I've always been fascinated by the idea of one- or two-person indie game development teams. Dedicated people tackling all the tasks necessary to create and release a game is inspiring. That mythical status has an unfortunate side effect: we (including myself) have a habit of glamorizing self-sacrifice and overwork. We laud the mental and emotional imbalance that's created when small teams combine their hobby and artistic passion and turn it all into a job. For small teams, social and professional life can become one and the same with no place to turn for a break. 

Even more daunting is that idea of two-person teams made up not of friends or acquaintances but spouses and life partners. This special class of development team combines not only their hobby, social life, and profession, but their romantic life too. I spoke with six couples who have successfully developed a game together about how they kept their project from dominating their life or eclipsing their relationship. They all highlighted communication as key, as any successful couple or business partners will, but exactly how they go about communicating was different for each. 

Here's what they had to say.

Helen Carmichael and Jake Birkett: Regency Solitaire, Shadowhand

Helen and Jake have been married for 20 years. They worked from home out of separate rooms doing different jobs for several of those years, only transitioning to developing Regency Solitaire and Shadowhand together when Helen had an off-the-cuff idea for a historical fiction solitaire game. Their prior experience working from home separately gave them the confidence they could make the process work, and they make it seem effortless, continually deferring to one another in conversation and speaking of each other supportively.

"We've had a fairly good work-life balance," Jake says. "I haven't had this problem where I haven't been able to stop working. It's almost the opposite, sometimes. We did go out for a lot of trips, ostensibly research for a lot of our games, but also just to have a nice time really. I think other indies might view us as a bit lazy in that sense. I don't mind. It's all about quality of life, really. It's a bit like having a jogging partner, you're more likely to go out if you're meeting your jogging partner at the same time every day."

Although their children are older now, having young kids during their early days of development sounds a bit hectic.

HELEN CARMICHAEL: When we were doing Regency Solitaire—four years ago we started on that and our kids were a lot younger—I would do my work between 9am and 3pm. Then I would stop and I would be available for the kids to do whatever they needed to do. Whereas Jake would tend to start a bit later in the day and continue on working into the evening.

JAKE BIRKETT: It was always stressful if we were having meetings sort of near dinner time because the kids would come home and make a fuss and we'd be right in the middle of some really complex design thing and they'd all come home making noise or whatever and want our attention. I've said before that having kids is indie hard mode.

Rebekah and Adam Saltsman: Overland, Finji Co

Rebekah (Bekah) and Adam Saltsman have been together since 1998, married since 2006, and started their company Finji Co the same year. The creators of Overland, they went on to publish other indie games like Night in the Woods and Tunic. They work out of a home office from which they post Overland gifs to their official Twitter account and amusing interactions with their two boys to their personal accounts. It seems like a dream, but when asked if they're doing what they've always imagined, it turns out that's not the case.

REBEKAH SALTSMAN: Somebody actually just asked me this at PAX, well no, it was just a throw-off comment. It's actually been sticking with me now for like two weeks. 'It's always been yours and Adam's dream to make games.' And in my brain I was like 'No?' This has actually never been a dream of mine—to make games.

ADAM SALTSMAN: Even my goal for most of my life was to be a cog in a machine that eventually produced a game. That was the biggest vision that I had. I would go 'Maybe I could be a level designer or something. That would be incredible!'

RS: The idea that my dream was to run a company with my husband—like, no! It's actually not, that's just the reality of what fell out of both independently and together following the things we perceived as our dream. Mine is I eventually wanted to be a mom and I wanted to work and I wanted to work with brilliant people. That's where I come at into the game industry. Whereas Adam has just forever needed to make games. The idea that I can help him accomplish that, which is one of the main tenets of who he is as a person, like hell yeah I'm all in!

Despite the chaos, Bekah and Adam seem like a well-oiled machine, even in casual conversation. It's a confidence in one another they've earned over 20 years by continually re-assessing their own wants and needs from the projects they tackle together.

"It sounds so obvious but we have made this mistake before where you just go, 'Well we're basically on the same wavelength so we don’t actually have to talk about our major goals and aspirations and things we want out of the company,'" Adam says. They both stress the importance of these "boringly explicit" conversations that they have with each other about the future of Finji and their personal aspirations. "The idea that you have that conversation once and then never again is insane. We basically have it every Sunday!" Bekah says.

