“Part-Time Hero” – When Sparkly Transformations Don’t Cover the Rent | popgeeks.com
Throughout the run of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, Tsukino Usagi faced off against many malevolent forces. She faced off against Queen Beryl and her generals, ended the show of the Dead Moon Circus, and defeated the vain nightmare maker Nehelenia not once but twice. But how would Sailor Moon fare if she had to face off against a villain so nefarious, so unforgiving, that it made Mistress 9 look like a saint in comparison?
That villain, of course, is late-stage capitalism.
Magical Girls and Daily Life Challenges
Fighting evil by moonlight, paying bills by daylight – this is the dichotomy Magical Pink finds herself caught up in the upcoming deck-building game Part-Time Hero: I’m Broke but I Have to Save the World!, which fuses roguelike deck-building games like Slay the Spire with life simulators like the Princess Maker series.
“Initially we were looking to create a game following the style of a Princess Maker-type game, where you help a character grow and evolve based on the actions they take over the course of the game,” said Part-Time Hero lead engineer Steven McGregor. “As we developed it out further, a deckbuilder felt like a natural fit for that premise; as you improve your deck you can see how Pink changes to match her situations.”
Game director and project lead Aevee Bee agreed. “Princess Maker is a very big inspiration we don’t get to talk about much. This kind of life-sim/character raising game was very influential, but there are very few games like it. Our final concept is quite a bit different, of course, but it started from the idea of how to make that game feel more engaging and fun. A lot of this genre of game involves building stats whose utility is quite opaque, and playing for a very long time to figure out what a perfect run of the game might be. Since that process is so similar to a roguelike deck-builder, we used it as a starting point.”
Gameplay Rooted in Real-Life Experiences
The concept is one that’s all too familiar to anyone in their mid-twenties. Pink’s passion is fighting evil as the magical girl hero Magical Pink, but passion isn’t paying the bills yet. So just like countless actors, artists, and even yours truly, Pink picks up a day job to make the rent. Players engage in both Pink’s civilian and magical girl forms, building decks to play out her day-to-day battles and her nighttime fights.
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Bee believes players will find the transition between the two parts of gameplay to be smooth and seamless. “The battle section was initially pitched as more of a turn-based RPG, but as roguelike deck-builders have been traditionally much like a turn-based RPG but with cards, it started to feel more strange that the battle wasn’t using cards. Our biggest fear was that players would struggle with switching between the two decks, but because both phases share the same basic rules and the most important resource – energy – is conserved between phases, it becomes very natural to shift between the game’s two phases.”
Magical Pink isn’t the only hero in the big city, however, as she’s joined by the cool, calm, and collected social media magical girl Icy Blue and local shopkeeper Witchy Green, a rare appearance of a magical boy (with the exception of the absolute fever dream that is Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!). When asked about Green, Bee stated that one of the goals was to showcase personalities that fell outside the traditional tropes of the magical girl genre. “One priority we had was coming up with heroes that would contrast with Pink, yet also be like her in how they don’t fit the traditional expectations for being a Magical Girl… They’re allowed to struggle and have serious flaws and not be perfect people.”
If it sounds like a tenet from a self-help book, that’s not too far off the mark. Though deck-builders like Slay the Spire, Balatro, and Inscryption provided some inspiration, McGregor said a lot more came from outside the world of video games. “The system used to actually play a card treats energy as ‘mental energy,’” he explained, “like the idea of having enough ‘spoons’ to do an activity. So a significant part of the game’s systems are inspired from things outside of video games.”
But adulting isn’t the only villain found in Part-Time Hero, as Pink will be clashing with the CEO of a prominent Villain Capital firm by the name of Desdemona Catastrophe, actor and model and self-titled “Wrathful Rose,” Romeo Lucifer, and master manipulator and gossip blogger Alex Perniciosa. Bee stated that “Desdemona Catastrophe was my favorite name to come up with, but I think Romeo Lucifer is the most fun to write. There’s no limit to how ridiculously he acts and Pink is a great straight man for his antics.
Kickstarter and Community Involvement
The team at Future Club have a clear passion for their project as well as the magical girl genre as a whole, but just like Sailor Moon needed her fellow senshi, Part-Time Hero needs assistance as well, which is why they have launched a Kickstarter which is currently running until April 12. “It’s extremely hard to get an original project off the ground, and especially one that values original art and animation like we do,” said McGregor. Both he and Bee also cited community involvement as a top priority. “We feel that a deckbuilder like this needs a lot of community feedback and involvement to really sing,” said Bee. “This was one way of us getting directly involved with players so we can tune this game into something truly special.
Whether it’s a monster of the week, office culture, or keeping the lights on, the clash between dreams and reality lies at the heart of Part-Time Hero, and that theme resonates with the Future Club team, and they hope it resonates with players as well. “That emphasis on personal life is much stronger in Magical Girls,” Bee stated when discussing the genre, citing not only Sailor Moon but also Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Madoka Magica as examples. “There’s this idea that the emotions and feelings that drive you are part of the balance of the universe itself.”
In a world that has embraced the “side hustle” culture, Pink’s determination to be a magical girl should be able to hit home for anybody who understands what it’s like to do whatever is necessary to realize that dream. Until then, word on the street is that she makes a pretty top-notch cappuccino.
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For more information on Part-Time Hero: I’m Broke But I Have to Save the World!, check out their Kickstarter campaign.
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