• Fixed two typos during Day 4 of Vlad’s route.

• Fixed a visual bug where Vlad changed hue while he left the screen during Day 4 of Vlad’s route.

• Added a song that was already in the game to the sound room when it wasn’t there before.

• Apparently, there was an error where one of the tracks in the sound room wouldn’t play the file associated with it, but I never noticed it until this update. Either way, I fixed it.

• Swapped the order of two songs in the sound room to be more consistent with the bandcamp soundtrack.

• Updated Kamil’s arms crossed pose and all outfits associated with it. This includes finishing two of Kamil’s arms crossed outfits.

• Slightly updated Vlad’s expressions and base pose sprite.

• Added a CG to Day 4 of Vlad’s route. This replaces the placeholder CG in the gallery.

Sorry for the infrequent updates. I have a lot of stuff to go through for the rest of 2026, so I don’t have much brain space for By Your Hands. For one thing, I’d really like to release the demo for Great Men Don’t Lie before the end of 2026. I also want to clean up my life a little. Sorry for the delay. I don’t want to jinx myself by saying “Oh, actually this VN’s not going to be on a crazy long hiatus don’t worry” and then the game is dead for at least 2 years. So instead I’ll say that I am going to take things easy and that updates will happen when they’ll happen. I’m 26 years old, and I want to make sure I don’t waste the rest of my 20s. I hope you guys understand. In any case, enjoy!

You can download the game here.

So, remember when I said that I’d be making a new update for Farewell, Wanderlust? Last year? Well, it’s finally here, over 13 months after the initial game was released. While this update doesn’t include any new story content, it does feature a lot of changes. All of the CGs, most of which were unfinished in the jam version, are now finished! A lot of the script has also been edited by a considerable amount. Mostly to make the text more natural, but also to address some of the complaints a few readers have. I’m not going to list out all the changes, because that would contain spoilers, but feel free to reread the VN yourself to see what changed. I also added a SFW mode so that you can play the VN in public without having to flash wolf dick to random strangers! The last thing I will mention is that I have replaced the title screen music with an original music track by BRKN HVN called “I’m Not Going Back”. If you would like to listen to it without downloading the new build, don’t worry, I have posted the soundtrack on Bandcamp. You can listen to it here.

As for why this update took so long, the short answer is life. Not just my life but the other team member’s lives as well. There’s only so much a person can do in a year, and I also would like to remind people that I have several projects I’m working on right now, and so does Mimbery. As this is a free jam VN, this was very low priority for me. You also might be wondering why I’m updating this VN before Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons. Well, it just sort of happened. EDHIPAC‘s content kinda makes me cringe, and so I’m trying to get someone to make it less cringey in editing, but that person is also busy with life, so I have to wait on that. Meanwhile, Mimbery just decided to finish editing the game on a whim, so I said “fuck it”, let’s just get this over with. So yeah.

If you’re expecting me to do another postmortem-type devlog, I’m sad to say that my opinions haven’t changed much since my last devlog. My main gripe with the VN was that it felt like a small chunk of a much bigger VN; therefore, it went too slowly to really go anywhere. That’s not something that you can just fix with a polishing update. Maybe in the future, I’ll revisit the idea and make it a lot more fleshed out, but for the time being, I’m satisfied with what we have. It’s pretty different from all my other VNs, and for that, I’m glad that I put this VN out there so that many people can enjoy it. I even met a new friend through this VN, so I’m happy even just for that.

Now for By Your Hands. Just wanted to give you guys a quick update: I have released the latest build to my patrons, which adds Day 5 of Vlad’s route to the game. If you’d like to play the new update now, you can check it out here. Or you can wait a month, when I will post it on itch for free. Either way, I hope you all enjoy it.

Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say for today. Have a good day!

The Early Days

I think the best place to start is at the beginning. And by “beginning”, I mean the early 2010s. During that time, the FVN community wasn’t really a “thing”. If you wanted to read a furry visual novel, your options were Morenatsu (a VN that contained extreme content that aged poorly and got abandoned by its original developers during development), Lagoon Lounge (another VN that contained extreme content that aged poorly, although it did get finished), and Blackgate (a VN that showed a lot of promise in the beginning, but then ended up falling off during development). I don’t mean to put down anyone who’s a fan of any of these VNs, but the options then were far more limited than they are now. There were other FVNs, but they were much smaller and less well-known. Then VNs like Echo, Extracurricular Activities, and Repeat got into the scene and started to cement a more concrete community, but there was still a dearth of content for people. I know I’m grossly simplifying the history of FVNs, but hang with me.

During 2020, the FVN scene exploded in popularity, partly due to lockdowns at that time giving a lot of people more free time to either read more VNs or create them, and partly due to a certain FVN you might not have heard of called Adastra bringing in a lot of newcomers to the community. In some ways, the 2020-2021 period could be considered the peak of the scene, as many of the big VNs started development during that time, and so many VNs were updating at a frequent and regular pace. But there was a constant trend going on with a lot of the VNs that were releasing during that time, and the earlier time periods. The vast majority of them had multiple full-length routes and were very long. In other words, a lot of them were incredibly ambitious. Yes, there were smaller complete FVNs, but they often ended up being forgotten soon after release. That’s not a dig on those developers, I’m just saying that often became the fate of those projects. Most FVNs often were very large projects. Password, After Class, Sileo: Tales of a New Dawn, Minotaur Hotel, Temptation’s Ballad, Dawn Chorus, and Burrows are just a few examples.

This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, we got so many quality projects that benefited from having such large scopes and frankly spoiled a lot of furries in terms of options. These projects would also stay relevant for longer periods of time due to them being updated every month or so. There was also a lot of interesting stuff done with multiple routes, as the author wasn’t limited to a single timeline of events, but multiple that they can play with and toy with. Routes dedicated to each love interest also meant each of them was given their own storyline, where they could each be given center stage.

On the other hand, both creators and readers got burnt out from many projects being started and abandoned. Remember Blackgate? That project slowed development to a halt, where Bane, the creator of the game, would update the game with minimal changes, and eventually not even that, while still charging people on his Patreon. That quickly burned out the FVN community and lowered a lot of faith for both readers and creators. That’s an example of a creator with more malicious intentions, but it’s not just Blackgate.

Many creators often had to put their games on hiatus due to the chaos of life and the stress of biting more than they could chew. Even games with regular updates can cause fatigue due to their unfinished states. This caused a bit of pushback, where you saw a bunch of people complain about the overwhelming amount of unfinished games, where you can’t trust if the creator you’re financially supporting will deliver on their promises. Even if you ignore money, there’s still time to worry about. Hearing that a VN you might be interested in is hundreds of thousands of words is overwhelming, and tends to lead to people putting off reading perfectly good works of fiction because they simply don’t have the time or investment to read such a long VN. There were also so many large projects that it was hard for the average person to keep up. This caused at least a few people to get checked out of the FVN community.

The Transition to Today

Despite this, we still kept getting more and more FVNs that were large in scope and had multiple fully fleshed-out routes, although it did slightly slow down by 2022. I released my own multi-route FVN in 2022, By Your Hands, and that’s the thing most people know me for. It seemed like this momentum would continue into 2023. But a few things happened. First, several linear/kinetic visual novels started development and were finished a few years later. 9:22, Lyre, and Undefeated were all linear VNs that were smaller compared to some of their more notable peers, but they were still sizable stories. While these VNs probably weren’t a response to the larger projects in the scene, they did show that VNs with shorter development times could become incredibly popular within the community. Yes, I know I already mentioned Adastra, but that was just one VN in a sea of much larger ones, and it seemed impossible to replicate Adastra’s unstoppable success. With more popular linear VNs in the picture, the idea of opting out of putting multiple routes in your VN was more palatable to the audience’s tastes.

The other thing that happened was in 2023, when Unagi started a little game jam called “MAY WOLF”, a pun on “MY WOLF”, which is a subgenre of FVNs that’s become sort of a meme in the community. The concept was simple: make a short VN (2k-25k words) that prominently features a wolf. The jam provided art assets for jam participants to use, with the intention that most would use them for their VNs, which was the case. But you could create your own assets for your jam entry. There were a few that did just that. However, there was one jam entry that took the FVN community by storm: Before You Depart. Despite being a very short kinetic 11k VN, it blew everyone’s expectations with its gorgeous art, emotional music, and touching story that made people cry. It basically told everyone in the community, “This is what furries can do in a month”.

After that, there was a gradual but definite shift within the FVN community from massive, non-linear VNs to smaller, tighter linear experiences. People stopped caring about the size of any given VN and more about the quality or appeal of them. The last big non-linear VN I’ve seen is Spectrum of Hybrids, and that was first released in early 2024, about two years ago. We’re seeing a lot more quality bite-sized games recently, both from game jams and out of them. What A Day That Was!, I’m Now the School Delinquent’s Lover, but I Want Out!!, A Thousand Yards, Ediction, Close And Distant, One Last Week, Depiction of Pleasure, Heavy Is Our Crown, All Under Control, IMG_1697, and so, so much more.

All of these VNs have come out in the past two years or so and have enriched audiences across the entire community. We only have these VNs because the community encouraged creators to work within a tight limit and showcase how truly capable they are. At the same time, we also got bigger projects that focused a lot more on production values than size. Under Heaven, Moontouched, Sweet Leaves, and several other projects. They have raised the ceiling on what furries can do in this niche, with better UI, better visuals, and better interactivity. Not to say that the smaller game jam-sized projects also haven’t pushed boundaries, but it’s on a whole other level with these larger projects. It’s hard to say how long these projects will become, as they are still in development. However, these VNs aren’t as non-linear as some earlier FVNs in the space, and developers are certainly more equipped to develop their games (I really hope this statement doesn’t age poorly).