RS: People are always so scared to have the first conversation. If you have the first conversation before there are any conflicts or feelings hurt, before—

AS: Before there's a ton of money involved. Before there's a ton of responsibility involved. Before you've settled into some kind of weird work habits or personal disputes. It's not going to magically protect you but—

RS: At least if there is a problem you can approach it like real adults and talk it out if you're on the same page.

Priscilla and Kevin Snow: Southern Monsters, Mama Possum

Kevin and Priscilla have been together since March of 2014. "Within the first few weeks of us dating we were talking about what we could work on together," Kevin says. They were thrilled to be in a relationship where they could be proud of their partner's creative work and feel as though their successes were shared rather than resented. 

They work out of a home office in their apartment cluttered with Priscilla's eclectic collection of instruments (Theremin, acoustic guitar, Rock Band guitar, and Nintendo Labo piano to name only a few) and Kevin's collection of post-it notes chronicling the first draft of Southern Monsters, which he wrote while on hold at his old call center job. They both work on upwards of five games at a time—some together and some separate.

KEVIN SNOW: It's kind of easy to just work side-by-side for 12 hours.

PRISCILLA SNOW: Which we do a lot.

KS: It's super easy to turn into a work Katamari together. We're both excited and both working on creative stuff and then we're like 'Oh god, we haven't eaten today.'

KS: Let's say you have a client and you're paying them money to produce goods and services for you like you do with money. You have that professional distance where you're treating them respectfully and you can give really honest feedback. When you're in a relationship with someone and you're also working together there's an overlap between your personal relationship and work relationship that you have to be aware of. There's been moments where we’ve worked on something and we’re both really really stressed. What would be a normal round of feedback might upset the other person just because we have that close emotional connection. We have to be really careful sometimes and closely pay attention to the other person’s mood.

PS: The longer we work together the more we realize we have good heads on our shoulders. When Kevin gives a critique now I'm like, 'OK, there's probably something there' and if I give Kevin a critique he's like, 'OK, I'll think about it'. So it’s evolved from 'How dare!' to 'Yeah, you’re probably right'.

Bart Heijltjes and Roy Van Der Schilden: Herald

Roy and Bart have been together since meeting in 2009 at university. They founded their company Wispfire with a third co-founder in 2013 and moved to working from a dedicated office space while developing Herald, an interactive period drama set in the 19th century. 

Bart and Roy have been an inseparable team since they met. Bart recalls their university graduation in which professors who had attempted to split them up creatively realized there was no keeping the two apart.

"They tried putting us in different groups so we wouldn't become too reliant on each other's opinions and work. So we could get more of our own artistic style. When we graduated from our Bachelor's degree one of the teachers said, 'OK, we failed. You can keep working together. We see that it was pointless to try and stop you.'"

BART HEIJLTJES: We can be very frank with each other because we know each other so well. So when we have creative differences, for us we are having a normal conversation but for people around us in the company it could be a little bit scary. Like 'Oh, they are really fighting right now!' when actually to us it's more like we're just having a creative difference and we'll work it out.

ROY VAN DER SCHILDEN: When you're in company culture, especially when you're a bigger company than we are, you have to have those practices to work together but in the end it loses a bit of the soul because fighting creatively is something that's needed sometimes to create something that's more than just a standard product.

RVDS: Often when you work with people who aren't your close friends or partner, it's hard to admit that you don't really know what you're doing. Sometimes you really want to say 'I'm so stuck. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please look at this.' It's nice that I don't feel a barrier to say that to Bart but I have certain colleagues I would never say that to because then I'm afraid they would think 'Nobody knows what we're doing!'

BH: Especially during the final production parts of Herald I think we had a couple moments where [Roy] said 'I really want this in the game' and I said 'That's not going to happen. It's impossible in the time we have.' And then later on maybe when other people are going home I was like 'Maybe I can make this work.' And I'd actually push myself to get it in there anyway. That happened a couple times. I think it made the game better in the end. I wouldn't do that for a boss or for anyone else. I know Roy really wants this in and I have an idea, I'll go and try it and maybe spend a couple hours working late on it.

