In April of 2023, Trent University’s freshly-minted games publishing subsidiary, Trent Interactive Entertainment, announced the imminent release of their maiden flagship project—ExcalaGals: Fables of Sword—in Alfred, Trent University’s “stupid newspaper.” According to its dev team, ExcalaGals is “an exciting Tactical Roleplaying game (RPG) set at an alternate-universe Trent University.” The game bills itself as “an ongoing coming-of-age story which develops in real time, following a diverse array of stunning anime girls and also boys (not playable) who are members of the Trent Council of Sword Arts, tasked by the school’s Board of Governors with obtaining* the legendary Cauldron of Inspiration.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The word “obtain” here appears to be a euphemism for “steal”]

The game appears to draw heavily from Arthurian cannon, the iconography of which is famously associated with Trent University (in spite of certain claims to the contrary which accuse the “Excalibur” symbology of being a thinly-veiled psy-op meant to distract from the fact that Trent’s branding by-and-in-large draws from the legacy of colonizer Samuel de Champlain). The game is a loose (and I mean very loose) adaptation of the Mabinogion and a number of associated Welsh Romances. To Arthur’s knowledge however, none of those involved in the game’s production actually speak Welsh, which bodes ill for the voice actors asked to pronounce such names as  “Culhwch,” “Llawfrodedd” or “Ysgithyrwyn”.

I was curious as to the motivations for Trent’s foray into the interactive entertainment medium, so I reached out to Trent Interactive Entertainment (henceforth referred to as “TIE,”) for an interview. Regrettably, I instead received a communiqué from Trent Communications telling me to “shove off, loser,” and to “keep doing your circa-2008 Tim Rogers schtick at somebody else’s expense.” Undeterred, I sought an alternate means of egress, and quickly found one in the form of lead developer and Finnish Computer Science exchange student Brian Vidjägammen. Spotting the involuntarily celibate programmer seated alone in the Otonabee College cafeteria wearing cat ears, a pleated skirt, and thigh-high striped socks, I pulled out my trusty Zoom H4N field recorder, pressed “record,” and set about ingratiating myself to the subject.

ER: Hi! Brian?

BV: Who are you?

ER: Evan Robins, Arthur Newspaper. I wanted to ask you a few questions if that’s alright.

BV: If this is about the KiwiFarms thing, I already told you that I didn’t do it. My brother, he must’ve gotten into my computer somehow, he—

ER: I’m not interested in fruits, Brian, I’m here to talk about ExcalaGals. 

BV: Oh. You’re not recording this, are you?

Having made my introduction, I made myself comfortable at Brian’s table, pulling out my computer, keyboard, several notebooks, and a zero-sugar, Ultra Peachy Keen™ Monster Energy® drink to let him know I took this gaming business seriously. With that aside, I quickly got down to the matter at hand.

ER: So, why’s Trent all of a sudden deciding to make video games? Seems a bit out of left field doesn’t it?

BV: Uh, money, probably?

According to Arthur investigation, ExcalaGals was first conceived of at a Trent Board of Governors meeting as a means to supplement the school’s pre-existing income. Much like the student centre, students are to pay an ancillary fee alongside tuition to finance development of the game. Rather than outsource the programming labour to Quebec, however—as many other game studios do to avoid taxes—TIE opted to keep development in-house to save on money. According to a transcript of a BoG closed session obtained by Arthur, one member can be heard saying “if we hire a Comp Sci student to do it we’ll barely have to pay them anything. Plus, we can just subsidize the position with the levy fee, so in a roundabout way it’s like the students are paying themselves.” The institution of a $89.99 non-refundable levy fee was passed unanimously by the BoG. No executives of the Trent Central Student Association were in attendance to protest. Ultimately, Brian was selected as developer out of a number of potential candidates for his staggering 69% average—the highest in his third-year computing class.

BV: Someone from admin came to me and showed me this picture of two anime girls having sex, apparently it was something to do with the University of Waterloo? They said they wanted to make a game based on the concept. Y’know, to solidify brand identity or whatever. I wasn’t that interested in taking the job initially, but they offered to let me stay in the Champlain College Annex free of charge and, well, you know how housing is. Plus, they’re paying me in Trent cash so I kind of need to be near campus otherwise I’m not quite sure how I’m going to eat.

The gacha genre of games—to which ExcalaGals belongs—tie progression to a randomized, lottery-based system in which “pulls” award in game items such as playable characters, weapons, perks, cosmetics, and other gameplay rewards. While players can earn a certain number of pulls through in-game progression, they can equally pay real-world currency for extras. Consequently, the games’ revenue often dwarf that of fixed-price games, with so-called “whales,” spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on games which are usually otherwise free-to-play.

Many mobile games make use of the gacha model, though it has seen varying degrees of success in the “AAA” space. Such games as Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) and Overwatch (2016) were contentious for their implementation of so-called “loot boxes,” and “surprise mechanics,” while Hoyoverse’s flagship open-world RPG Genshin Impact—which Brian worked on for three months as part of a summer internship—makes prolific use of the contentious system. 

The game’s principal mechanics revolve around its turn-based combat system, in which players pit their units against enemies on massive gridded maps. “Honestly, I just straight up ripped most of the source code from Fire Emblem: Three Houses and hoped no one would notice,” Brian confided to me. “That stays off the record though, right?” Within the narrative of ExcalaGals, the gacha system is framed through the device of pulling swords from stones—much like the Arthurian legends from which the game draws.

