18 New Zealand teams recently showcased their games at PAX AUS! These great teams were a part of the CODE booth #1140. Companies such as CODE are providing the support and guidance to grow Aotearoa’s game development industry.
We had a great talk with Nate and Thomas from Fnife Games, about their title, Shelflife: Art School Detective. We talked about the various game aspects and real life inspirations for the games setting, the forming of Fnife Games and their recent experience at PAX!
Hi there team! Thanks for taking the time to speak to us, first off, it must be a busy time! How were you feeling in the lead-up to MIGW!? (Melbourne International Games Week)
Thomas: I would describe our pre-MIGW vibe as CONFIDENTLY STRESSED. I think there’s always a mix of imposter syndrome and quiet anticipation that comes from putting your work out into the world.
Nate: We definitely tried to pace ourselves, and had a plan to take it really easy ‘cause we’d committed to doing GCAP, PAX and SXSW Sydney afterwards! Whether that’s genius or foolish is yet to be determined, haha.
How are you feeling about your PAX showing? You’ve been to PAX before, is that right?
Nate: We were really happy to be returning to PAX, the devs, the attendees – the whole experience is so welcoming. It’s honestly a really heartwarming feeling to reconnect with folks we’d met before, and show everyone how far we’ve come since 2023.
Thomas: We were worried our demo was a biiiit lengthy but people were eating it up! Last year we had a much more stripped-back demo, so we were happy to bring something with a bit more oomph. We’re eternally grateful for the NZ Centre of Digital Excellence for supporting us to come over – they really help the Kiwi cohort achieve a high standard.
Please tell us about Fnife Games and your team’s journey in game development this far.
Thomas: “Fnife Games” spawned from a loose collective of creative collaborators! We’d originally teamed up to make music videos for NZ bedroom pop artist “Pickle Darling” (our lead composer) and around 2019 this developed into a curiosity about what it’d be like to make interactive works!
Nate: This ultimately led to the official founding of “Fnife Games” in 2022. With support from the New Zealand Film Commission and the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence we’ve journeyed into the world of indie game development with a focus on making fun narrative projects with queer themes.
Thomas: In 2023 our first project “Small Town Emo” won two awards at the NZ Games Festival, which was massive validation. ShelfLife: Art School Detective builds on everything we’ve learnt from our wild and spicy dev journey as Fnife.
Can you tell us about ShelfLife: Art School Detective and how the idea came about?
Nate: The short story is we both went to the same art school and really wanted to explore it as a setting because it’s SO WEIRD. Our project takes that organic weirdness and turns it up by one billion.
Thomas: We thought that a Detective Dating Sim would be a great excuse to spotlight a strong cast of LGBTQ+ characters and give them a silly, high-but-low stakes supernatural world to come alive in. The idea of “Art Murder”, “Art Killers” and “Art Psychics” all emerged from the feeling that when you’re at Art School, all that matters is ART!
We have quite a few elements, such as “mystery adventure”, “dating sim” and “visual novel”. Can you explain why you chose these elements?
Nate: There is a lot of innovation potential in hybrid genre games – mysteries, dating sims and visual novels are all often character-driven, there’s a lot of fun things you can play with.
Thomas: It basically boils down to – why can’t we date everyone in Ace Attorney!?
‘Entering’ art looks great and provides a great opportunity for doing all sorts! Can you give us details on designing these art worlds?
Thomas: We’ve been doing a lot of mixed-media work, making as much of this content as possible in “real life” and not just in front of a laptop. It’s been working really well, both as it creates limitations, and because it gives a kind of texture and presence that can sometimes get lost in the purely digital.
Nate: *Drum roll* Guest artists!!!! The secret to eclectic art is getting your friends involved! We have been collaborating with talented folks who work in a variety of mediums, so eventually each of the 7 “art-worlds” in our game will feel bespoke, and connected to whichever in-game character is their creator.
What was the inspiration behind the game’s setting, Cruston Academy?
Nate: The University of Canterbury we both attended has lots of iconic brutalist architecture that we wanted to pull from. Nearby there is (was) a building called “Antonio Hall”, which was a strange Christchurch mansion a lot of students filmed horror movies in! It’s now unfortunately been destroyed, but the merging of these locations birthed “Cruston Beaux-Arts Academy” – the heart of our game!
Can you explain the term “investi-date”?
Thomas: We thought it was a really fun pun that kind of sets players up with a strong idea about just how silly things are about to get. Investi-dating is sussing people out, it’s flirting, but with an agenda!
Did that wolf drawing just wink at me?
Thomas: YES! :^)
Can you explain what goes into various choices and managing these end results? It must get a little overwhelming!
Thomas: There’s a lot to consider, especially since we need to manage romance / social choices as well as narrative investigation discoveries! It’s part of the reason we leaned a bit more heavily into the humour for our PAX demo.
Nate: Without getting too deeply into it, we want to offer replay value and diverging paths without losing our MIIIIINDS… and the solution to that is: YarnSpinner (a game dev narrative tool). We actually met with the Yarn Team during MIGW and they are the nicest, coolest bunch ever. They’ve got a new tool coming out soon that folks should keep their eyes peeled for!
You also have another project, Small Town Emo, can you tell us about that? Are you developing simultaneously?
Thomas: Yeah! Small Town Emo is our story-driven GameBoy game! It’s about an emo teen in 2007 with a gay crush on his best friend, and there’s a 1.5 hour demo out on Steam and Itch.io, which essentially functions as a first episode. The second part of this will be coming out SOON™.
Nate: It’s been a really great way to work out our writing process, and build up a bit of an audience who will enjoy ShelfLife, too!
A lot of NZ development teams are popping up thanks to organisations like CODE really driving our industry forward, what are your thoughts on the NZ dev scene?
Thomas: The NZ Game Developer Community is incredibly generous, hard-working and open. I’m only a little bit biassed because I was on the committee for the Christchurch Game Developers Association, but there is something special about Game Dev in New Zealand. We’ve been offered generous support and feedback from established pros from day 1, before we’d even caught a sniff of making a game, really!
Nate: We’ve been helped by a variety of organisations, including NZ CODE, the NZ Film Commission, NZGDA, NZTE, Script to Screen and Te Puna Matarau to name a few. We’re proud that Aotearoa is a place where creative folks have opportunities to upskill even (or especially) if they are new to the screen or interactive industries!
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Is there anything else you’d like to add on how players can keep up with Fnife!?
Nate: Follow us on Twitter ((X, ew)) or Instagram, but for more regular updates join our Discord Server or Mailing list.
Thomas: Oh, and wishlist ShelfLife: Art School Detective on Steam – SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL!