Conclusion

So what am I trying to say? I think there are several things to take away from this:

• VN creators as a whole have become much less interested in non-linear stories. Sure, there are still non-linear elements to newer FVNs like multiple endings and different love interests to pick from, but the format of “pick from several routes early on, each having its own unique story” seems to be dying out, at least for now. And it’s completely understandable. Adding additional routes is an easy way of making your project’s scope go way out of hand. I can count on one hand the number of finished FVNs that have this exact format. For most people, it’s just not feasible. Another thing is that the benefit of routes is disputable. My take is that routes are supposed to enrich the greater story, where going through each route gives you a fully fleshed-out story that you couldn’t get from a linear story. However, without naming any names because that would be a bit mean, there are some visual novels that have routes that don’t add much to the story and could have used some condensing. I’m not saying that routes are dead, but they should only be reserved for projects that both need them and are fully capable of implementing them.

• Length doesn’t matter as much as people thought. Uniqueness, hooks, concepts, art, writing, and general appeal matter a lot more. People are just busier now than they used to be, and so they have less time to do stuff like read FVNs. Smaller projects make it so that they don’t have to fight so much for people’s time and energy. There’s still a place for longer VNs, such as Void Dreaming, being a recent massive VN, but the author should make sure they’re prepared to take on such a project.

• The entry point for newcomers has become wider, but it has gotten harder to make it big. With game jams happening multiple times a year, there are plenty of opportunities for furries to make their own small VNs and see if this is something they want to do more of. On the flip side, the standards for VNs are now considerably higher than they used to be. There’s a lot more competition now, and more VNs have actual teams behind them, so you do need to work harder (or smarter) to stand out in the crowd. In general, you first need to take some time to establish yourself before you get a significant amount of attention. If you’re doing this for the love of the craft and not for clout, this shouldn’t be a big deal, however. I believe that if you’re making FVNs, you shouldn’t overwhelm yourself with trying to win over people’s attention. Rather, you should just let yourself have fun and be grateful for all the positive reactions you get, while also keeping an eye out for good-faith criticisms.

• Game jams in general are just great. There’s a sense of community as you’re working on your game, and you get to see the creativity from your peers. Every VN gets at least a little exposure, with a lot of them having streams for every entry on their associated Discord servers. I believe every FVN dev should participate in one, regardless of whether you’re a newbie dev or a veteran.

• We’re kind of in a furrypocalypse (or Awoopocalypse if you prefer) where the FVN community is more segmented and decentralized. There’s no big FVN project that the entire community gravitates to. This is highly subjective, but I personally don’t find this to be bad at all. Sure, it would be nice if the community was larger, but honestly, I’m happy that I can find success in a space that doesn’t have much attention outside of it. Trust me, when you’re writing gay furries having explicit sex with each other, you don’t want just anyone to pay attention to you. I also feel like having a smaller community is more intimate and less tense, but again, just my opinion.

In short, a lot of things about the FVN community are changing, and that’s a good thing (for the most part). To be honest, I’m pretty excited to see what the FVN community will bring for us in the future. Who knows, maybe our expectations for a typical FVN will change dramatically in the next few years. Only time will tell.

I also want to clarify that this blog post is not meant to be a dig at older FVNs and punching down at them. I love those older VNs and all the hard work their creators put into them. I would not have been in this fandom if it weren’t for VNs like Minotaur Hotel or Extracurricular Activities. And we wouldn’t have gotten to this point without those older VNs. I’m simply pointing out that FVNs are evolving, and we shouldn’t let it go unnoticed. I think it’s interesting to see how our culture has affected the VNs that get created today, and it’s something to be appreciated.

I also want to take a moment to talk about how I’m in this precarious situation where I’m an FVN creator who’s talking about FVNs that aren’t my own and their creators. It’s generally recommended that creators not talk down about other creators in the space they’re working in. I only admire the authors and artists who helped make these wonderful VNs. I also want to mention that I tried to make this blog shorter than what I usually write, although it still ended up fairly meaty. Whether you’re a creative or just a fan, I hope this blog gave you a lot to think about. With nothing else to say, have a good day and see you later!

Greetings, everybody. Normally, I wait a month or so before I make a response to the results of any one of my surveys. However, I pretty much got all the data I needed in just a week, as I already got over 50 responses by then. For comparison, the last survey I did got roughly 35 responses in that same timespan. As of today, I have 69 responses (nice), which is more than plenty to provide quality data for me.

What’s not quality data, however, is that I got several duplicate responses that I had to delete so that the data wasn’t skewed one way. Unfortunately, the only way to ensure surveys made in Google Forms only limit one response per person is to require the respondent to put in their email address, and I’m pretty sure most people aren’t willing to share their email address just so they can fill in a survey about sexy furry men. Maybe when I’m feeling more serious, I’ll do that, but this should do for now. There’s another thing with the data that I had to deal with, which I’ll mention when we get to it. You can access the full results of the survey here and here.

This survey was bare-bones, all things considered. The only required questions are the multiple-choice questions, which consist of a question for each project I’ve shared, rating how interested you are in them, and then one question asking you to rank all of them. The rest were all optional long-form questions, and most people didn’t answer them, as you can imagine. Being straight to the point probably made it easier for people to complete the survey, which resulted in more responses.

Respondents could rate each project on a scale from 1 to 7. I thought I was giving the respondents more options by having a bigger scale, but all it did was exaggerate the gap between the lower-rated projects and the higher-rated ones, as people often picked the extremes on either end. In hindsight, I probably should have used a 1 to 5 scale, as I usually do, but oh well.

In case you didn’t take the survey, first of all, I hope you don’t mind the results I’m about to show you. Second, each question that asked how interested you were in each respective project had a picture related to the project and a description of the project. Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on anything. All of the descriptions are literally just abridged versions of the descriptions I gave on my New Year’s Eve post, and the images used for the new projects are the same as the ones in that post as well, with the images used for my established projects being the same images I used later in this blog post.

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, it’s time for the juicy parts. I’m going to do something a bit unorthodox by going through the projects that had the least interest first, before moving up to the project that got the most interest. I have analyzed the data and calculated the sums, means, and standard deviations for each project’s responses. The sum is basically all the responses added up, the mean is the average of all the responses, and the standard deviation is basically how spread out the responses are. The higher the sum and mean are, the more favorable the responses are; the higher the standard deviation is, the more divided the responses are. With all that said, let’s get into the results:

Tier C

These are projects that I’m probably not going to touch in a long while, and might not ever make it to the surface in the worst case scenario. It really depends on how long it takes to finish each of the other projects.

All In Love and War Remaster

Sum: 194

Mean: 2.81

Standard Deviation: 1.88

If there was any project that had to be at the bottom, it would be this one. Not to say I hate All In Love And War, it’s the visual novel that started it all. However, I agree that it’s better if I spend my time working on new things rather than revisiting old work. While I stick with my sentiment that there are aspects of the VN that I’d like to revamp, a lot of people like it in its current state. Honestly, it’s just nice having a time capsule showcasing my skills from 2021-2022 and seeing how I’ve grown since then, so not having a remaster isn’t a huge loss. Maybe in 2031, it would make more sense to do a remaster then. Time will tell.

Project Restart

Sum: 259

Mean: 3.75

Standard Deviation: 2.09

So remember how I can’t say much about this project, but it’s super cool, guys, I promise. Yeah, that wasn’t enough to interest people. I didn’t do any favors with the art I provided. While it does perfectly encapsulate the tone and atmosphere I want to go with the project, it’s not very appealing and doesn’t say much about what type of project it is. Other than that, I can’t tell you why it’s not that popular, even though horror games are super popular both in and out of the FVN space. My guess is that By Your Hands already fulfills that niche of being a dark and serious story set in a school with romance elements. Or they might be a bit fatigued by horror games. I don’t know. You might think now would be a good opportunity to say what exactly this project is about, but I still want to have this project be on the cards, so I’m going to keep it a secret. I’ll probably end up making this into a game jam VN, as there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in it.

Tier B

These projects are in a strange place where I could see myself doing really cool things with them, but I’m not motivated enough to work on them, nor is my audience interested in them enough to warrant me working on them. If there was a strong push from my audience for me to work on these projects, then I’d be more than happy to get my hands on them as soon as I can. As it stands, however, they’ll probably have to wait a few years before they can see the light of day.

Barachoda Bloom Continuation

Sum: 299

Mean: 4.33

Standard Deviation: 2.26

If there was any project from this list that I crossed my fingers would get a lot more interest than it actually did, it would be this project. Don’t get me wrong, I’m much more motivated to work on the stuff in the higher tiers, but that’s exactly the problem. I don’t want to leave this VN unfinished for so long. At the same time, there’s so much stuff I want to do first that the only way I can rationalize working on BB right now is if my audience were screaming at me to work on it more, and that doesn’t seem to be the case. Don’t worry, I’ll return to this VN someday, just not right now.

Cannon And Tank

Sum: 308

Mean: 4.46

Standard Deviation: 1.81

Being a project that I forgot about for an entire year, it standing right in the middle is pretty satisfactory. This is the second hardest project for me to develop out of this list, as it’s wildly different from what I usually do in both genre and style, and it would require copious amounts of art from me. It’s the project I have figured out the least, as I don’t even know if it should be a comic or a visual novel. Definitely best if I let this one cook for a while.

