OHR Icons: Julia
A Feature by Nathan "Shadowiii" Major

What makes a good character in an RPG? Someone with spiky hair and a cool sword? Maybe someone who loses his memory, only to find out they’ve done awful things (or extremely convoluted things) in the past. Maybe a character is as good as his party, with the strong male warrior, female magic user, and weird animal/pet/chibi abomination.

Regardless of how this may be, I’m not here to talk about RPGs. I’m here to talk about Pitch Black. No, not the Vin Diesel movie with the aliens that show up at night. And no, not that funky grape Mountain Dew that, thankfully, doesn’t exist anymore (Editor's note: Pitch Black, the beverage, ruled). I mean a little horror game you may or may not have heard of on the OHR, created many years ago by Mr. B and myself.


The idea behind the game was simple: wander through a dimly lit mansion, solving puzzles and trying to uncover what happened to your friends. As you go along certain things could cause you to fail: spikes, difficult puzzles, and maybe even a plotscripting error or two. Either way, the point of the game was simple: blend puzzle elements together with a good, old-fashioned ghost story, and provide an entertaining experience overall.


Of course, considering the nature of campside horror stories, plot usually take a backseat to the scares (and, in a game’s sense, puzzles). So it came as quite a surprise as, when designing the game, I wanted to have a main character who was both memorable and sympathetic. After some designs and changes, Julia was born, a character who (at one point) had a very strong association with Shadowiii, the game designer.

At the time of Pitch Black’s development, the majority of OHR games released were by males, and because of this often featured male protagonists. Really the only two games I can think of off the top of my head that starred female characters were Lucier’s Genesis and Rinku’s &And. For the most part, females were reserved for awkward love interests or just the stereotypical magic user/healer.


This helped set off the idea that would become Julia, a female lead who didn’t fit too strongly to the stereotype. Julia fit perfectly into the world of Pitch Black; a horror story starring an innocent, frightened young lady who only wants to know what happened to her friends.

The more I considered using a female as a lead, the more it made sense. I looked at the alternative: what would a male do in the situation given in Pitch Black? Well, first off the story hinges on the character questing after friends she hardly even knows, and a male character might not care enough to have motivation to even start the quest. Secondly, a large portion of the game is slow paced, careful puzzle solving. I really couldn’t see a male character going through all that; they’d probably just bumble their way through the house, punch the gargoyle and call it good. Lastly, the “innocent virgin” is a horror-film staple, not to mention usually the only one who survives to the end, so it all pretty much works together.

Now I’ve presented a lot of evidence as to why a smart, intellectual person would decide on a female lead for the game. I regret to inform you that nearly the majority of all that is a complete and outright lie, an utter fabrication. The real reason why I designed Julia can be summed up in just three bullet points.

   1. She was a girl (hot!)
   2. She had red hair (hot!)
   3. She was single (hot!)

My pre-girlfriend, pubescent self probably had some of the smart-person thoughts mentioned above on the back of his mind when he designed Julia’s character for Pitch Black, but ultimately the design was based on what I thought an ideal girl would be like, and who I would like to date, because if I think this way then other lonely nerds might as well, and then more people would download my game.

This makes the perfect transition to my next point of interest and evolution of Julia, OHR-Date.

OHR-Date is a dating game based somewhat off that dating sim that was so popular on Newgrounds a while back. I’ll openly admit to playing about five minutes of that thing before getting bored, but one look at the hit count on it made me realize I was sitting on an OHR goldmine. Surprisingly, nobody in the OHR community had made a dating game yet (maybe because nobody was all that experienced with the concept), so I figured there was no way I could fail (plus I really wanted to win that contest). The contest in question would be the 528 hour contest, hosted by MCW with the theme of “simulation.” I wish I could tell you how many years ago exactly it took place, but that has been long lost to the annals of time and space. The point is, it set up the scene to create the next, slightly more evolved form of the heroine Julia.


It was here that Julia made a re-emergence, alongside June from some thing Mr. B made that I don’t even remember because he never releases anything; and Aurora from The Crystal Globe, something I don’t even remember because I never released it. Here Julia began to become more fleshed out and, as mentioned before, this was done by using a very simple fact as a base: who would Shadowiii want to date?

Well, if you played through the game (it's so long, I apologize), you probably got a general feeling for the girl’s personalities. Which is surprising, because I knew jack squat about girls at the time I made that game except they smelled good and I hadn’t made out with any of them. Aurora was the sportsy one, pretty much the one I would never even consider. June was very outgoing and flirtatious, the one I’d be way too scared to even talk to. And then we had Julia...ah, Julia. Quiet, innocent, and shy, but with a secret passion for DDR...Julia was the girl for me.

As you progressed through the game you got to see more of the girls, which in turn meant you got to see more of Shadowiii’s dream girl. Though quiet at school and often in public, at her home and on dates she was a very nice girl to be with. She was kind, polite, and innocent. She showed appreciation when you gave her attention, and willingly gave it back. She was, in fact, everything Shadowiii wanted.

Actually, I’m just assuming all of this, because I haven’t played my own game in probably four or five years, but I remember that being the general idea I was going for when I designed the game.

The ultimate irony (or joke) about all this, is that I am now married. Want to take a guess at the girl I married? Well, she likes video games (she’s out in the living room playing Zelda on the DS as I am writing this), plays DDR, is somewhat shy but warms up over time, and is a very caring and compassionate person. She’s also a little crazy, which works because I’m a total psycho. Speaking of crazy, hey look, it’s OHR-Date 1.5!


OHR-Date 1.5 was my attempt at redemption after creating OHR-Date. After it went on to get downloaded by every lonely nerd on the internet (that isn’t true; it would have a LOT more hits if that happened), I realized the full extent of what I’d done: I created a dating game with horrible art that was actually popular. Oh dear.

1.5 was clearly a joke game, but honestly I liked it better then the first one. One of the best parts about the game was taking the personalities of the girls and twisting them to find the “dark world” equivalent. June became a controlling freak, Aurora became...actually, I don’t remember. But I DO remember what happened to Julia.

The realization of her quiet personality probably grew into the startling revelation that, if she didn’t stick with the guy she had (essentially, you), then she’d probably never have another boyfriend. Enter the clingy Julia, annoying, lovey-dovy, and stuck on you like a remora latched on the belly of the mighty blue whale. Oh dear...what have I made?

The amazing part of this, to me, is this actually fit the character. Having known several females from this point who were, in fact, similar to Julia (again, not a huge surprise considering I designed her to be the girl I would date), their reactions to break-ups where remarkably similar to the reactions found in that game. Huh.

At any rate, it is important to design characters that don’t suck, but there is something far more important then that. Make sure, no matter what, when you design a character you have a totally amazing story about how you designed them. Think out deep and intelligent meanings behind your character’s hair color, weapon choice, gender, and so on. Then, if somebody a few years down the road asks you to write about the character you’ve made, after that character has become extremely recognizable and even featured in an OHR game show, you’ll have something to say besides,  “I thought she was hot.”