about it thanking me for like making it an option to not drink alcohol Which surprised me at the time because it was something I hadn’t thought too much about but just seeing that comment like really reaffirmed for me like that this kind of like matters to people.
Exclusive content: To Grant a Wish
Before you go, here’s what’s brewing behind the scenes: a free DLC with extra endings for To Grant A Wish (including side-character surprises) and one side character getting a full route; the enigmatic “C” is already in progress with fresh side-routes; a player-friendly CG art-style choice where both artists redraw the routes they didn’t do so you can pick a consistent look; and a closer look at that painted shard of glass. Platform update: Android is in the works, while iOS and consoles are under exploration.
Cami: There’s gonna be a To Grant a Wish DLC that’s free to everybody that’s bought the game that’s gonna include some extra endings, things that I’d wanted initially but didn’t want to allow Scopecreep to delay the game any further. So a few jokey endings, a few side character endings I think I showed you. Some teaser art of a side character that’s going to be getting an ending in the DLC that I think should be very, very fun. One of the side characters is going to be getting kind of a full route with a main character playing a supporting role in that.For any DLC that would be paid that would be entirely new characters, new story, like kind of right from kind of the beginning like new offering, new character, new tale to tell you know.
Cami: This is a little look to show that I have started work on the new endings in the DLC and the new little side character routes that I think people are going to really enjoy. think C should be a very, very fun one. Especially once you’ve kind of finished the game and you find out a little bit more about C. I hope people are quite looking forward to.
With the DLC, one thing I am really wanting to, one thing I’m working on adding and I’ve already kind of got started with some of the CG kind of like redraws and stuff .
In To Grant a Wish, there’s two different CG art styles between the routes. So Bells’s route has one CG artist and then Leo Sam and Laura Lake Ellen has a different CG artist and I know that that that can be a little bit jarring so I’ve kind of already started work on commissioning that both artists are essentially going to redraw the CG’s for the routes they didn’t do the CG’s for so that you should be able to choose in the DLC whether you want the CG artist that did Belzer’s route or the CG artist that did Leo Salmon, Callan, Lorelai’s route.
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