Tier A

These are projects that I’m probably going to work on a little bit if I get too tired from doing other stuff, and I have a strong urge to work on them. I definitely want to get them out soon, but it’s best if I finish the project in Tier S before I seriously knuckle down with either of these projects.

By Your Hands Features

Sum: 342

Mean: 4.96

Standard Deviation: 1.84

Oh wow. The thing related to the VN I’m most well known for, and most of my audience are interested in, is rated highly. Being serious, I get that there are a bunch of people who just want me to get By Your Hands done. I get it, but it’s like, it’s a collaborative project. I don’t just want to force Nemo’s hand to write the game faster. In the meantime, I can work on doing several things I’ve been meaning to implement. It’s probably not going to take that long, hopefully, but I do have priorities elsewhere. Expect to see new features being added slowly but steadily.

Project Everything

Sum: 347

Mean: 5.03

Standard Deviation: 1.98

This project and the By Your Hands features are closely ranked, making them essentially interchangeable. This project has the highest sum and mean, but the BYH Features have the lower standard deviation, so I have no idea. Anyways, I’m really happy to see this project being so highly rated, especially as it was looking like it had little interest early on. As I mentioned, this is a project I’ve been wanting to develop for years now, and I still get new ideas for it to this day. I at least want to work on creating the series’ outline and planning each part in the series. I really think that this project could be something special once fully realized. It definitely deserves as much attention and care as it could get.

Tier S

Okay, it’s no secret, this is the project I’ll be focusing on alongside By Your Hands. There’s really no question about it if you just look at the results.

Project Delusion Tax

Sum: 388

Mean: 5.62

Standard Deviation: 1.74

Yeah, I’m pretty sure the sketches of Derek and Gabriel having sex with each other didn’t influence the results in any way… In all seriousness, I already said that I was meaning to make this my side project for 2026, and so it’s very convenient that a lot of people think I should work on this project. It really works out quite well: People want to see more of the game, I have a fairly developed outline for the VN already sketched out, I’ve already started working on art assets and written a few scenes, and I’ve already got a bunch of ideas for the project. All of the planets are aligned for this project, and there are very few reasons why I shouldn’t work on this VN, so it’s time to get started on development!

Skipping ahead to the ranked question: The respondent was asked to rank all seven projects against each other. Unlike questions prior to this one, they couldn’t give multiple projects the same rating. The previous questions were more about people’s general thoughts on the concepts, while this question was more about which projects I should prioritize. There were a bunch of respondents who ranked the projects differently from how they rated them in previous questions as a result. I did run into the issue of people putting their answers in reverse. I even edited the question to clarify how to enter the rankings, and people still got it wrong. I had to manually fix the results in the Google Sheets, although they’re still reversed in the form results.

The order of popularity isn’t that much different from the results of the previous questions. The major difference is that Features for By Your Hands is ranked higher than Project Everything, now being closer in rating to Project Delusion Tax. If you consider that By Your Hands is already an established project of mine and that it would take a lot less time to implement some extra features to an existing VN of mine than to create a whole ass RPG, this makes sense. The standard deviations are also lower across the board, with the main exception being Project Delusion Tax having a significantly higher SD. I’m not sure why that’s the case. Here’s the data below:

Sum

Mean

Standard Deviation

BYH Features

335

4.86

1.87

BB Continuation

265

3.84

1.86

AILAW Remaster

186

2.7

1.77

Project Delusion Tax

342

4.96

1.96

Project Restart

236

3.42

2.07

Project Everything

301

4.36

1.82

Cannon And Tank

267

3.87

1.6

There’s really not much to say, Project Delusion Tax is still clearly what most of my audience wants me to prioritize on.

In addition to the seven projects I provided, I also included a question asking if they had any ideas for projects for me to work on. I got a handful of decent ideas. Here are some of them:

I’m a sucker for horror. And furry stuff. I had started writing a VN which in all honesty never will get put out there. A soldier goes to a country he fought in during a war out of guilt for killing someone with his bear hands (tusks? Hooves? Idk boar). Under the floorboards in his hotel rooms he finds a journal from a deserter claiming solders in his platoon are being replaced. The boar soon realized that the deserter was correct. mass graves with skinned people, mostly mammals buried in the forest, strange blackouts during the investigation where the boar is covered in blood and nude when he wakes up, and people keep trying to break into his room in the middle of the night. Spoilers, is the remnants of the human race wearing the skin of the townspeople to slowly retake the earth. Convoluted and stupid, yah, but might be fun to make or read.

Like I stated before, Im not the audience of most of your games, but I think that by following what you usually like to do, you could do a game where you are like a coach for a team, and you could be a small guy and the team doesn’t trust you and your hability and you will be gaining their respect, love and lust as the story progress, like they could see the coach taking a shower after he thinks everyone already went home and someone peeks and see he’s endowed and that can star their journey, I dont know, I just thing of what I would want and do the opposite so it can fit your taste better hahha

To be perfectly honest, I’d actually like to see you do something that’s radically out of your element. I recall that you wanted to make a metroidvania type of game, so those types of experiences would be really nice. Maybe low fantasy or urban fantasy?

I’d love for you to make a monster taming based vn where the mc can romance and be intimate with the beasts he tames and trains. I feel like that’s a concept you’d ace.

Admittedly, aside from the monster tamer idea, none of these interests me too much, but I’m glad some people are willing to share their creative ideas with me. To be honest, the concepts I already shared have gotten enough interest that it would probably be better if I didn’t think of working on any new projects for the time being.

For additional feedback on the projects, there wasn’t anything specific relating to the projects themselves that jumped out at me. I did get a lot of kind words, which I’m very thankful for. There was one response I got that I wanted to show you guys:

About BYH, I personally think you should focus more on advancing on the story instead of adding new features, maybe in the future they’ll be fine, but for now I think we’ve been waiting for so long for the story to develop, been waiting for over 2 and a half years for an update for Brendan, and Ill wait whatever is necessary, I love his story and all the character in general, I love EDHIPAC is amazing, I love both characters, the story is well written and the art is beautiful as always, would love to see more CG and maybe an extended version for the story that develops more the relationship instead of just one single date, Benjamin is gorgeous, thank you so much for creating him, the idea behind project delusion tax is also so intriguing, would love to support any of those projects. I loved all in love and war, but don’t think it’ll need a remastered version, it’s already good as it is, and it shows how you’ve been growing over the years. Overall thank you for your dedication on everything you put your mind on, it really shows how much effort you put on everything, love you and would love to see what you are planning for 2026, against thank you for everything, be proud and loud, love you

I got a lot of people concerned that I’m facing burnout or that I’m handling too many projects, which is very sweet. I’m glad you guys care about my mental being. Don’t worry, I will focus on two projects at a maximum for the most part. I’ll be fine.

Concerning what people said I did well, a lot of people said my art skills have been improving dramatically over the past few years, which is really reassuring. I also got a lot of praise for my writing. As for what people said I could improve upon, people also said I could improve on my writing, and I will say there’s room for improvement. I do want to become even better at what I do, so I can create truly amazing art. I also got a few that said the programming could be improved, which I will keep in mind.

The last question was free-form and asked if there were any final words. I got a lot of kind comments, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who sent those messages to me! I really appreciate it, and it does make my day. I’ll share a few responses that I liked:

All your ideas are awesome. I am not a fan of horror or gore but as long as it is balanced with more lighthearted concepts I am fine. I would like to see a VN like All in love and War but with a happy ending but that is my personal preference. You make VNs how you want. They are unique and wonderful storys with great characters and art.

Hope that you can find all that you need in this round of surveys! Good luck in all your projects, whatever you decide i’ll be here to see each story, maybe i’ll even see dwavern destiny in a list here someday! Att: a venezuelan furry

You’re very dedicated and passionate. Thanks for taking your vn work so seriously, it really makes everyone that thinks lesser of vns and vn devs look aa stupid as they should.

Conclusion

For 2026, I’m going to focus on By Your Hands and adding new story content to the game. Updates should be more frequent compared to the previous year. I’ll also focus on finishing up Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons and Farewell, Wanderlust. After those two are done. I’ll work on Project Delusion Tax alongside By Your Hands. If I’m really feeling it, I might work a bit on Project Everything or implement more features to By Your Hands. I might even do a game jam project this year if I feel like I have enough juice in me, but no promises. As for the other projects I mentioned, those will have to wait a little while before I can get to work on them.

I’m really excited for the rest of 2026. I think it’s going to be a good one. Have a nice year, and look forward to everything I have to offer soon! Laters!

• Added a CG to a certain scene in Day 4 of all routes.

• Fixed an error you could get in Day 4 if you picked a certain option in Day 3 of Vlad’s route.

• Fixed a visual bug where Kamil’s face didn’t align with his body when exiting the screen.

• Added the new songs from Day 4 of Vlad’s route to the Music Room.

• Completed the task of making all the ellipses consistent with each other.

• Fixed a visual bug that happens when you skip forward in Day 2 of Vlad’s route.

• Fixed a visual bug where Owen wouldn’t appear if you skipped forward in Day 4 of Owen’s route.

• Fixed a visual bug where the thumbnail for one of Owen’s Day 6 CGs didn’t properly crop.

• Fixed a visual bug where Vlad’s sprite wouldn’t display the correct expression depending on what choices you made.

