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The Game Bakers on creating a love story with Haven, and the challenge of not being cheesy
Haven is making its way to Switch next year, and it's certainly looking like a breath of fresh air for the industry. While it has some traditional gameplay mechanics, the focus of the game is a couple in love. In an interview with GamesIndustry, The Game Bakers co-founder Audrey Leprince talks about why the dev team is taking on this unique approach, and how tough it can be to present the idea of love in games.
"Emeric [Thoa], the creative director, and myself wanted to do a love story for a very long time. We had just done Furi. It was a challenging, hardcore, skill-based game. Very intense. And we wanted to change things completely. To go for the opposite, which is relaxing, feel-good, going to bring a smile on your face. We wanted to make something that wasn't already being done everywhere in the industry. And there are actually not that many love stories in games.
There are a lot [of games] about dating, and some stories where you actually love someone but they've been killed and you have to avenge them, or you have to save the princess. That's about the range of the love stories. So we decided to do a love story about an established couple. They're already in love, and they're going to have a happy, healthy relationship. It's not going to be horrible and terrible and dark, and they're [not] going to have to survive or die of starvation. No, it's going to be okay.
...The challenge is to find the fine line between too cheesy and not touching enough. It's a very fine line, even with the character design and how they speak to each other. You can't be too cheesy. But you can't be too cold or too sarcastic. It doesn't work. We have a really great writer, and I think he managed to hit that line."