Behind the Scenes: The Interim Domain Notes

With The Interim Domain coming to a close, we felt it was time to throw out some facts and revelations about the project and its development.

Before The Interim Domain, there was Peach County

As a follow-up to Now & Then, we wanted to do something with a larger cast. Maybe a more slice-of-life story. So, we started work on Peach County, about a guy sent off to college in another town. We got as far as a rough alpha (see the screenshots below) before dumping this idea. Frankly, the game was boring as fuck to write and I didn't want to wait for six updates to be done to start getting to something interesting.

So, we scrapped the main concept, kept the characters and many of the storylines, and merged it with a plot treatment I'd worked on about a decade ago jokingly called "The Non-Denominational Endtimes". Working the two concepts together, a number of things got dropped or majorly altered for the final product.

• Marisa was a college student

• Allison was your aunt and you lived with her

• Kara, Mina, Saaya, and Chira were all going to be background characters with no story of their own

• Selene was brought in from the plot treatment and was a nihilist who only wanted the world to be nothing at all

There is a semi-working build of the first six in-game days that will never see the light of day.

Last Second Name Change

Just as we were about to release 0.01.0, we decided to change the name from The Interim Dominion to The Interim Domain. It just felt a little less wordy. Sometimes phrases don't roll off the tongue right. This was one of those.

Some scenes were locked in from day one

As usually happens when you're working on a story, things change as the story flow alters and you see that certain elements just don't work out anymore (as we've mentioned in this very article). Some moments were so essential to certain characters that everything leading up to them had to be built to feed into those scenes.

• Rescuing Robin from her father

• Marisa learning about Walt

• All the stuff with Tina in the girls locker room

Other ideas were changed radically

Yeah, some things just don't work out the way you want. And some threads weren't worth following.

• There was an option where Sammy and Bud ended up together. This felt too much like a bad ending for her.

• A lot of theological debate intended in the original plot treatment wasn't appropriate for a VN.

• Content at the Men's Club in Anita's story could've been a lot darker, but we figured implying it was for the best.

A lot of Sammy's story was written "ad-libbed"

With so many characters to work on at any given time (and man were there months where the writing/rendering load was taking us to task), there might have been a few days where we were struggling to come up with inspiration. We knew that Sammy's story would be about her and Bud and the expectations from their parents. But, some of the day-to-day moments needed to be brainstormed at the last second, more so than any other character. In the end, I think we did well to give her a solid and complete arc that went to locations most of the others avoided.

Apollyon wasn't originally in the cards

Of course, we had to fill the Interim with weird characters and each of the Archons needed their Entede handler. So, wanting to make use of the Invisible Body mods and taking inspiration from flame-headed characters (Ifrit, Candlejack, Candlemaker), we gave Edd someone to work with. Of course, being able to see Apollyon without the mod led to a conversation about "human forms" and her character and role quickly changed, because how you gonna keep that under wraps, am I right?

Combo scenes gave us a way to include unlockable scenes and threesomes

A part of intended design for the middle portion of the game was having Michael link characters to others, so that we could have more crossover between the stories. To implement this, we added combo scenes to the rotation, first opting for moments where two girls might hang out together as friends.

Thanks for your support and interest,
-Kinderfeld