• Fixed a couple of lines that were glitching out. Not sure if this change is noticable but thought I should mention it anyway.

• Changed the thumbnail for one of Owen’s Day 6 CGs to make it properly fit with the other thumbnails.

• Changed the thumbnail for Owen’s imagination CG to be consistent with the other imagination CGs.

• Changed the outfits Victor and Todd wear during Day 4 of Vlad’s route.

• Changed the song that plays when Victor appears during “Blood Sucking”.

• Updated Ren’Py to version 8.5.0. This shouldn’t create any noticeable differences at the moment, but it should make coding in the future smoother.

You can download the new build here.

It’s good to be back. Since I took a break for December, there’s probably not going to be a new build for the public in February. We should have a new public build in March, though. Look forward to it! Also, if you haven’t already, please consider taking the survey about what projects I should focus on during 2026. I’d really appreciate it. You can take it here. That’s it from me. Enjoy the new update and have a happy New Year!

Before I continue, I’d like to mention that I have a survey going on that asks what projects my audience are interested in seeing me work on. If you want full context on the survey, it’s highly recommended that you read the entire devlog. You can take the survey here. Now back to the post.

I’ve mentioned bits and pieces here and there, but 2024 was a terrible year for me. I don’t want to get into too many personal details since some of these details involve other individuals, but I fucked up. A lot. As a result, I spent most of 2025 acting very erratically and directionlessly. I lashed out at people who didn’t deserve it and said some unwarranted things that pissed off people close to me. I felt like I was in a state of constant belligerence, ready to snap at anyone in my way. That was all private, by the way. I did my best to hide it in public, but some of the cracks showed. For those who know me personally, I apologize for my behavior. To be honest, even I don’t know what caused my harsh words. I’m very lucky to have friends who have stuck with me despite everything.

Towards the end of the year, however, things started to look up for me. I made new friends and helped them out. I started to go back to how I was during 2021-2023. It was a painful process, but I think things are starting to go right for me soon. 2025 was very bittersweet. I learned a lot over the past two years, and I hope to use that knowledge to carve out better years for me. With that in mind, let’s take a look at all the things that happened this year.

By Your Hands

2025 marked the first time By Your Hands received a large hiatus. There have been times when the game had a month or two-month break, but never one that lasted over six months. This was not planned. Why did that happen?

Well, for one thing, part of it has to do with my behavior I mentioned earlier. Due to me feeling lost, part of me really wanted to branch out of the VN and do other things. I feared that I was only going to work on BYH for the next several years of my life. I also felt like interest in the game was dwindling, and that people wanted to see something else from me. And so, I decided work on other projects for a bit. The first instance of this was Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons back in November of last year. It was a fun detour, but it didn’t get the type of attention I was hoping it would have. Then there was Farewell, Wanderlust, which I released this year, and I had a lot less time for it than I’d like to have, so it ended up very unpolished.

Besides those two VNs, I also tried getting into other side projects that I ended up having to can due to issues I’ll mention later. This disorganization led to me not being able to focus on By Your Hands, leading to several delays. Another thing that happened was that Nemo got busy with his personal life and didn’t have much time for writing. And well, I couldn’t update the game without a script, so there was that. Finally, during 2022-2024, I worked myself and Nemo very hard into getting consistent updates. I felt bad for doing that, so I decided to be more lenient with updates. In that case, I overcorrected by not having any updates for several months.

For 2026 onwards, I think we’ll be aiming for a bi-monthly release schedule. Not too strict, but also not going to leave anyone hanging for several months. Due to the hiatus, we weren’t able to make much progress on the routes. Owen’s completed Act 1 was released to the public this year; there were only two days added to Vlad’s route. I hope we’ll be able to get a lot more done in the next year. Please enjoy Day 4 of Vlad’s route tomorrow.

In addition, I’m going to return to working on the commentary and guide of the game. I already explained on Patreon, but essentially, it was a lot of work, and I didn’t have a lot of motivation to work on it. But I will work on it next year if all goes to plan.

Also, we released the demo of By Your Hands on Newgrounds and Steam! After the whole itch.io fiasco, I realized that I needed to expand my horizons concerning the VN. Cover my tracks, so to speak. It is just nice having it on those platforms, especially Steam, for convenience’s sake. It will be annoying having to update on three separate platforms (four, including FVN.LI), but you just gotta roll with the punches. All in all, I’m really excited for what the future has in store for this game.

Other Projects

So if you have read either of my jam games, you’d know that they’re unfinished in terms of art assets. I also stated multiple times that I would update Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons with an epilogue and never got around to doing that. So let me explain.

I worked on finishing all the art assets of EDHIPAC several months ago, and I actually finished. However, I’ve been meaning to rework some of the game’s dialogue so that Billy is less of a strawman and the relationship develops more naturally. I consulted Nemo to help me rework all the dialogue, but as mentioned before, he was busy with a lot of other stuff, and I wanted him to prioritze on BYH. Plus, I wanted to update some aspects of the game, such as adding a CG gallery, a Replay Room, and updating its UI, and I just never got around to doing any of that. That’s not even getting into how I made zero progress on the epilogue’s script because I procrastinate so hard with writing. It doesn’t help that the political climate has drastically changed since last year, making it so hard to get back into the headspace of 2024 me writing the VN. I could just update the game with the art assets and do the other stuff later, but I feel it would be better if I could update everything in one big update, so I can finally wrap it up with a nice little blow and never have to touch it for the rest of my life. Since it has taken longer than expected, I will show a sprite of a character who will be in the epilogue. Here it is:

Gee, I wonder who this is?

That leaves me with Farewell, Wanderlust. I planned to finish all the art assets of the game, as well as polish a few things, after I was done with EDHIPAC, but I never got to finishing any of that. That's still the plan so far, so look forward to that. When I eventually get to that, anyway.

What Else Happened?

In a surprise twist of events, I managed to appear on a YouTuber’s video! Specifically, Nemo and I voiced a few lines in Agent of the Spade’s video. Okay, Nemo had more than a few lines, but still. It’s actually part 3 in a video trilogy he made over the course of several years. By Your Hands appeared in part 2 of the trilogy, alongside Minotaur Hotel and Tennis Ace. It was a lot of fun talking and working with Spade, and I really enjoyed seeing my work in a YouTube video. You can check out the trilogy here.

Another thing that happened was that By Your Hands had its first fan fiction written about it! Well, sorta. A character from By Your Hands appears in a fan fiction that has characters from several FVNs. Specifically, Owen. The fanfic is called Danganronpa: Mayhem of Bewildered Guests by GatoRon. It’s essentially a Danganronpa game in written form, but all the characters come from established FVNs. There are characters from Burrows, Minotaur Hotel, and Password. I haven’t actually read the entirety of the fanfic, so it might be spreading propaganda about the lizard people for all I know (this is a joke; it most definitely doesn’t do that). If there is some crazy shit in it, I will delete this section of the post, but I read the first few paragraphs, and it’s pretty decent. This might appear strange to mention, but it’s a sign to me that By Your Hands is slowly building up momentum into something really big, and that’s got me very excited. It’s only a matter of time until the Dr. Abraham X Wyatt slash fics start appearing (Please don’t actually write that). Anyways, you can read the fanfic here.

What Didn’t Happen This Year?

If you guys remember, I mentioned that I wanted to start making video essays earlier in the year. I even posted a script for a video on my Patreon. This never came to fruition for the simple reason that I don't enjoy recording my voice. I often procrastinate writing, but I at least enjoy doing it. Doing a recording session is just agonizing for me, as I have to worry about how clearly my words sound, my tone of voice, and if I'm pronouncing words properly. It's just a lot. Plus, I already have a bunch on my plate that I need to finish. I will still write blogs when I have the time, but I'm an entertainer first, commentator second.

What’s Coming For 2026?

I’m pretty sure I mentioned almost everything I’ll be doing for 2026 already, but to recap: I’ll be focusing on By Your Hands and hopefully updating the game. I’ll also be wrapping up EDHIPAC and F, W, hopefully next year. I might be participating in more game jams this year. I have two ideas in mind for game jam projects. It really depends on whether there’s a jam this year that fits the project I have in mind, how busy I am, and how prepared I am. I really want to make a jam game that’s just complete and doesn’t need further updates after the jam is over. We’ll see what happens.

Now, I want to clear something up. By Your Hands is a collaborative project between Nemo and me, alongside some extra help from others. This means that Nemo does effectively half the work for BYH. The amount of effort I put into By Your Hands is manageable enough that I can work on a second project simultaneously. I also want to go back to writing after not writing for any public projects for a while. For a long time, I was set on working on a specific project, and that was the project I was certainly going to work on during 2026 and beyond. I realized, however, that I don’t exactly know what my audience wants. I have a decent idea, but I never asked directly. I’ve always worked on what I wanted to work on, which worked out well for both me and my audience. Right now, however, I want to make something my audience wants. So, I decided that before deciding on what second project to work on, I’m going to conduct a survey on what people want from me.

The purpose of this survey is mostly to gauge how much interest these projects generate from people. The project with the most interest may or may not be worked on next, as there are a lot of factors to consider. And before you mention it, yes, I am going to factor in my personal investment in each of these projects. I'm interested in working on all of these projects. But this information would help me a lot in deciding what to work on next. Also, if you have any questions or want to provide any feedback on any of the concepts I mentioned, please let me know in the survey or in the comments of this post. Regardless, any project I choose not to develop next is always on the table, and I could bring these concepts back sometime in the future. And to reiterate, for the foreseeable future, I am going to focus on updating

Closing Thoughts

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to what the future holds for me. Perhaps that's not the right thing to say, considering what happened this year, but I'm really excited to work more on

We’re finally back, baby! It’s been a long hiatus; I’ve been busy with a number of other projects and life commitments as well. But now that we’ve completed this update, I have a kick in my step to work more on By Your Hands. I’m excited to hear what people have to say about this update. You can join my Patreon here.

