Monthly Mecha: Screaming Metal by Snow

Asa: Screaming Metal: Vector Soul is a competitive game, a free-for-all with mature themes. It involves erotic content, discomfort, betrayal, and a long list of content warnings. It invites players to feel and to play in ways that may be unsafe. What about this type of play interests you?

Snow: I think safety is largely uninteresting to me. My favorite art is the kind that hurts. Discomfort, pain, embarrassment. But I also trust in the human experience quite a bit. I think what interests me the most is presenting what is essentially a box made to inflict pain to a person or group of people and seeing how they use it. It interests me because it asks you to make a choice. When you make your characters, you’re already set up with a mess of opinions about this world you live in, and that’s where the drama lies.

Asa: Something you emphasize in SMVS is its flexibility, that it can be played in-person or online, solo, duet, or multiplayer. How do these formats change the game experience?

Snow: I think the only thing that changes is the human variable. When you play solo, all the pain inflicted and joy felt comes from words on a page, images in your head, and dice you roll. The more players added to the game, the more those feelings come from another person. Otherwise, the game doesn’t change mechanically for the individual. It was designed as a solo game, so the more people you add, the more people end up playing their own game in your vicinity, and sometimes you happen to run into one another. The only goal I had with regard to these different modes of play was being able to start as one and shift to another without any hassle. The challenge wasn’t in making it possible, because it seems so obvious in my head. It was about putting it on the page in a way that put the image in other people’s head.

Asa: SMVS has a bureaucratic side to it that is tremendously interesting to me. In fact, you recommend a calculator for play, and I love that. Why did you want this to be part of the experience?

Snow: The original mechanic that turned SMVS away from being a hack of Songbirds was using D10’s as digits for damage, and requiring a calculator to, well, calculate damage and keep track of it. It was a game modeled after a mode in the racing game, Burnout, where you attempt to cause the most damage. So you’d smash buildings and moons and whatever, tabulating massive damage numbers. When I moved away from that, I wanted to keep the calculator. There’s something oppressive about it and big numbers. They’re kind of nebulous. They don’t make sense or feel real even when put in front of you. I wanted, more than anything, to get across the worthlessness of these numbers. Like, when you subtract 1,000,000 from a number, and it doesn’t seem to change. Using that to measure your impact. The bureaucracy grew from that feeling. 

Asa: Who should try SMVS? And why?

Snow: I think everyone should play with their mom. Or their war game buddies. Board game people who like fiddly pieces. Diplomacy nerds. All the people I usually don’t relate to. Awkward boys should give it a try and see if maybe they come out the other side a pretty girl who finds it impossible to measure the worth of a human life.

Asa: What inspirations or touchstones does SMVS draw on?

Snow: Diplomacy, Over/Under, SuZi, and HARDCASE are the three big mechanical influencers. One of my girlfriends is obsessed with power armor and talking to her has shaped my conception of mecha quite a lot. Death Stranding. There’s a doll’s night at a local bar every Thursday. Being trans and trying to make a living.

Asa: What other games would you recommend?

Snow: SuZi, even if you can’t download it anymore. HARDCASE, cause Thursday is working on a 2e that looks so cool. Have You Been a Good Girl is super cool, and I’m excited by the things it’s doing to my designer brain.