Lottie Bevan and Alexis Kennedy: Cultist Simulator

Lottie Bevan and Alexis Kennedy are a rare sight: a relationship between former boss and subordinate with a significant difference in age—both qualities of their relationship they speak of willingly and with candor. They're eager to dispel the taboos associated with workplace relationships, having successfully navigated one themselves when they worked together on Fallen London and Sunless Sea at Failbetter.

In fact their working relationship was so productive, when Alexis left Failbetter to create Cultist Simulator they found they missed that sense of creative collaboration.

LOTTIE BEVAN: With a totally new project that I had no professional involvement in, there was a bit of a wall between this guy that I am in love with and what he was really excited about right now. He could talk about it all he liked but it wasn't the same as working on the project.

ALEXIS KENNEDY: If you're doing intense creative design work it's a bit like going off to sea with somebody waiting at the shore for you and I don’t like that aspect in a relationship. I don't like feeling separated from Lottie so I was very keen to find ways for us to be on the ship together.

Now they're working together again as Weather Factory studio, recently releasing Cultist Simulator to rave reviews. They protected themselves against potential creative differences by taking unequal shares in the company to avoid the possibility of a deadlock. It works for them, they say, because of their established respect for one another as co-workers.

"If you ever overrule me to the point where I'm like 'I really disagree!' and you say 'No I'm going to use my power here' then we may have a tense couple of drinks at a bar where we discuss it and go back to being boyfriend and girlfriend," Lottie says.

Beth and Andy Korth: Verdant Skies

Andy and Beth Korth didn't intend to have their first child right as they were beginning development on Verdant Skies, a farm-life sim set on an alien world, but that's how the timing worked out. As full-time indie developers, they weren't able to set aside money for childcare. They worked it out like a relay race, tossing the baton back and forth (but never tossing their baby, I'm sure) until Verdant Skies reached the finish line.

ANDY KORTH: What we try to do is decide 'today is my work day' or 'today is Beth's work day'. So one of us can stay at home and the other can get out of the house and work.

BETH KORTH: We did struggle with that a lot at the beginning when [our son] was born. Waking up in the morning and deciding whose day it is is not good because it's sometimes 11 by the time you decide. We tried to schedule it where I was Tuesdays and Thursdays for a while and at the end when it was obvious that the writing needed extra I switched to Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

Beth and Andy found that their most significant challenge as a couple and as development partners was acknowledging that both game dev and child-rearing were demanding tasks in separate ways.

"It's really important to honor each other's time," Beth says. "If it's somebody's work day you have to respect that they work but also know that person who stayed home spent a lot of time with your child or was taking care of the house or doing their day job. I think you can lose sight of that. 'I worked all day, why should I have to take the baby?' 'Well, because I sat at home with the baby all day and I need a break.' It's important to remember that the other person's also working and suffering too. Give them time to do something fun or go out or just be alone and sit in a quiet place."

Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games has been making casual games for over a decade but it was his first collaboration with his wife, science editor and writer Helen Carmichael, that gave Grey Alien a crossover success. They mixed solitaire with the design sense of a historical costume drama to create Regency Solitaire, which met with critical acclaim after being released on Steam. However, this year's follow-up Shadowhand, a solitaire RPG about a highwaywoman that adds card-based combat, had a different sensibility. 

I had a chance to speak with the husband-and-wife team about setting a game in rough-and-tumble 1770s England—and releasing it directly to an audience with a different set of expectations.

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

PC Gamer: Shadowhand is a sequel to your previous game, Regency Solitaire, making it the second bodice-ripper solitaire-based game that I'm aware of. It iterates on your previous game, in story, setting, and... solitaire. What was the first idea you had that led to what would become Shadowhand?

Helen Carmichael: In Regency Solitaire there is an older female character, Lady Fleetwood, who hints that she had an interesting youth. It was just a one-liner, but it sowed the seed: to go back in time 40 years from the Regency period, when Regency Solitaire was set. We wanted to make it a bit more edgy than Regency Solitaire, and also to include a much wider range of characters—not just wealthy aristocrats who attended balls.

Sometimes it's good to include the things you enjoy that are right there. We both love British history and we live in the South West of England. Our stretch of coastline was alive with smugglers and wreckers—people who would be on the shore with strong lamps trying to lure ships in, to make them run aground and cause a shipwreck. I got quite immersed learning about highwaymen, smugglers, and how the law worked [in the 1770s]: no police force, just locally-appointed magistrates and various militias.