I think I’ll try to focus on wrapping up my two game jam projects and then do stuff I’ve been wanting to do with By Your Hands for a while now. But that will be for later. Have a good day and see you later!

That’s right, By Your Hands can now be played on Steam. This may not mean much to you, but it is an important step in getting the game in front of as many eyes as possible, as well as safeguarding the game by expanding its reach to more platforms. If you have a Steam account, I’d appreciate it if you could give the demo a review and wishlist the game to help promote it. You can view the Steam Page here and download the demo here. You might be wondering where Vlad’s Day 4 is. The short answer is, we’re working on it, but unfortunately, it will have to wait until at least December. Please be patient. That’s all I have to say now. Have a good day and see you later!

Greetings, everyone! In case you weren't aware, there was a Nintendo Direct this morning. Overall, I liked it. There were some duds in it, but I think what they showed off was enough to make me excited as a long-time Nintendo fan. However, this Direct made me notice a bunch of red flags that could spell doom for the Switch 2 if Nintendo doesn't address them soon enough.

But before getting into it, I want to clarify my position as a Nintendo fan. I grew up with Nintendo, I had every Nintendo from the Gamecube onwards. I had a lot of memories that involved Nintendo and the only video games I would play were Nintendo games, with a few exceptions. I was religiously following Nintendo news on the internet when I was a kid in the 2010s. I kinda grew out of Nintendo in my 20s, but I still enjoy playing Switch games when I find the time. Nowadays, I consider myself more of a casual fan who just so happens to have a lot of obscure Nintendo knowledge. Did you know that “The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds” was the first Zelda game to have a “B” in the title?

Anyways. So because of this knowledge, I know a lot about the history of Nintendo and right now I see that it seems like the Switch 2 is going to repeat one of their lowest points in recent memory.

Going more into depth into the Direct, it's good as I said. There were a few blunders in the Direct. I don't think the tour game should be paid, that should be something that that everyone who owns the console should be able to experience so that they can learn more about the console's capabilities. It would be good if they had a demo, but it just seems like an odd decision from Nintendo's perspective. I also think that the Switch 2 editions being paid expansions leaves a bit of a sour mark. It's somewhat understandable for Super Mario Party Jamboree and Kirby And The Forgotten Lands as they add new content, but the other expansions are just resolution and frame rate upgrades, something that should be innate to the game without any paid expansion. It's at least better than having to pay full price for Switch remasters of Wii U games, and occasionally Wii games, you already own, but otherwise it's not a good look, especially with how expensive these Switch 2 editions are. The last point doesn't have to do anything with the actual content, but there was a part of the stream that froze and ended up cutting a portion of the Direct. Thankfully, the sections it cut off only showed off ports and multi-platform releases, but that was a pretty bad blunder regardless.

Other than that, the Direct had a lot going for it: We saw a lot of the Switch 2's new capabilities, including a new Gamechat feature that seems to have a lot to it; Mario Kart World looks like a lot of fun that puts in an interesting open-world twist to the Mario Kart formula; A new Hyrule Warriors game; An unexpected sequel to Daemon X Machina, a game that had flew by the radar for most people; A Deltarune Chapter 3+4 release date announcement, which was an absolute Chad move on Tobyfox’s part; Ports of popular games to the system, including Elden Ring; A 2025 release date for Silksong, although I think that was announced outside of the Direct; A new Soulsborne game exclusive to the Switch 2; A sequel to Kirby's Air Ride directed by Masahiro Sakurai; And a new 3D Donkey Kong platformer we haven't seen in over 25 years that looks fun as bananas. And even though I ragged on the Switch 2 editions being paid, seeing Metroid Prime 4, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom with increased perfomance is pretty awesome. All of this makes me look forward to the Switch 2 as a Nintendo fan.

But that's thing, as a Nintendo fan. But what about for the average consumer? The person who doesn't have extensive knowledge on Nintendo's deep lore. The person who isn't deep within the fandom. The person who played the SNES as a kid and decided to buy Breath of the Wild because everyone was raving about it for weeks on end. Are they going to want to buy a Switch 2 after seeing this Direct? Honestly? I'm leaning towards no.

Now I know what I'm saying sounds a little contentious, but hear me out. The main reason why the Switch 1, and the Wii before it, did so well was because of two things: they brought in innovative ideas that could sell themselves to even non-gamers, and they modernized their staple franchises that a casual gamer would be stoked about. In the Switch 1's launch year, we got Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, two smash hits that reached both old and new fans of all different ages. These games had so much hype during the lead up to their releases. Like, watch the E3 2017 trailer for Odyssey and try not to feel the urge to load up the game immediately afterwards. There wasn't really a game in the Direct that could generate the amount of hype as those two games could. Like, it's not hard to find a Nintendo fanboy who knows what Kirby Air Ride is, but do you think someone not as attached to Nintendo would know? Duskbloods seems like a big title for the system, but the issue is that the majority of FromSoftware fans are PC gamers, with PlayStation and Xbox gamers being the second biggest majority. Most of them aren't interested in Nintendo systems, considering the current amount of FromSoftware games on Nintendo systems is laughably small. It seems it will be overshadowed by Elden Ring: Nightreign. Donkey Kong can sell copies, but can he sell consoles? It seems like Nintendo is banking on Mario Kart World to be the killer app of the Switch 2, and it does look pretty impressive, don't get me wrong. However, I'm doubtful that it will be able to carry the system alone.

Like I said, the Direct was good. But this isn't just any Direct. This is the Direct that we've been waiting months for about a console that we've been waiting years for! “Good” just wasn't good enough. It had to knock it out of the park and it just... didn't. Now you might be saying, "Oh, but they're trying to appeal to the hardcore Nintendo base before appealing to the general public, so that they can convince them to buy the console." First impressions are everything and I think it was imperative that they made a good one to make everyone onboard with this system. Announcing the big stuff later on and not while the iron's hot is just a wasted opportunity in my opinion. To me, it seems like the system will struggle to generate and maintain hype for its first year. Now I will admit, it was a good idea to put in stuff that would get fans of Hollow Knight, Deltarune, and FromSoftware to talk about the Direct, so that the word about the system would spread further across the internet. I also do appreciate Nintendo announcing some more unexpected titles during an event a lot of people would be paying attention to. I think that's a big reason why Xenoblade Chronicles 2 did as well as it did. But they should do it alongside the big announcements that everyone will get hyped about. They fumbled teasing Mario Kart in their reveal trailer for the console, their big game for the Direct, when revealing the title in this Direct would have created a lot more hype.

You might be thinking that I'm being overly-critical and pessimistic, and you might be right. However, there are several valid reasons for me to be concerned. Right now, the economy's not doing great. The spending power of the average citizen just wasn't what it was eight years ago. The Switch 2 is pricey, at $449.99, and so are the games, with Mario Kart World being a whopping $80 and the standard seemingly being raised to at least $70 if Donkey Kong Bananza's price is to be trusted. People are in less of a position to be buying expensive hardware and video games nowadays, and such a dramatic price jump when Nintendo have been using the $60 standard for years now feels like a slap in the face.

Not only that, but the competition is fierce. The PS5 has been dominating the console space for years now. It's been selling more units than the Switch 1, it's cheaper than the Switch 2, and it's more powerful than both. Then there's the Steam Deck, the Switch family's mortal enemy. It's crazy popular with gamers, getting console gamers into PC games and holding the convenience of the Switch's portability with better hardware and a much larger library. PC gaming itself has also exploded in popularity in recent years, with games like Helldivers 2 and Black Myth Wukong drawing in an insane amount of players at blistering rates. While Valve doesn't have the marketing power as Nintendo does, so they won't reach the same amount of casual players as Nintendo, they've already captured the hearts of millions of hardcore gamers, diminishing the Switch 2's potential audience. There's also the rise of mobile gaming, which could be a threat to Nintendo.

But there's one other competitor that the Switch 2 has to worry about: the Switch 1. The original Switch had an immense effect on the gaming industry and its culture. It expanded the gamer demographic just like the Wii did and managed crossed over into more mainstream culture. You might hate me for this, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Switch 1 has the best library out of any Nintendo console: Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Splatoon 2, Splatoon 3, Super Mario Wonder, Kirby and The Forgotten Lands, all of them being critically acclaimed and commercially successful games. Even more niche titles like Pikmin 4, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses did better than people expected. It seemed like every first party title was guaranteed to be a hit. There was a game for everyone of any demographic to enjoy. Unfortunately for the Switch 2, the games might have been too good. Why spend $80 on Mario Kart World when Mario Kart 8 is a perfectly serviceable game with lots of content? If, or should I say when, there's a Smash Bros game for the Switch 2, is there any reason to play it over Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a game with over 80 fighters and 100 stages? I could go on, but even disregarding that, how do you follow up the cultural impact that the first Switch had? That seems to be the trend here. What's the point of the Switch 2? From everything I know about the system, I can’t give you a clear answer without getting into nebulous speculation. I'm sure we'll get at least a few good games on the Switch 2, but will it be worth the money? Can it compare to what the Switch 1 has to offer? It says something that out of all the Nintendo's upcoming titles for 2025 and 2026, the one that seems to garner the most hype is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, a Switch 1 title. It's more important than ever that Nintendo convinces its customer base that their products are worth the money and I don't think they've done a great job so far.

