Alt Title — Conclave: A Totally Celibate Dating Simulator

What if no one wants to have a prayer session with you?

Welcome, dear brother cardinal, to the conclave! Conclave: A Prayer Simulator is a visual novel/dating sim in which you play as a Catholic cardinal with the goal of becoming the next Pope of the Catholic Church. In your search for the necessary votes to achieve the Papacy you’ll meet the other cardinals sequestered with you in the papal conclave. Have conversations, debate, gain and share perspectives on spirituality, and ultimately sway the other cardinals into voting for you! And who knows – maybe you’ll get a chance to have a prayer session with a few of them along the way…

Play the game in your browser here on itch.io! This game was developed in Ren’Py with absolutely no AI used in code, writing dialogue, or asset creation.

Note: This version of the game only contains up to “Day 1” of what would (given more time) be up to 5 days worth of scenes with more romanceable characters. This is an MVP of what the game could be with the resources and time allotted.

Overview

Conclave: A Prayer Simulator, while being on its face a game about earning the Papacy through diplomacy with your fellow cardinals, explores more than just allowing the player to experience the conclave. Through explicit design decisions made in response to playtesting over the course of the last three weeks, Conclave attempts to tackle a handful of different themes by way of interactions with the characters:

• Spirituality. One of the main empathetic goals of Conclave is to allow people to experience and understand firsthand why and how people engage with spirituality. What experiences in one’s life lead them to believe in the things they believe?

• Vulnerability. Sharing and listening to experiences regarding spirituality often have a high opportunity cost in real life. Being vulnerable and exploring your own spirituality while helping others work through theirs in a virtual setting allows players to explore these emotions in a safe environment.

• Intimacy. Of course, due to Conclave’s dating sim mechanics, intimacy is ever-present throughout the game. Although generally regarded with a wink and a nod and never explicit, the vulnerability to share spiritual perspectives in Conclave goes hand in hand with the vulnerability to become intimate with other characters. This, naturally, is the ultimate goal for most players, but is inaccessible without engaging with the previous two themes. In other words, if you don’t bother to engage with a character’s perspective, there is no chance in hell (heaven?) they’ll have a prayer session with you.

I wanted to communicate these themes in a way that felt very personal despite the very tongue-and-cheek humor, which is why I chose to place the player inside the shoes of one of the cardinals within the conclave, enacting his story. The immersion of being in the point of view of the person making choices, changing relationships, and moving the story in one direction or another aims to amplify the strength and ease of communication of these themes.

Medium and Target Audience

As a visual novel in Ren’Py, certain design elements were available to me that were easier or harder to implement than my peers working in Twine or Unity. Since Ren’Py is pretty intuitive and customizable, the moment I downloaded the software I was able to get started on writing dialogue directly in the game and get instant feedback by launching it ever so often. Although I encountered a couple issues with state tracking because OOP is a little awkward in Ren’Py, once I figured out how to set and modify relationships between the player and other characters based on decisions made throughout the story, the rest was fairly straightforward – photos are easy to add to the game, audio integrates smoothly, and (most importantly) choices with complex paths and state checking through the journal (Fig.1) are much easier to implement than on platforms like Twine.

Although for a majority of Conclave’s development I wasn’t able to fully engage with the character visuals aspect of the medium, a guardian angel (my partner), who is incredibly talented and knowledgeable about the medium of visual novels and dating simulators, helped me find a solution. They scoured through itch.io and Picrew looking for templates with older men we could turn into cardinals. Although it was hard to find, through great perseverance they were able to find the only Picrew template on the entire website for generating priests. From here, with some edits, they created the sprites that now dialogue and interact with the player (Fig. 2). Credit to all in itch.io page!

My choice of medium was also motivated by my target audience, which is people who are interested in dating simulators – in particular, those who enjoy queer dating simulators with men dating men. I fully leaned into the campier dating sim style for Conclave, so using Ren’Py just made sense as its interface is incredibly intuitive and familiar to people in this audience. Although there is a bit of a learning curve for those unfamiliar with the organizational structure of the Catholic Church, the fundamentals are explained through dialogue and a deep theological understanding of the Catholic interpretation of the Bible is by no means necessary to enjoy the game. In fact, a majority of my playtesters had no prior knowledge whatsoever on Catholicism and a slight understanding of the papal conclave and still provided positive feedback.

Iteration History

Version 1 – The Paper Prototype

Playtesters 1, 2, & 3: Target demographic (avid visual novel/dating sim enjoyers)

The first playtest of Conclave was a kind of in-person RPG, similar to those we played in class. I read the explanation of the premise, choices, goals, and motivations of the characters with my playtesters. We then went through some practice scenarios and actions for playtesters to explore. Main feedback for this version of the game was:

• Not everyone understands the system of the conclave.
• The mystery surrounding the Pope’s passing takes away from the relationship focus of the game.
• It wasn’t clear how often and in what capacity you could interact with other characters.
• Make sure the cardinals can be mean while speaking kind.
• What purpose does an explicit antagonist serve in a game like this?

In response to these notes, I did the following:

• Lengthened the introduction, giving more context to why the conclave is being held and what that means for your character.
• Removed the mystery element entirely.
• Adopted a Monster Prom-esque time-management system in which players have a list of places they can visit on each day, but cannot visit the same location twice in one day.
• Adapted the tone to make the cardinals’ speech slightly more subtle.
• Removed an explicit antagonist. Couldn’t think of a good way to include an antagonist while maintaining the empathetic goal through the Perspective system.

