Postmortem: Minion(s): the Despicable

This postmortem contains spoilers. Please play the game before reading.

What a long journey this game was. The most complex RPG Maker game I have built so far (largely from the sheer number of character creation options, what a terrible idea that was). I already gave a semi-postmortem in the Extra Credits file in the download, but I'd like to use this to shed a little more light on the development process of this monster of a game.

Unused version of the Nursib with a red cross instead of a yellow one (hopefully you can imagine why the change was necessary).

Artwork was, as per usual, the thing I wanted done first. I drew up the Minion character select drawings in just a few days in October 2022, which is astounding to me as I hadn't drawn (especially that quickly) very often before. They were crude, sure, but that was the idea. Before the art of course was the concept: a White Wolf parody... with Minions. The Minions were thanks to BrightsideofDarkness, which was a genius move. Minions were this squeaky clean image of children's entertainment, and White Wolf were an edgy game for adults and teens that full of controversies. Despicable Me 1 came out just 2 years before White Wolf were to stop all ttrpg publishing, signaling a death in the unique (if flawed) teen/adult art and the rise in child-friendly corporate shlock that passes for entertainment (note: BrightsideofDarkness doesn't have such negative feelings about Minions, so this was absolutely unintentional on their part. All me babyyyy). 

Old Uggo art without the nose. I was told to add it by BrightsideofDarkness.

It was a fairly quick and easy creation process to get the Minion Types down. I knew how a lot of White Wolf games treated character archetypes, so I exaggerated some of my favorite (and least favorite) and applied them to Minions for comedic effect. I never preplanned all of their routes, only a few actually had anything in mind before going in. Bookaa and Napoleon's Men paths were decided early to play up the classic "brains vs brawn" trope, Pharrell's was obvious from the start, Fakiebak Mom's plot was pretty much concepted in my head the instant I came up with it, etc. Most of the Minion Type routes were spur of the moment. "Wouldn't it be funny if the Furz did drugs?" was the thought process that went through my mind with RPG Maker open. Oh, and the addition of Rabbids was BrightsideofDarkness' idea, though it was mine to make them the "bad end" of Minions. Their embrace of chaos and similar use of slapstick humor played well with the Minions' style of accidental constant failure, so the idea of a Minion becoming a Rabbid by ignoring work was a comically dystopian idea to put in the game.

The TTRPG was an idea that was very spur of the moment. "LOL What if there was a TTRPG like a White Wolf game?" It made sense, more sense than an RPG Maker game since the very concept was poking fun at a TTRPG company. That said, it wasn't until December 2022 (almost 3 months later, about halfway through development of the video game) that I began work on it. The development of it was fairly simple and took the least amount of effort; just adapt old White Wolf ideas and concepts into Minion stuff. Easy. It was mostly based off of Vampire: the Masquerade 2e and Revised editions, but I absolutely got some ideas from Mage: the Ascension 1e & 20th anniversary edition. 

Unused "Diploma" to signal you were "converted" to Minion: the Despicable. Based off an old White Wolf publicity stunt where you could trade in your D&D book for Exalted and get a similar diploma. I'm not making this up, that is a real thing they did.

The symbolism of Minions: the Despicable was perhaps the funniest part of the development process because it was all accidental. The idea that all meat made you insane so you had to eat veggies and fruits? Sure, I like to think of it as a metaphor promoting veganism. During the development, however, what "Bacon" was changed frequently. First it was cop mean (where the name comes from, not the bacon meme), then it was human meat, then it was just all meat to hammer home that Minions love to eat bananas and don't like anything else. Purely accidental but a message I love. The apocalypse becoming a metaphor for global warming was, too, somewhat accidental. White Wolf games tended to have apocalypses in them for metaplot so I added one with the joke being that nobody knows what it even was or why it was a thing. But when i decided to end the game with it I had been reading a lot of global warming science and boy howdy that was depressing. I kept thinking "eventually, when it all comes tumbling down, what will the last humans on earth think?" and that's how I treated the Lemegeton (latin for "small," which could refer to Minions or the fact I got the word from the Lesser Keys of Solomon. Another happy accident). The "end of the world" for Minions looked a lot like global warming did to me, so it ended up being the way it did. What wasn't an accident was the "Wacky-Service." The whole joke of the concept was, to me, that you had to spend the entire game at the whim of some asshole you weren't smart enough to understand (this concept was absolutely a parody of Exalted's Sidereals, which are very much the same thing). The dystopic idea that you went insane if you didn't work, and that submission to your boss was the only way to stay alive was the crux of the point of Wacky-Service: you either lived unhappy, or died alone. The edgy subversion of work was inspired by Marx (duh! the Gotha Programme reference not give it away?) but also White Wolf games. Many of their games like Vampire, Mage, Exalted, etc. involve being forced to do something by a shitty boss that you wanted to get rid of, so it was a perfect match to include as an element of Minions. 

Unfinished art by BrightsideofDarkness for the TTRPG. Nintendo hire BrightsideofDarkness. The art came slow but when it hit... it hit HARD.

I guess I shouldn't forget the music. That was by far the most fun I had during the development of Minions: the Despicable. I knew early on I wanted to make MIDIs of obscure and popular 70s rock (Spooky Tooth and Lynyrd Skynyrd were my first choices). While that was my go-to for a lot of the music, I knew I wanted to use some of my own, and gosh the MIDIs I made for this game... the fight scene and the Servitor town music are some of my best MIDIs. I was tempted to use a lot of System of a Down because of their comedic/political lyrics but I opted not to. It would have been too on the nose for a game this silly.

Blood Wolf Games is the best thing to come out of this. I love White Wolf games enough to keep talking about them forever, and so making a fake White Wolf to make my parodies with was fun. I expect to make more if I am able. If you'd like to keep up with Blood Wolf shenanigans, they have a twitter here.

Thank you for reading, playing, and stuff. I hope you enjoy the video game and good luck running the TTRPG, by design it was made to be difficult to play. I initially dreaded this project; I don't like the Minions franchise after all. In the end, while I can't stand Minions anymore, I am glad I put this game together.