We have put a lot of effort into making the details (clothing, weapons, buildings) historically accurate. Yes—the firebomb blunderbuss really did exist! This approach worked well for us in creating a game setting for Regency Solitaire, and we feel it also worked for Shadowhand.

There is an ancient sword in the game forged in Avalon by a trainee blacksmith called Conan. While we were making the game our teen son Conan did actually go to a forge in Avalon (Glastonbury) and forge his first sword. It seemed only fair to include it.

Regency Solitaire was first available on casual game portals like Big Fish Games, and only later launched on Steam. In contrast, Shadowhand went straight to traditional game stores, like Steam, Humble, and GOG. How did that happen?

Jake Birkett: Cliff [Harris, of Shadowhand publisher Positech Games] liked Regency Solitaire, and at the time he was publishing indie games. He actually asked me to pitch a sequel that would be suitable for Steam. Normally indies have to seek out and pitch to multiple publishers.

Helen already had this highwaywoman idea, but the concept needed something else to appeal to a non-casual audience. That's when I had the brainwave to add in turn-based combat. The idea sprung pretty much fully-formed into my head and when I coded it and tried it out, it worked very well! There were tweaks and refinements of course, but it's pretty close to my original "vision".

HC: We already had an automated AI testing system that we had created to check the difficulty of the levels on Regency Solitaire. We already had the theme and ideas about highway robbery and making some kind of more strategic and in-depth game. Our core mechanic was solitaire, so we thought, can we drive turn-based combat using solitaire?

Then followed months of iteration as we gradually worked out how the various different systems in the game would affect the cards—the player actually has a big advantage over the AI of being human (automatically makes smarter and more strategic moves) and also of all the various gear, training and attributes they acquire through the game that end up giving quite a major advantage over the AI enemies.

JB: Games like Bookworm Adventures and Puzzle Quest were an influence. I had also played the Early Access version of Darkest Dungeon not long before, and I really liked the way the characters came together when one hit the other. So I attempted to kind of emulate that with the characters on cards in Shadowhand. It's only a really simple two frame animation but it works, especially with the addition of great sound effects from [Vancouver-based subcontractor] Powerup Audio. 

HC: Shadowhand was targeting a core gaming audience on Steam, whereas Regency Solitaire was aimed primarily at the casual market. So we have both put a lot of thought into our audience and that has influenced the design of both games considerably.

How did the different audience affect Shadowhand?

HC: Solitaire is quite a tough and strategic game, as many card players recognize. We already had something there we felt we could work with. The issue was how to message it to appeal both to card players and also perhaps to those in the core audience who may not have played this type of game before.

Some of the decisions were about how we message things visually: Regency Solitaire uses large buttons and has a fairly deliberate feminine-styled UI. We based [it] on women's jewelery from the Regency period. The pink and gold color scheme was fashionable for both men and women, and was also common in interior decor then. We love it but we also couldn't see that resonating with the core audience.

JB: The first iteration of the UI the artists sent us for Shadowhand was too casual (too big, too purple), so we sent them more references and eventually ended up with a look we are very happy with.

HC: [For Shadowhand], we have a lot more information on display and didn't hold back from "complexity". There are many layers of strategy in Shadowhand and you do have to deploy them to win. We have tried to message this to the players, and added a number of systems—mainly to do with inventory management and character stats, so that they can manage their loadout.

We still introduce the various layers and systems gradually over the first few hands. The difficulty is in showing a new player just how much there is going on and how many choices they can make, but not overwhelming them with all of that immediately. It's a fine balancing act.

JB: I think some people still probably look at the theme and art style of Shadowhand and think it looks too casual and maybe skip it. Though those who give it a chance soon discover the gameplay is anything but casual: it's quite hard in normal mode. There's a lot of depth that emerges after the first few chapters.

Regency had no "traditional" RPG elements. Just a ballroom you upgraded which affected the gameplay in some ways. However, Shadowhand has the inventory (weapons, outfit, consumables, special abilities), and character states plus of course the whole turn-based combat system, so that's why we call it an RPG.

What you describe as the core audience are often conditioned to expect an inexorable upward power curve and a "fairness" where there's always a right answer to avoid failure. Casual games, on the other hand, are often harder and less "fair" in that way—there may be no right play to clear the entire table in solitaire with a given draw. Failure isn't as punishing in a casual game, though, because win or lose, you're simply going to play again with a new shuffle. 

