The Monsterhearts video game rebels against dice and solves a murder

Avery Alder’s Monstershearts is an indie darling. It’s loved for deftly combining themes of queerness, growing up, and monstrosity with the mechanics of the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) framework. This makes it a tricky choice for a video game adaptation. The RPG is a highly emotional, inter-personal game about teenagers figuring out who they are and who they don’t want to be. Also, would the open-ended, free flowing nature of a PbtA game translate well into a more directed medium like video games? 

It seems like we’re going to find out, as Canada-based studio Ludic Lemur are taking a swing at turning the Monsterhearts TTRPG into a Monsterhearts CRPG. And they’re ditching dice for cards.

“We wanted to work on something that we could do very much as an indie studio so that if we find a publisher, that's great. But if we don't find a publisher, we don't need one,” said Wren Handman, a novelist and Ludic Lemur’s Creative Director. “We wanted something that was very story heavy, that is a little bit lighter on art, that fits the themes and things that our company is interested in. Meanwhile, Amy [Fox, CEO & Art Director] had a good friend from back in the day, Avery Alder.”

With Alder’s approval, Ludic Lemur started working on a prototype. They received funding from the Canada Media Fund to conceptualize the game and then worked with masters students from the Center for Digital Media, an educational institute, to design a prototype. “They did a sort of student-led, student-designed version of the game. And it actually ended up being such a positive experience that we're hiring three of them, knock on wood, if the Kickstarter goes well,” said Handman. 

Ludic Lemur’s small team came together in 2023, and currently none of the core team works full-time. “I think scrappy is the adjective I ascribe to us,” said Nick Drake, Community Manager. The team currently consists of Handman, Fox, Drake, and Kalev Tait, the Design and Technical Director. In September, they hope to bring on Jiahui Li for sound design, Praveen Namasivayam for additional narrative design, and Ayushi Singh as the lead artist — but keeping them is contingent on a successful crowdfunding campaign. 

Given the state of indie video game publishing, Ludic Lemur knew they had to rely on crowdfunding to create their version of Monsterhearts. “We looked for publishers right at the time when publishers stopped being interested in signing anything ever,” said Tait, who worked on both Fable 2 and 3 as a programmer. They’ve sketched out a budget of CA$290,000 that will fund a 10-month development cycle, hopefully ending with the game being released late 2026 or early 2027. Right now, they have the building blocks of the game — a prototype, concept art, plot outlines, and so on. With the resources, they'll actually build everything out.