We’ve had a spectacular first week on the Hustle Cat campaign, with over 30% raised, thanks in large part to fans excited about a non-binary protagonist option! Wanna know more about Avery Grey, the slacker-come-lately main character of Hustle Cat?
Here’s writer Kasey Van Hise on what makes Avery different from most visual novel protagonists:
There’s an impulse to create an “everyperson” as the protagonist of a choice-based story to better represent the player, but I think this can be kind of misguided. Often, I see this expressed in terms of giving the protagonist a vague, noncommittal personality, and to me there’s no greater shortcut to an unfulfilling story experience than a Nilla Wafer hero. I felt that leaving gender up to interpretation was a better way to universalize Hustle Cat.
Avery Grey is a careful mix of specific and general ideas. I think presenting their motivations and their actions, without gendered commentary, will hopefully help to fit them under more than one lens. After all, anybody can love painting their nails, or sleep through two alarms every morning, or hate cooking, or shove their dirty socks into the couch. Everyone messes up the smaller stuff from time to time; everyone can be a good, kind person with unrealized potential; everyone’s a little rough around the edges when they’re just standing at the cusp of adulthood.
At the same time, there is no “canon” gender for Avery as far as I’m concerned, and that’s something I try to balance in the story. That isn’t to say that means Avery, by canon, has no gender; it means that I want to see what Averys are important for you, the players. Avery has no pronoun preference, and also all pronouns.
The idea of including NB Avery came up pretty much immediately in our talks about our protagonist character, and all of the decisions we made as a team have stemmed from that. There are so many wonderful folks who are outside of the binary, and it’s a shame that I’ve never seen anyone like them in a game like this. With your support, I’d like to change that, and hopefully write a character that we can all connect with.
Want to learn more about how Date Nighto makes visual novels? Backers of the Hustle Cat Kickstarter are getting in-depth updates throughout the campaign about our process and progress!
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