How did you tackle the challenge of satisfying the need to feel like there was a right way to win, when solitaire often doesn't have a right, winning answer?

HC: Casual gamers are often dismissed somewhat, and this fails to recognize the skill that is required to beat many casual games.

JB: Agreed. Regency Solitaire on hard mode was hard. The chapter goals were intense and required a lot of skill at playing the cards and using the abilities, and of course retries! At its heart, Shadowhand is a solitaire-style game, and thus involves plenty of RNG and tries.

We gave the players lots of tools to influence the outcome. You can still lose due to bad luck or win easily with good luck, but in a close match—and there are lots of those due to the balancing we did—players can swing it their way by using skill and abilities, and those are the most exciting and rewarding situations.

[Some players] want to always win, as you have identified. There seems to be a contingent of players who want to play something on hard mode and get the accolade of beating it but not without the pain of losing and having to retry. We decided to rename "hard" to "very hard" in the hope that people will take it more seriously.

Plenty of other people love it though. We have to accept that it's not a game for everyone, but for those that do accept the nature of the game, it's great fun. Something like Darkest Dungeon is brutal and pure [randomness], and they got flak from people. But, ultimately it sold tons, so we knew we'd still be OK.

HC: In card games, the cards are dealt. It's a game of chance, to some degree. We give the player many opportunities to be "luckier" through their choices—but we also don't want to patronize them.

JB: I can understand why people don't like losing due to bad luck. But if you accept that losing and retrying is part of the core premise of Shadowhand, then you can focus on choosing the right equipment for the job and playing the hand to the best of your abilities. That's how we empower players, in the choices they can make on the micro level (with the card play) and the macro level (with their loadouts and stat upgrades).

Solitaire players expect a random shuffle and to lose sometime, but that can come as a shock to players new to the genre. There may be merit in making a different game with a fixed layout that applies all kinds of background tricks to give the player a different experience for sure, but it's too late to apply that to Shadowhand. 

Jake mentioned in a GDC 2016 talk that only 14% of your revenue on Regency Solitaire at the time was from Steam; the rest was from casual game portals. Now Shadowhand is only on Steam and its competitors. Are you done with the casual game market?

HC: Not necessarily. We need a few weeks for the dust to settle after launching Shadowhand to decide our next move.

JB: We were discussing what game to make next last night. And we have some casual game ideas, and some game ideas more like Shadowhand.

HC: The good news for us is that we have quite a few options. I think it's possible you would see both core and casual games from us in the future. Being at the crossover is an interesting place to be. There are definitely design values from casual that can inform a core game. 

It's the PC Gamer Q&A! Every week, our panel of PC Gamer writers ponders a question about PC gaming, before providing a short and informative response. This week: which game did you miss in 2017 that you're saving for the holidays? We'd love to hear your answers in the comments below, too. 

Jody Macgregor: Shadowhand

I enjoyed Regency Solitaire, which was Grey Alien's previous reskinning of solitaire as a Jane Austen-style period drama. And I liked Faerie Solitaire too, which was a different studio called Subsoap basically reimagining solitaire as a cute Popcap game. What I'm saying is, if you can turn playing cards by yourself into some kind of saga then I am your audience. But I didn't even get past the tutorial of Shadowhand before I had to put it aside and play other things I needed to write about more urgently.

From what I saw it's a more thorough twist on solitaire than they've tried before, one that uses it as the randomizing factor for RPG combat in the same way other games use dice. You play a highwaywoman, and there's swashbuckling, romance, and pirates involved. In a way it reminds me of a tabletop RPG called Castle Falkenstein, which also used cards instead of dice and a period setting where people said "indubitably" with a straight face. I'm looking forward to giving it a proper chance when I can play it on a laptop balanced on my stomach which will be full of Christmas ham.

Wes Fenlon: Night In The Woods

I've been trying to find the time to play Night in the Woods all year. I definitely have some pent-up feelings about small town America (and maybe a latent fear of having to return to it one day), and a smart, funny game built around that setting is something I know I'll love. Earlier this year my girlfriend and I played Oxenfree together and had a great time, so I've had Night in the Woods pegged for our next game. We just never got to it, and in October the developers announced an expanded version was in the pipe, so that felt like a good reason to wait. Weird Autumn edition is out just in time for the holidays, so I've got Night in the Woods pegged for a post-Christmas game. I can't wait to laugh, and also probably be a bit depressed.

