I first discovered Fnife Games when I was browsing a list of exhibitors to check out at PAX Australia 2023. I saw the title of their demo, Small Town Emo, and as a former mid-2000’s emo kid, my interest was immediately piqued – and the more I looked into the game, the more I fell in love with it.

I streamed the demo for Small Town Emo the very next day and, despite the short notice, the devs were able to say hi and stop by during the stream! I adored the game as much as I hoped I would, and getting to chat with the people who made it only made it all the more enjoyable.

I knew they would be showcasing the demo for their latest project, ShelfLife: Art School Detective, at PAX, so I kept that as a surprise for myself on convention day. After how much I loved Small Town Emo, I had high hopes for their newer title, but these hopes were effortlessly surpassed – even in these early stages of development.

I could rave about Fnife Games all day – about how unique and creative their ideas are, how flawlessly these ideas are executed in innovative, heartwarming, even moving ways, and how lovely the team were when I got to meet them in person – but who better to hear talk about these games than the people who made them?

Thomas and Nate kindly agreed to let me interview them about both Small Town Emo and ShelfLife: Art School Detective, as well as their experience showcasing the demos for their games at PAX Australia 2023. It was a pleasure getting to know them, and I can’t wait to play the full releases for both these games.

Fnife Games

Fnife Games are a small Ōtautahi-based indie videogame studio, focused on creating LGBTQIA+ narrative projects.

(fnifegames.com)

First things first, what are your favourite games?

Thomas: Chrono Trigger, Suikoden 2, Is It That Deep Bro?, Butterfly Soup – clearly my spectrum only covers old JRPGs and queer narrative games, which honestly is prolly quite evident in my work.

Nate: If I have to pick just a few, I’ll give you a range that have been the most influential to myself as an artist! 

• Rayman 3: Extremely strange narrative, amazing soundtrack and rewardingly difficult. Rayman 3 was given the permission to be weird and funny – something that I hope to achieve in my own art.
• Minecraft: Game of all time – honestly the creativity and community/collaborative aspects of this game are unmatched.
• Return of the Obra Dinn: Perfection: 10/10 game. Visually very interesting (1-bit aesthetic in 3D space), the puzzles are challenging but not impossible and the soundtrack… is EVERYTHING. Especially the musical cue when you solve something and the “Soldiers of the Sea”… it’s a privilege to play this game.
• Hylics: Both Hylics 1 & 2 have such a strong visual style. Mixed media, ever evolving, ever growing.

Basically: I love a distinct visual style and weird, unexpected or emergent story-telling. 

What inspired you to start up Fnife Games?

Thomas: Our friend group is essentially a chaotic bunch of queer artists. We wanted to collaborate together on something interactive, so we were drafting up ideas for a Dating / Fighting Game called “Romance Battle Adventure”’ which eventually turned into “ShelfLife” – a game about art school. 

Nate: I’d been working on comics for a wee while and really enjoyed the experience of being part of an online webcomic community. The immediacy and interactive element of creating a webcomic made me want to try branch out into game development. I’d recently met Thomas and we found that we both preferred collaborating to working solo (brainstorming is a joy).

Thomas: Around the same time (2017/18) we saw that the New Zealand Film Commission were offering support for teams who wanted to make narrative projects, so we pitched our idea to them and were lucky enough to get their support! Fnife Games was our attempt to organise some of our chaos, I guess. Most of us still work day jobs outside of the arts, so structure tends to be really important for us.

As you know, I’m a huge fan of Small Town Emo – the concept is so creative and unique, and you can feel how much heart was put into the game. How did you come up with the ideas behind it?

Thomas: As a new team that was still kind of inexperienced(ish) we were looking for ideas for a side project that would be short and tightly scoped. We stumbled across GB Studio, and (being big GameBoy stans) we knew we wanted to make a GameBoy title. 

Wanting to revisit the mid 2000’s emo glory days felt really natural when making something for the GameBoy – it’s already a bit ~out of time~ so nostalgia was totally on the cards. I think the other reason we wanted to *go there* was that the emo subculture provided a safe space for a lot of gender diverse and queer kids growing up at that time, me included.

Totally outside of all that, I read a lot of YA books ‘n’ Fanfiction (cuz I have bad taste) and really wanted to channel that into something tropey and cheesy. Someone described it as being a bit like “The Goonies” meets “Heartstopper” which, well, we love.

In a small indie team, you have to wear many hats to cover all the bases of game development – what does your team’s creative process look like?

Thomas: We try to treat things like it’s an improv class at a community theatre – lots of “yes, AND…”

Nate: It’s a kind of “sky’s the limit” style brainstorm / braindump of all the ideas, thoughts, feelings, themes that we’re interested in. After we’ve got the idea, we focus on characters, story, key-locations, and start prototyping. It’s good to make something tangible as soon as possible so you can get people to playtest it. You save a lotta time, effort and tears by getting real human eyes on your mess ASAP.