This whole situation reminds me of the Wii U. For those who aren't aware, the Wii U was Nintendo's successor to the Wii. While the Wii was an incredible success, the Wii U flopped for a multitude of reasons. It wasn't clear that it was a separate console from the original Wii, the library was both small and filled with niche games that only hardcore Nintendo fans cared about, the gamepad was too clunky to incorporate in games, and the marketing was horrible. I like the Wii U, I enjoyed a lot of the games that were initially exclusives to the system before being ported to the Switch, but even I know that the Wii U was an absolute failure. Not just finanically but culturally as well, as the console was seen as a laughing stock after all was said and then. After the Wii U bombed, the Switch came in to clean up the console's mess. Comparing the Wii U to the Switch 2, there's a lot of similarities between the two consoles. They both are direct successors to incredibly successful consoles; they both have complete backwards compatability to the consoles they're successors to; they both lack a strong launch library, although the Switch 2's is stronger because of Mario Kart World; they both have a Hyrule Warriors game come out before a new mainline Zelda; they have two options to buy from at launch, one that includes a game and one that doesn't; they both lack a mainline 3D Mario platformer and a mainline Zelda game in their launch year; and they both have a lot of third party support in its launch year, which in the Wii U's case disappeared as soon as a year passed in its lifespan. I'm not crazy for noticing all these similarities, am I? There's also the fact that ever since the Nintendo 64, every successful Nintendo Home console has been followed up by a flop. The Nintendo 64 was a relative success disregarding how the Playstation utterly outperformed it, followed by the Gamecube which was a failure, followed by the Wii which was a huge success, followed by the Wii U which was a bigger failure, followed by the Switch which is a bigger success, now being followed by the Switch 2 which will be…?

I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom here. But I'll be frank with you guys, between the high prices, the lack of an identity, the fierce competition, the lack of the cornerstone games we know Nintendo for, and the absurd amount of red flags that would make a love interest of a gay furry novel blush, the future of the Switch 2 looks pretty bleak. Need I remind you that Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, Super Smash Bros for Wii U, and Super Mario 3D World weren’t enough to save the Wii U? I mean, one difference between the Wii U and the Switch 2 was that by the time the Wii U was released, the Wii died out of popularity at least two years before, so the console had no momentum when it launched. The Switch is still popular and getting games long after the Switch 2's launch, so it will at least be able to ride on the Switch's success for a little while. Ultimately, I think the Switch 2 will do okay, at least do better than the Wii U, but it will only share a tiny fraction of the Switch's sales. What the Switch 2 needs are quality exclusives that make it stand out from the first Switch and worth the $449.99 price tag. Because right now, the Switch 2 is more like an overpriced Switch Pro or a Switch 1.5 with a few exclusives than an actual successor. I hope that we get announcements for bigger games later down this year, otherwise the Switch 2 will fail to leave a mark on people. I hope I'm proven wrong, I want this console and the company behind it to succeed. But until Nintendo can really turn things around, I can't in good conscience trust that everything will work out for this console. Well, you know what they say: hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That said, regardless of whether or not it will succeed, I can’t wait to get my hands on this system and see what Nintendo has cooking for us.

Anyways, that's it from me. Not what I usually write about, but I had to get this out there after watching the Direct today. I think it's important I get my opinions out there. We'll see what will happen in due time. Have a good day and see you later!

With Owen's route done, it's time for me to write another reflection. Owen's route was something I didn't expect would turn out so well, but after seeing the route finish its Act 1, I can say with certainty that it exceeded my expectations. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't thinking it was going to be bad, I just thought that it wasn't going to be as good as Kamil's Act 1, which might sound ironic for those who vastly prefer Owen's route to Kamil's. Kamil's Act 1 is a big hitter in terms of story, so I was worried how Owen's Act 1 would compare being developed right after his. But now his Act 1 is finished, and I think now would be a good time to see what went right. Suffice to say, I didn't have anything to worry about.

WARNING: COMPLETE SPOILERS FOR ACT 1 OF OWEN'S ROUTE.

Compared to the two routes that were being worked on before, this one didn't change much during development. Owen was always a shy, socially awkward, chubby orca who had issues with his parents and maintaining his emotions. And that's not surprising at all. The initial idea of By Your Hands was a VN that focused a lot on deeply flawed characters who couldn't quite fit in with society. Brendan's and Kamil's issues are things that are heavily looked down upon in society, and while it looks like they are able to fit in with everyone else easily, a closer look reveals that they aren't satisfied with their lives. Meanwhile, Vlad goes against society and chooses a lifestyle that intentionally offends the average person. Connor… I can't exactly reveal how he fits into this description without getting into spoilers, but needless to say that he has his own issues that will be revealed in due time. Owen's the only main character who is apathetic about how he fits into society, and yet his character best showcases the type of story I wanted with By Your Hands. Without him, the VN would be missing a part of its soul. He is an essential part of the game.

The development cycle for Owen's route was… something, I can tell you that much. A lot happened during the days I was working on his route. Like, whatever amount of stuff you think happened to me during that period of time, the actual amount was a lot bigger. I've lost a few friends, I've gained a few new ones, I saw people I cared about suffer, and I saw my country go in a direction I'd never thought it would go five years ago. It wasn't all bad, but I would be lying if I said that there weren't moments where I was hurting. I definitely changed as a person, in terms of my personality and way of looking at the world. The biggest thing about me that has changed is that I no longer want to make stories with the intention of saying something to the audience. Rather, I just want to make stories that connects with both me and the audience I'm engaging with. Part of me wishes I could return to the person I was at the start of development. I don't even know if people like the person I've become, but I know I can only move forward, and move forward I shall. That said, working on Owen's route and By Your Hands was a sort of stabilizer. It helped remind me what my life's passion was, and what I enjoyed doing the most. Making visual novels. With hot guys kissing each other in it.

There aren't any words to express how much I love Nemo's writing skills, and I think Owen's route doubled my love towards his writing skills. For Owen's route, I gave Nemo more freedom on what to write for his route, and man did he blow my expectations out of the water. If you take away all the character arcs in the VN, Owen would be my favorite character. I just find that his personality and chemistry are the most enjoyable to read about out of the entire cast. This doesn't mean that he's my favorite character out of the entire cast, but I like his interactions with Rex the most. I'm the most convinced that these two are romantically attracted to each over Rex with any other love interest in the game. Unlike Kamil, who had a considerable amount of detractors, Owen's more generally liked amongst my audience, with the worst usually being people being neutral on him. He is overall a likable character, and frankly relatable for most people, and the flaws we see of him so far are easier to sympathize with. It's no wonder why he's so popular with fans and I'm pretty satisfied with the fan reaction to him.

The side characters weren't as popular as the ones in Kamil's route. I expected people to like Gavin more but he's gotten a lukewarm reception so far. I've gotten some comments that he teases Owen and the protagonist too much, which might explain the reception he's gotten thus far, other than the fact that he doesn't have much screen time yet. I based Gavin on a goat character from GAB Shiba, you should know which character I'm talking about if you've read that comic, as well as my sister's ex, who left a large impression on me. Hopefully he'll become more of a notable character in later Acts, but we'll see. Charlie didn't get a lot of screentime, so there wasn't a lot of feedback to his character, but I did see some people complain about his characterization. He will get more screentime in later Acts, so we'll just have to see if people's opinions improve by then. Olivia got more positive feedback, with people saying she's a cool older sister to Owen. Surprisingly, Owen's dad, Oswald, got a lot of adoration (and thirst) from people. I guess people felt both sorry and horny for him despite him not having a sprite initially (although he does one have one now). Owen's Mom on the other hand… got recieved about as well as you'd expect.

I've been seeing some confusion from some of the survey responses I've gotten, so I want to clear the air. Yes, Owen is autistic. It was always the intention from the planning stages of the game for him to be on the spectrum, as it was a fundamental part of his character, as autism is for real life people with the disability. As someone who grew up autistic and struggled because of it, I wanted to tell a story that dealt specifically with the ugliness associated with being on the spectrum, as I felt a great desire to see that sort of story be expressed through a visual medium. I would go more in-depth into my struggles, but I think it's better if I let you figure things out on your own based on what I've said and BYH's content. Anyways, when I got Nemo to write for me on this project, I knew that this was the perfect opportunity, considering I wasn't confident about my writing skills at the time to write such a personal story. So far, he has done a phenomenal job. This is just the beginning, I hope to do this story justice.

I think my main concern for the game right now is how long it will take for it to get done. The pace the game is getting updates is okay, but it's going to take years for this game to get finished at this rate. And that's not the worst thing in the world, I knew that the game would be very large and would take a long time to work on. But I do wish that I could speed up development even just a little bit. I do have a few ideas on how to do that, but we'll just have to wait and see. During some parts of development of this route, I had moments where I wanted to work on other projects and I tried to sideline development for a bit. I did create another VN, Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons, but seeing Nemo write Owen's Day 6 gave me a lot of motivation to work on the game again and implement some things I've meaning to put into the game for a while. Hopefully, you guys are patient enough to see through the completion of this game.