BV: Yeah, so uh basically, you spend a certain amount of in-game currency, you get to make a pull. You can buy pulls in bundles of ten, or twenty, or whatever. Each item is assigned a rarity, and that rarity corresponds to your likelihood of getting it in a pull.

ER: And what do you get from these pulls, exactly?

BV: Oh, you know. Uh like… swords, other weapons, useful items and stuff. It’s also how you recruit the uh… gals,  as it were. You’re guaranteed something like one character for every ten, maybe twenty pulls? 

ER: Do you think it’s strictly ethical to gamble for propriety over teenage girls?

BV: I mean… they’re just pictures, right? Like, it’s a video game. I think they’re all eighteen as well. Except Roxy, she’s a seventeen-year-old first year. Fuck. On second thought, I’d rather not answer that.

Roxy is just one of the game’s titular “ExcalaGals” who fill out its playable roster of busty, nubile anime girls. These girls become animatic player avatars whose designs are based on the iconography of Trent University, and other publicly-funded Canadian post-secondary institutions—a concept which first stemmed from an online practice known as “university shipping.” “I just paid my friend who’s in the Arts LLC twenty bucks to draw a bunch of gijinkas based on the Trent Colleges and other unis,” said Brian. ExcalaGals follows in this tradition by anthropomorphizing Trent University’s five constituent colleges. The game’s base roster includes four such characters based on Trent’s four Symons campus colleges, each of which can be obtained free of charge:

• “Lucy” (LEC). A Environmental Science major from Deliverance, Ontario. The fact that she rides her bike everywhere makes her technically a cavalry class.
• “Shannon” (Champlain). A business major from Fort McTarsand, Alberta. Started from the bottom, now she’s the Executive Director of her Father’s landlord agency, which expropriates land from local Indigenous nations.
• “Ollie” (Otonabee). A Psychology major from Burnaby, BC who’s so quiet most people forget she exists. She’s both the least memorable and arguably least useful character in the roster, but she’s mandatory in the first three chapters so you better not let her die!
• “Roxy” (Gzowski). The youngest of the ExcalaGals—a nursing major from Rosedale, Toronto, with more money than sense. The electric yellow gleam of her bleached-blonde hair can stun enemies from over 600m away. It’s said her daddy can bail you out of any DUI. 

An additional character, Catherine Parr Traill College’s “Gale,” can be obtained through the gacha system. “I mean, I feel like most people don’t know Traill is even like, a thing,” said Brian, attempting to rationalize the decision. “It’s just like… Cultural Studies and English there, and everyone knows those aren’t real degrees.” I for one—thinking writing was a stable career choice—did not know this fact, and was shocked to discover that the department page for Cultural Studies simply reads “Get fucked, faggot! Next time pick a real discipline!” The page also includes a link to the Police Foundations landing page on the Fleming College website.

The game also includes many other characters who are either already playable or planned to be added in future updates. These include such memorable and diverse examples as:

• “Bronwen” (University of British Columbia)
• “Carly” (Carleton University)
• “Dahlia” (Dalhousie University)
• “Olivia” (University of Ottawa)
• “Trinity” (University of Toronto)

Much like the Fire Emblem series from which Brian stole, these characters can form complex interpersonal in-game relationships, or “Supports,” with one another over the course of regular gameplay. ExcalaGals differs from most games, however, in that it only affords the player lesbian romance options. “Someone at admin told me it was ‘a demonstration of their commitment to queer inclusion,’ said they had a reputation as ‘that lesbian school’ to uphold.” Some motivation also no doubt stems from the recent success of series such as Netflix’s Arcane, which prominently feature girl-on-girl relationships—not to mention the perennial popularity of lesbian pornography with 18–35 year-old heterosexual men.

ER: So you can like, make them kiss?

BV: Uh… yeah.

ER: Can they fuck?

BV: Some of them.

ER: What would say to someone who might call this fetishism?

BV: I think it’s actually kind of feminist if you think about it. 

As for the story itself, Brian didn’t have much hand in determining that. “I was basically just handed a script by someone from Trent Communications and told to ‘make it happen’,” he admitted. While Brian was unable to reveal much to me, I was able to swipe a document marked “INTERNAL USE ONLY” from his backpack after distracting him with a fabrication about body pillows on sale at the IMAGINUS poster sale. Consider this a sneak preview then, of what the game holds in store, though be warned—there may well be spoilers ahead.

With the ratification of many monumental decisions such as the mandatory levy fee, the Trent BoG seem confident it’s a case of “when” and not “if” ExcalaGals takes the world by storm. In the interim however, it’s students who quite literally bear the cost of the game’s development. Will the promise of abundant yuri bait prove sufficient to assuage the woes of a long-neglected and downtrodden student body? Only time will tell. In the meantime, when asked if he had any profound concluding statements to offer, Brian told me “please, just leave me the fuck alone. I’m trying to eat my chicken nuggets.”

ExcalaGals officially launches on September 7^th, 2023. Early registrants will receive the in-game Hitachi Magic Sword® item and be entered in a draw to win an ahegao-patterned keyboard (Razer Deathstalker V2, Linear Switch).

The game is rated “L” for “Lesbians”.