Thomas: For indie teams with part-timers it’s super valuable to have people with skills across multiple disciplines. We tend to take turns being creators, editors and critics. We’re using more and more “AGILE” processes now because (who would guess) being more organised helps you be more productive and creative – especially if you have many fingers in many pies. For teams starting out (even solo devs) we’d recommend using an app like CoDecks, Trello, or ClickUp.

Your latest release is the demo for “ShelfLife: Art School Detective”, which you showcased at PAX Australia 2023. Can you tell me one thing you’re most proud of with this game, so far?

Nate: I don’t know if I’ve fully processed how much we got done in the lead up to PAX. I’m incredibly proud of our efforts and especially proud of Thomas who’s worked so hard (since he’s the only one of us who is close to full-time) and achieved so much. This whole thing seemed impossible, but it happened. It provided the desperately needed enrichment in my environment.

Thomas: I’m so proud of our team for MAKING THE DARN THING. We spawned this demo out of the boring corpse of another, broken, worse demo, in 2 months. It was a total overhaul of art, characters, narrative and mechanics. I think selfishly what I like best about it is the look – I’m so happy with the 2D/3D mix – with HD cartoon graphics, low-poly 3D AND pixel art. I’m glad I was able to stop being a control freak for a second and trust our character artist Hessel that we were going in a good direction.

How was your experience running a booth at PAX Australia 2023?

Nate: Bodily tiring but emotionally/spiritually rewarding. I’ve never experienced people playing a game I’ve made in this way before. My heart grew 1000x when I heard people say that they felt seen and represented by what we’d made. I’m eternally grateful to those that took the time to play the whole demo – even though the claustrophobic nature of being at a convention can make it harder to engage with games. Apart from having people play our demo, my favourite thing was just getting to talk to a lot of creative and queer people.

Thomas: PAX was incredible, tiring, rewarding, surprising? We were really pleased to have so many open-minded folks come by to check out our game, and LOADS of LGBTQ+ folks and allies who were picking up exactly what we were putting down. We got told our poster was giving off “mega gay” vibes (a bit of a beacon I guess). I felt like I got at least 60,000 EXP points for doing it and now I can spec into a bunch of new talents in my skill tree (talents like knowing how to survive off muesli bars and 7-Eleven onigiri).

Do you have an estimated release date for Small Town Emo or ShelfLife: Art School Detective?

Thomas: Alright. I’m gonna say it. Small Town Emo is gonna be Feb/March 2024. Because I want to put it in Steam Next Fest and also because I got Jury Duty at the end of this year, which ruined all my plans. And ALSO because I want it to be beautiful and perfect (no pressure).

ShelfLife: Art School Detective is a bit harder to call, but we’re angling for 2025. We’d love to do some tie-ins for Pride month, but obviously we’ll have to reassess the exact release based on whether or not some beautiful business divas want to throw money at us to finish it in a timely manner (I joke, kind of).

What is your next top priority goal for Fnife Games?

Thomas: Well, the days start coming, and they don’t stop coming, and they don’t stop coming–andtheydontstopcoming! I want us to be sustainable and consistent, and full-time, I guess. Small Town Emo will obviously be the next Fortnite, and ShelfLife: Art School Detective will be the next Roblox / Minecraft. Ha. But genuinely I guess my priorities are: 1. Fnife should make great queer experiences and 2. Fnife should pay for my student loan.

Nate: Really the top priority is to turn this ““hobby”” into a proper career for us both. From there we want to be able to create things and collaborate with friends, because that is the most fun and rewarding way to live.

We have so many ideas of what we’d want to do next – we love trying out new mediums and styles that are inspired by games and other media we love. I would really like to make a First-Person thriller/horror game next, but I also grew up mostly playing educational games so I’d love to make something as a homage to those.

Do you have any other news / gossip / fun facts you’d like to share?

Thomas: Here’s a fun fact: we’re friends with a bunch of very cool devs (and I love them all equally but can’t list them all) so in no particular order of favouritism please check out: 

Drăculești (gay dracula sim) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2537980/Drculeti/, 

Toroa (lovely birbs) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2003490/Toroa/ and 

Denari (cute hot action adventure) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1589820/Denari/

Up to Par (rogue-lite minigolf) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384660/Up_to_Par/

And a fun piece of GOSSIP I have is how much I love Told Slant (bedroom punk non-binary fronted band) https://toldslant.bandcamp.com/album/point-the-flashlight-and-walk. I can’t understate how good “Point The Flashlight and Walk” is, I listen to this SO MUCH while I am doing dev.

Nate: No news, no news, but thank you, plz check out our demos, like & subscribe xoxo ❤ !!!

Final Thoughts

A huge thank you to Thomas and Nate for taking the time to chat with me and share the love for Small Town Emo and ShelfLife: Art School Detective. I love the demos for both their games, and if any of this has caught your attention, I highly recommend checking them out yourself, and wishlisting these titles on Steam.

You can also follow the team on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, and check out their website for more info. I’ll absolutely be keeping an eye on the progress of these two games, and anything else Fnife Games make in the future!

Thank You

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