Version 2 – The Updated Paper Prototype

Playtesters 4 & 5: Target demographic (4: understands dating sim tropes but don’t play them often, 5: has written a dating sim)

The second version of Conclave was still on paper and functioned instead like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, where players would read the story and jump in the document to the response to whatever choice they made. Based on previous feedback, I revamped the prologue to the game with a longer introductory sequence that set up the events, locations, and tone a little clearer. Main feedback from this playtest was:

• Player character motivations and characterization are unclear.
• The tone is inconsistent. It suddenly becomes serious and suddenly becomes horny and has very little in between.

In response, I made the following changes:

• Explicitly state at the top of the game that your character’s goal is to become Pope in order to hold the prayer sessions that horny players want to see. The text goal is to achieve the Papacy, the subtext goal is to pray with as many characters as you can.
• Completely leaned into the sillier and hornier elements of the onboarding. I wanted to give the players a slow burn in terms of the characters’ relationships, but also included what I felt were many on-the-nose references to the possibility of intimacy between characters.

Version 3 – The Rough Digital Prototype of Onboarding

Playtester 6: Close to target demographic (understands tropes through light novels/anime)

The third version of Conclave was finally ported to a digital platform on Ren’Py. The main feedback from this playtest was that the tone was still inconsistent and was too explicit in the prologue to allow for the slow burn I was trying to write. In response, I made sweeping changes to the tone and revamped the introduction sequence again.

Version 4 – The First Digital Prototype of Onboarding

Back to Playtester 1: Target demographic (avid visual novel/dating sim enjoyer)

The fourth playtested iteration of Conclave added new functionality that I was hoping to test in the previous version. A journal was added to help players keep track of characters, relationship statuses, and Perspectives with descriptions to remind players of what they’d experienced and what resources were at their disposal. Feedback on this iteration was:

• The tone is much more consistent. Similar to Hatoful Boyfriend in tone and concept.
• Debate and conversation feel different but could use more distinction, perhaps through visuals.
• Gaining Perspectives is neat, but make sure to give the player a chance to use new Perspectives sooner.
• Add photos and sound.
• Journal gives a nice overview for the player, makes sense and is easy to use and understand.

In response, I made the following changes:

• Added a chance to use a Perspective right in the intro if the plant sequence is explored.
• Distinguished Perspective response options to regular response options visually.
• Played with different border colors/layers to make debates seem visually distinct.

Version 5 – The Second Digital Prototype of Onboarding

Back to Playtesters 4 & 5, new Playtester 7: Target demographic (4 & 7: understand dating sim tropes but don’t play them often, 5: has written a dating sim)

By this point, the introduction sequence’s writing was polished and could be read in its entirety, complete with alternate endings and relationship state changes based on player input and interaction. I had started writing for the first day of “real gameplay,” but did not have enough to playtest by this point. Feedback included:

• The game was fun to play.
• Onboarding felt a little long, but likely because there was no real gameplay after the onboarding.
• The tone was clear and consistent. Although it occasionally deviated from thirsty to safety, it just needed a few small edits.
• Character motivations were clear.
• Make sure the prayer scenes aren’t too explicit.
• Player location input isn’t that important, probably could be removed.
• Is it important for the main character to be explicitly male/a man?
• Add more choice variety.
• Focus writing for a single character with a single ending.

In response, I made the following changes:

• Made edits to pull away from “safety” tone to “thirsty” tone. No more mentions of smelling like home – only mentions of smelling like prayer.
• Removed player location input.
• Made it explicit the main character is a man. Not only is this “more accurate” to the conclave (although accuracy was really never a concern of mine), but more importantly it recontextualizes a lot of the interactions the main character has with the other cardinals. Men speaking with other men in the context of Conclave is a safer space for many to engage with the themes I presented in the Overview.
• Choice variety was added to the “real gameplay” of Day 1 and beyond. I still wanted to keep choices narrow during the onboarding so as to not overwhelm the player.
• Cut down on extra characters from 5 dateable characters to 1. Although there are still characters outside of the intended romanceable character (Cardinal Bruce), I wanted to make it clear that this character is the one the players are meant to be dating.

Version 6 – The First Prototype of Day 1

Back to Playtesters 4 & 5, new Playtester 8: Target demographic (4 & 8: understand dating sim tropes but don’t play them often, 5: has written a dating sim)

Feedback was generally positive for the first draft of the first half of Day 1 of the story. Despite some bugs here and there, players were able to explore the majority of dialogue paths before the voting session. Feedback included:

• Provide more options to the player
• Include visual cues to improve feedback loop with player
• Include animations that play when correct choices are made
• Finish the game!!
• Elaborate more on Bruce’s introduction as it doesn’t give enough of a reason to date him.

In response, I made the following changes:

• Wrote more options for the player, increasing the playtime of Day 1
• Worked on including more visuals
• Finished Day 1
• Lengthened the first interaction with Bruce to make it feel more believable that the player would want his affection/favor, even if just for the Papacy.

Version 7 – The Last Prototype of Day 1

Back to Playtesters 1 & 6

Feedback was great! Playtester 1 said it felt like a visual novel, especially with the new character sprites. Playtester 6 mentioned they felt their choices didn’t make as much impact on the game on the first playthrough, but on the second they remarked they understood the choices better and were able to progress further through the game.

The video of the last playtest is linked here.

Choice Map

GitHub repo is linked here.

Reflection

This project was one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever worked on to be completely honest. I felt like I was writing for at least an hour a day on the second week and up to three hours a day on the third. There were so many choices I wanted to explore and so many directions I could’ve taken the game that it was impossible to choose one at first, which really hindered my progress at the beginning. Additionally, I wasn’t really as familiar with the medium of visual novels when I chose it as my medium for this project. I completely underestimated the amount of work it takes to make a *good* visual novel (not that one is present here) and I have so much more respect for VN developers.

I hope I can continue working on this project for P4. I’m incredibly passionate about the subject matter, tone, and characters, and would like to see what more eyes would mean for this game. I’m excited to see where it goes!