All in all, working on Owen's route has been a nice way to pick myself and continue working on the rest of the game. Vlad's route is probably going to be more involved than even Kamil's route and Connor's route is definitely going to be worth the wait, so the extra energy will be needed. It's going to be a good one. This reflection is a little bit shorter than the last reflection because I had less to say. That's okay though, not everything I write has to be thousands of words long. I realized that I've been behaving in my own self-interest for far too long without understanding the feelings of others. After everything that has happened, I've decided that I don't want to hurt anyone close to me anymore. To those who don't want to associate with me because of my actions, I just have one thing to say to you: "I'm sorry". I've become a changed man, and now I'm open to whatever the future holds. I hope you guys enjoy Vlad's route as it updates. I'm really looking forward to seeing people read his story.

That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading and have a good day!

Hey guys! It is here, Vlad's route! I hope you guys will enjoy hanging out with this goth black vulture. There's not much to say, so here's the changelog:

• Fixed a bug where it would display the wrong name during for a specific line of dialogue during Day 2 of Vlad's route.

• Fixed a visual bug where a visual that wasn't supposed to appear in the side story, "Blood Sucking".

• Changed it so that Yousef faced the opposite direction in a certain scene in the side story, "Blood Sucking".

• Added a profile to a character appearing in Day 2 of Vlad's route.

• Made it so that going through Day 2 of Vlad's route would unlock a certain character's profile.

• Modified a line in Day 2 of the common route that only appears if you're on Connor's line due to the original line being redundant.

• Added four songs to unlock in the Music Room. You can unlock the first two by going through Days 5 and 6 of Owen's route and the other two by going through Day 2 of Vlad's route.

• Added a new CG in Day 5 of Owen's route that appears if you fulfilled specific requirements by that point.

• Added a new CG in Day 1 of Vlad's route.

• Updated Owen's Mom's sprite.

• Shortened the ringtone sound effect as I was getting complaints that it was too annoying.

• Changed the background of a scene featuring Brendan that appears in all routes besides Brendan's in Day 3.

• Added a few zoom in effects and a shake effect to a certain scene in Day 6 of Owen's route to create more visual intensity.

• Replaced a few music tracks in Day 2 of Vlad's route with new songs.

You can download the current public build here. If you want to read Vlad's Day 3 now, consider becoming a patron here. Otherwise, there's a lot to look forward to in the near future! I hope you guys are as excited as I am! Have a good day and I'll see you guys later!

By Your Hands

It's been over two years since the first build of By Your Hands was released to the public! It's been a wonderful journey so far, and I'm loving it so far. During 2024, we finished the Act 1s of both Kamil and Owen, although Owen's Day 6 has yet to go public yet. One thing I realized last year was that By Your Hands was that project that I tried to distance myself from last year, but I couldn't really escape it. I tried to distance myself not because I hated the project, but because I didn't want to be known for one project. I'm a creative, which means I want to explore as many ideas as possible. Not to mention working exclusively on one project for so long can burn you out if unchecked.

I've written down so many ideas that I want to make into VNs, but there's only so many hours in the day, and I'm simply one man who just got out of college. There was this one project I was working on that kept running into difficulties and ended up getting scrapped, which soured my mood for a bit. People want to see By Your Hands get finished, and starting new projects is going to get in the way, which is going to annoy my audience if I keep side-lining projects.

Initially, when I was working on Owen's route, I wasn't the most enthusiastic about working on it when I wanted to work on other projects. By the time I was working on Vlad's route, I was really pumped up, and now I haven't felt this motivated to work on the VN since I worked on the very first build. I will still work on other projects on the side, but By Your Hands is still my main priority right now. Hopefully you guys look forward to what we have in store.

I'll talk more about development of Owen's route when Vlad's Day 2 is public, but I had my doubts on how well it would be received before working on it. I knew it was going to be good, but Nemo's writing frankly blew me away with how he handled Owen's route, and the positive attention the game was getting was quite favorable. I'm now optimistic about how the rest of the route will turn out. As for Vlad's route, I think I'll wait before I talk more about it.

Again, thank you to everyone who has supported the project. Without you guys, we wouldn't have come this far. We'll make sure this VN will get completed eventually.

Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons

Oh boy, this VN. Initially, I was going to make this section its own devlog, but I figured I might as well put this into a large devlog. I guess I should provide some background to this VN. The idea for this VN came from watching a HealthyGamer video where he was discussing a story about how a middle aged man from the South had issues with erectile dysfunction. The cause of this was because he was having sex with the wrong gender, but his upbringing made it so that he just denied that part of him. I thought the story was funny so I decided to expand it into an entire VN. Internalized homophobes and gay conservatives are quite the taboo for gay men to be attracted to, which makes them even more desirable. I also recently got more into political videos, and so I wanted to involve some of the discussion from those videos into the story. I didn't talk about some of the more controversial topics though as I thought that would be too spicy for most FVN readers. So I didn't talk about gun rights, healthcare, abortion rights, or AI within the VN. Call this a test run.

I based part of the story on nanoff's Boomer's Big Date, particularly some of the story beats, as it's the comic that made me into a furry essentially and the premise was artificially similar. The main difference was that it's the older man who's more into the relationship in this story, while the younger man who is hesitant about it. I'm not sure if anyone noticed the influence, but there are certainly fingerprints from that comic in this VN. Originally, I planned to make this VN as a submission for May Wolf 2025 and Benjamin was originally a wolf. I changed him to be a bear when Novembear was announced. Unagi was searching for a project to work on for the jam as he couldn't make his own project for personal reasons. I proposed my project to him, to which he said he'll consider it before politely declining the offer, which I understood. Later on, he came back to me and told me that he wanted to work on the project for various reasons that I'm not going to get into. I accepted it, and that's how he helped with the development of the VN.

Now onto responding to the reception of the VN. First there's the positive reactions. Among those who liked it, a lot agreed that Benjamin is a great love interest. Even those who were on the fence on the VN warmed up to it after viewing the sex scene. It's good to see people enjoying a bear DILF. I'm also glad that even the people who didn't exactly enjoy the VN said that the prose and other technical aspects were competent, as I'm pretty insecure about my prose and dialogue writing. It was nice seeing people on the left who normally have a very negative opinion of the right still enjoy the VN. I think that's the great thing about fiction is that people can immerse themselves into a story and like characters who you'd not get along with in real life. I think the people who say that you can't write "problematic" content don't understand this fact.

And then we get into the negative reactions, because there were a lot of people who didn't like this VN. The biggest gripe people seemed to have was that Billy was a lot worse at arguing his points compared to Benjamin and this made it seem like the game was taking Benjamin's side. This complaint seems to come from the expectation that the game would depict both sides as equally good/bad. But like, real life doesn't work like that? Even if two debaters are good at debating, more often than not, one side will inevitably have the upper hand in the long run. And that's in a controlled environment. Here, we have a relatively young and asocial man arguing on the spot with a man a lot more experienced than him. Of course, it's going to be a bit one sided. And well, the point of the VN isn't to show that both sides are equal, but rather to show that some leftist young adults are unwilling to interact with people on the center and right and assume they're all racist, fascist bigots when some (but not all) of them are perfectly reasonable people. And this goes both ways, although it's not as obvious with Benjamin. They both have their own positions that slowly shift slightly more to the center by the end of the game and they're able to see eye to eye by the end.

Also, just because a character can't argue their points hyper-competently doesn't mean those points are somehow wrong. There was one review that said that I was promoting right-winged values, which… have you read my other work? I'm clearly a leftist. It's funny how many people complained about how Billy is incompetent at arguing when there have been exactly one person who actually made any valid counterarguments to any of the points in the VN. You can argue that this imbalance doesn't make for an enjoyable experience, which I can understand, this type of story is definitely not for everyone. This is the first project that focused primarily on politics and so I wasn't quite equipped with integrating into the story naturally. That is something I'll keep in mind for later projects.

Another complaint about the game is that the protagonist is too unlikeable, and I'll admit that he could have been written better. A protagonist who is stuck up and haughty but then slowly grows into a likeable person can work in a story. The problem with Billy is that he's written as if the story is 5 times longer than it actually is, so the VN ends right when he starts to become more sympathetic. I like writing asshole-ish characters, but I have to remember that I have to make the audience want to read about them, especially considering how long it took for Billy to show his softer side. I should have probably made his growth happen faster. That being said, it was a bit amusing seeing people complain about how unlikeable the protagonist is when they are even more aggressive on the whole "the right are all evil racist, fascist bigots" schtick than Billy ever is.

There were some other complaints about the VN. For example, at one point, Benjamin used the word, "tankie", which makes more sense for Billy to use as it's usually used by online liberals rather than old conservative men. It would have made a lot more sense if he used the word "commie" or "communist". I thought the word "tankie" was used by the online right because I haven't heard any leftist use that word. The explanation on why he knows that word is because he learned it through his son, but that's not explained within the game. I did screw up at that part. I also realized that I can't tell a joke to save my life. I played three rounds of RiffTrax with four other people the other day and I got last place in two of them. It says something that the funniest joke I've ever made involved the f slur. Hopefully, I'll be able to improve my sense of humor someday, but until then, I'll probably focus on other aspects of my writing.

Overall, while I'm grateful that there are people that enjoyed it, I definitely could have done a better job. It certainly ruffled a couple people's feathers. It's a shame, because I really did want to get to people's heads that this whole left-right dichotomy isn't helping anyone and I think it's hurting us in the long run. That there are problems with the left that we can't afford to ignore, especially considering the left is currently losing this culture war and they haven't figured out why. Instead, I ended up creating a VN that's simultaneously woke and anti-woke at the same time somehow. I would have liked to have continue the story of Billy and Benjamin, but it seems like fate has different plans. Ah well, there are always other projects I can work on.

