Upcoming Armored Core 6 dating sim, Amoured Core, is being developed not just out of a love for the latest FromSoftware game and its characters, but for the community that rose up around it.
Beth Short was introduced to the Armored Core franchise by her boyfriend, who has been an avowed fan of the giant mech video game series throughout their relationship. Both Short and her partner work in game development, but both of them got laid off from their jobs. Though they were able to get some financial help from her boyfriend’s family, when Armored Core 6 was released, she knew she wanted to treat her partner to the expensive deluxe edition of the game. Through crowdfunding on her Facebook page, Short was able to get him the gift for his birthday, alongside an Armored Core cake that she made for him. Little did she know that she’d start falling in love with the game as well.
“He starts playing and then I hear Chris Hackney's voice and I was like, that's Dimitri,” Short said “He goes ‘no it isn’t.’ I’m like, I think I know Dimitri’s voice. I know that better than any voice.”
Short is of course referring to Dimitri Blaiddyd from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, one of the lead characters of the game. Hackney’s performance as Rusty in Armored Core 6 was praised by players near universally, with some players saying they developed a crush on the character that you never see in-game.
“I got totally swept up in this world,” she said. “Every character had such a clear motivation. And the world was structured really, really well. I think one thing that FromSoft does really well is that with their oppressive worlds, they are structured in a way that the only direction the character has to go is forward.”
Short also pointed to the characters Ayre and Snail as examples of strong voice acting and character in Armored Core 6, but the one character that she kept coming back to was Rusty. In the context of Armored Core 6, Rusty is essentially the only character who is outwardly nice to you. You play as 621, also known as Raven, who is a freelance mech pilot that commits war crimes for pay. Most of the time when you interact with characters, they’re asking why you’re crushing their resistance movement, or telling you about an exciting new mission in service of an evil arms manufacturer. By contrast, Rusty calls you “buddy,” and seems genuinely excited to see you when you show up. Combined with Hackney’s sultry tones, it’s hard not to fall in love with Rusty.
“It was the ice worm fight where I was like, okay, I have to do something,” she said. “I made the joke, like, me and [my boyfriend] were watching that on the couch and I said ‘I don't know what that was, but it was definitely cheating.”
In that boss fight, Rusty supports 621 from a distance, sniping a giant worm shaped robot with a powerful laser. The way that the sound design and soundtrack cuts out to highlight Hackney saying “I won’t miss” still sends chills down my spine.
Enamored by the characters—Short mentioned both Ayre and Snail as standouts in terms of voice acting—and inspired by an article on PC Gamer about players’ crushes on Rusty, Short decided to draw Rusty as if he was a character in a dating sim. When she posted the drawing to the Armored Core subreddit, the response was explosive.
“I posted that initial Rusty picture as a joke,” Short said. “The response was overwhelmingly positive. I thought I was gonna get so many people calling me cringe and being like, don't care, this is the worst idea I've ever seen. But instead it was people being like, can I download it now? Like, do you have the link?”
The response was so positive that eventually, Short decided she might as well make an actual Armored Core 6 dating sim with the tentative title Amoured Core. She said it was her partner that told her to reach out to a friend of hers that also works in game development for help, encouraging her to take the project seriously and expand the amount of characters on offer. So far, she’s planned on at least ten routes for players, including fan favorites like the mysterious Ayre, your handler Walter, and your rival Iguazu. She’s even added at least one character because fans demanded him so much.
“A lot of people asked for Snail,” she said, referring to the arrogant mech pilot whose nasal voice drips with disdain for 621 in every interaction. “So, now Snail’s in the game.”
But working on a fan project like this comes with its own hurdles.
“The one roadblock to sort of this whole project is the fact that we can't make any money from it,” Short said. “Like, I have a Patreon, which I'm planning to clean up, and maybe I can offer people who donate to me a beta test of the game or something like that. But it's like, I don't want to piss off FromSoft at all.”
Short, who is active in the Monster Hunter fanart community, has experience in making fanworks. She’s currently working on a Monster Hunter fan comic where she is able to work with Capcom to license specific characters for her work. FromSoft doesn’t offer such robust support for fan projects, and while the developer has allowed projects like the Bloodborne demake and Bloodborne Kart to exist, Short is aware of the risk inherent in making a fan game.
“I told my [development partner], there's a couple things that I want to keep in mind for this project. One, I don't want to compete with Armored Core in any way. So I don't want to have gameplay, I don't want to have mech building,” she said. “Also, I want to get it done quickly. So I don't want to implement any really sprawling systems that other dating games might have. Let's just do visual novel.”
Working on this project as just two people is certainly an undertaking for Short. Right now, she’s focusing on art and writing, while her partner is working on music and programming. Even with their distilled vision, Short knows that this game will take some time to complete. Amoured Core will be a labor of love—not only to the characters in the game, but also towards a community that has already shown her a lot of love.
“My philosophy, as a maker of games, as an artist is that the character comes first,” she said. “I really hope that I can do justice to these characters that everyone loves, and make them feel like the way they were in the game.”