Chris Livingston: The Long Dark

When it comes to survival games I tend to overdo it, playing a bunch of them in a short period of time before getting so sick of chopping down trees and cooking at campfires that I can't bear to play another one for months. Then, eventually, I get back into them again for a while. The first time I played The Long Dark, then in Early Access, I was at the tail end of storm of survival games and I bounced right off it, unwilling to mope around freezing and starving and wondering where my next meal would come from. It left Early Access this year, and I would like to finally give it a proper look. Maybe when my belly is full of Christmas ham and my feet warm in new socks, I'll finally be in the right mood to put some real time in it.

Philippa Warr: Okami HD

I didn't exactly miss it—I was actually down to review it at one point—but various other features conspired to move Okami out of my grasp when the HD version came to PC. I actually played it on console back in 2007 but hit a bug over halfway through rendering progress impossible but being unable to reset to a point before it had bugged. Faced with losing more than a dozen hours of progress, I couldn't face going back. About a decade later the irritation of that bug has abated just enough for me to consider returning to the inky world and trying all over again. Fail me again, though, wolf, and I'll be ditching you for Slime Rancher quicker than you can whip out a paintbrush.

Andy Kelly: Wolfenstein 2

Since it was released, Wolfenstein II has been sitting unplayed in my Steam library, staring at me, wondering why I don't want to load it up and kill Nazis. So I reckon the holidays, when I have an abundance of spare time, is when I'll finally give Blazkowicz the attention he probably deserves. I didn't love the original, though, so I'm a little wary of this one. I hear it's difficult, and I don't have the patience for hard games these days. So we'll see how that pans out. If I can't get on with it, there are a dozen other games I didn't get around to playing.

Evan Lahti: The Elder Scrolls Legends

I've been abstaining entirely from digital cards for the past four or five months so I could dive elbows-deep into the new Elder Scrolls: Legends set, Return to Clockwork City. Thematically, it's focused on the mechanical creations of the Dwemer (and those who'd hope to steal from their ancient vaults), with a new singleplayer campaign and a bunch of new cards. Competitively its impact has apparently been a bit underwhelming, but I'm still looking forward to reacquainting myself with the meta. Unlike the FPSes I play, one of the things I've always loved about Magic: TG and other card games is that their landscapes can shift so quickly and dramatically, even as players simply discover new synergies. I mean, that's part of the business strategy. I like observing the shifts in "what's in style" on sites like betweenthelanes.net (co-run by the excellent TESL streamer CVH), picking out a new deck that suits me, building it, then modding it further based on my preferences.

Bo Moore: Nier: Automata

I'm not sure if this counts, since technically I've already put many hours into it this year, but Nier: Automata. I finished my first playthrough of the awesome action-RPG about robots with feelings earlier this year, but as (most) people know, the game has multiple (26, to be exact) endings and is meant to be replayed several times. I'm looking forward to starting my "route B" playthrough, but I've been holding off for the last few weeks, saving it for holiday time when I can really dive in. 

Steven Messner: Cuphead

I'm one of the shameful few who never touched Cuphead on launch. It's not that I don't find the game appealing (I do), just that when everyone praised it at release I felt like I was at a breaking point in how many games I was trying to juggle and complete. Adding a excruciatingly tough boss brawler to that pile would have surely driven me to madness. But what are the holidays for if not bashing your head against something repeatedly, sinking into the depths of despair as you realize you can't succeed, and then drinking in the dark until the wee hours of the AM? Oh, I'll probably boot up the new Path of Exile expansion too because the new league sounds like fun.

Tim Clark: Assassin's Creed Origins

I've theoretically earmarked Assassin's Creed Origins as this year's 'big' Christmas game to wallow in. My worry here is that 1) each time I've tried to run it, it's had some pretty wild performance dips, and 2) I will almost certainly use these as an excuse to go back to Destiny 2 and grind for Masterworks weapons while watching old British detective shows. Last Christmas I ploughed through every Inspector Morse episode on the ITV Hub. That's a lot of dead professors. A question I can more confidently answer is what will I be drinking. And the answer is sweet sherry.