I do plan on making on final update to the VN, but it probably won't be out for a while. It also wouldn't add a lot of content, although I would like to add an epilogue. I would like to polish the art assets and as well as improve some of the dialogue, however. Don't worry, it will be coming someday.

Barachoda Bloom

Oh yeah, wasn't there a project that I have that's not furry and that's currently on hiatus? What was it called? Cocksucker Flower? Jokes aside, unfortunately, I have barely worked on Barachoda Bloom in the past two years. The reasons why I have already stated: it's because I don't feel inspired to work on it and it would require a significant rehaul before I could work on it again. I swear it's not dead, just give it some time.

In Conclusion

I have several plans for the year. I do want to do more blogs and maybe even some video essays if I have the opportunity. As I said, I do want to work on some other projects when I have the chance, but of course By Your Hands takes the highest priority. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope I'll be able to accomplish a lot of things this year. Only time will tell, though.

Until then, see you later and have a good day!

Hello everyone, today I wanted to write another blog about Marketing. The first blog talked more about general guidelines on marketing, basically boiling down to how much it resonates with audiences and how creators should aim to create lots of projects in order to both preserve their creativity and be able to make FVNs their career. This time, I'll be going through some of the specifics of marketing as well as make it more palatable for more FVN devs. Hopefully this will be helpful for you guys.

Full disclosure, I'm not by any means a professional. I'm just a guy who likes to read a lot of blogs and watch a lot of videos on this topic. Some of the things I say here will probably not apply to every single one of you reading this. If you find something that has worked for you and isn't mentioned here, feel free to mention it and your experiences. This is to mostly serve as a jumping off point for those wanting to make their visual novel a success. I'd recommend you doing your own research so you can gather information specific to your interests. I’ll also going to upfront tell you to “do as I say, not as I do” but a lot of this stuff are things I've learned from my experience fucking things up. This blog will also touch a little about the actual process of making a VN but will focus on marketing.

DONT: WORK ON YOUR FIRST PROJECT FOR OVER TWO YEARS.

Probably the biggest mistake I've seen devs do in this community is make their first project a VN with a huge scope they can't possibly deal with, scope basically meaning the expected size of the game when finished. You will be stuck with a game that you have to develop for literal years, with the only way out being to cancel the game and all the time and money you put into the project will go to waste. And if you're just starting out, then the development time will be even longer. You might be three years into the project and say, "wow these early writing and art assets are pretty lame, I should redo them," spending even more time on a single project. Your best chance to be successful is by finishing as many projects as possible so you know what people want. So if you worked on a single project for years and it's not doing so hot, then you’re probably not going to see success anytime soon. Another thing is that most people don't actually care that much about size. (That's what she said) While most of the popular FVNs are large VNs, there are a few short VNs that have managed to be really popular: Arches, Before You Depart, and Clawstar Wrestling come to mind. People care more about quality than length.

DO: START SMALL

As I said, your best bet on being a success is having as many projects as possible. Your first project is probably not going to be a hit, but that's okay. The fact that you finished a VN gives you so much confidence and guidance on what to do, as people can provide feedback on a complete project instead of a incomplete one. I know you probably want to make a doorstopping epic with a wide arrange of side characters and an engaging plot, but actually finishing projects establishes your presence within the community. It also gives you an indication of what people want from you. My recommendation is to start with a game jam VN (May Wolf is specifically a FVN game jam, but other general VN jams exist), then go on to make a small VN that's around 20k words within 3 months, then another VN that's 50k words within 6 months to a year, and then you can make a VN of whatever size you want. One suggestion I'll make is that if you tried to market a VN but it's underperforming, then try to cut scope as much as you're comfortable with, finish the game as fast as possible and move onto the next game. It takes a LOT of effort to turn around a game’s failure into a success. You just can't make a person like a game. If you have a specific project in mind, but it's way too large, create an elaborate outline of it. Then create an outline based on the previous one but make sure it condenses only the essential elements into a small project. Make a project based on that. You can still make your dream project after you're finished with the small project, but now you're more prepared to actually handle the larger projects because you got the experience and skills from working on a similar project.

DON'T: CARE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is not as important as people make it out to be. Basically, if you don't want to use social media, you don't have to. But using social media will let you reach a broader audience that you couldn't have connected to if you stuck with just itch.io (and maybe Steam). Twitter is alright, but it's mostly just to keep your fans updated and maybe get interest from some Twitter people if you have a viral tweet, although the chances of that happening are very low. Bluesky is Leftist Twitter with a smaller base, but some posts on Bluesky can do better than in Twitter. Reddit is hard but can be worth it. The obvious subreddit is r/furryvisualnovels but it's quite small and they have a specific style they like which can be hard if your game isn't that style. r/bara_irl is a niche one I used to use and which got me some success, but it doesn't work for VNs with twinky/slender characters. There's also more general furry subs. You can risk it by going for a bigger subreddit like r/gaymers or r/gaybros but they will ban you if your post is too much like an advertisement. Plus, it's hard to convince normies to play a furry visual novel. No matter what sub you pick, posts on Reddit should be posts you'd expect on Reddit. TikTok is an option surprisingly enough. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but remember no sexually explicit content on TikTok. You can still post about an adult VN on TikTok as long as your videos aren't anything that would get your account deleted. Be open about creating new accounts to get the most mileage out of the app. There's Telegram which I don't have any knowledge of, so I can't say anything about that. Finally there’s Discord. I really like Discord but I wouldn't recommend making a discord server until you have a build out. You'll also need mods if you're going to make one. Again, don't make one if you don't like Discord or you just don't want to manage one, but the benefits are that they can turn casual fans into super fans.

DO: NETWORK WITH OTHER CREATORS

You should get involved with the community. You want people to know your VN exists and once you start sharing it around, they'll start talking about it and show it to their friends and other parts of the community. Doesn't even have to be the FVN community, it could be the wider furry community, although obviously FVN readers are more likely to read your FVN. Most importantly, don't be afraid to interact with other FVN devs. They have their own audiences and if they like your stuff, they'll share it with their fans. The easiest way to befriend them is make fanart or fanfics of their work. People love it when they see fanwork of their stuff. Only do that if you're actually a fan of them, however. Otherwise, just be honest and be nice. Regardless, don't force anything to happen. They have their own lives and if your VN doesn't interest them, so be it. It's a lot of work, but it can be worth it if you know what you're doing. You can connect to other people through discord servers, telegram, forums, and social media.

DON'T: BE COMPLETELY ORIGINAL

Don't get too caught up with the wording of this one. It's hard to be attracted to a game that has nothing familiar to the average FVN reader. People generally want the same thing but different. Devs often fixate on being as different as possible, but that might alienate people, especially if it goes against their expectations. Don't be afraid of being too similar to another VN as long as you have a least one thing that makes you stand out from the rest. If you're too similar to another game, then no one will want to read your VN when they have the original. Keep in mind, the thing that differentiates you from the VN you're basing yourself on doesn't have to be anything crazy. It could literally be something as simple as a setting change or a perspective switch. And you're also making a FVN. Use that to your advantage and make something like “Star Wars but furry and gay” or “Indiana Jones but furry and gay”. I'm going to borrow some advice from another person: if you want to really increase your chances of succeeding, your VN should be a third familiar, a third improved, and a third original. Have something striking and never seen before, but ground it with things the player is likely to know beforehand.

DO: KNOW WHO YOU'RE APPEALING TO

General speaking, your VN probably isn't going to appeal to everyone. Someone who likes cozy slice of life visual novels probably isn't going to enjoy your horror game. That said, the FVN community is surprisingly omnivorous. From my own experience from looking at survey responses and collections, a lot of FVN readers read a whole variety of VNs from several different genres, so this isn't too important, but it's still better to target people who like things similar to your VN. Now here is the part where I go list out the latest and hottest trends in the FVN community right now, but there really aren't any trends. The most popular VNs vary from contemporary romance, to psychological horror, to fantasy, to sci fi, to psychological horror romance, to fantasy romance, to sci fi romance, to urban fantasy, to psychological horror sci fi romance-you get the point. The only thing I know for certain is that wolves are really popular right now. But from what I've seen, what's more important is having a distinct and appealing style in both writing and art. On that note, here's the general expectations audiences have for the typical FVN:

• That most of the major characters are anthro characters. There can be human characters (and one can even be the protagonist) but the reader should be made aware of this early on.

• The cast are mostly queer males. Straight characters and female characters can be major characters but they tend to only make up a small portion of the cast.

• The game is free but you can support them on Patreon for early access of builds and other potential benefits.

• The VN has multiple routes and the player can make several choices. Describing your novel as a kinetic novel indicates there are no choices or branches in your story. Describing it as linear indicates there are no major branches but possible choices.

• The VN has character art and CGs (AKA special illustrations for certain events). Additionally, they're 2D and drawn by a human (occasionally multiple humans). 3D art being used for either character art or CGs and any AI art tend to cause a negative reaction from readers.

• The game contains sexually explicit scenes at some point in the game. At least one involves the protagonist in some way.

• The protagonist is a young adult (18-30) and is relatable to the reader. (So introverted and horny)

There are some other things, but these are stuff that you're probably going to need to know when making your VN. If your game has anything that goes against any of these things, make sure you clear that up through either screenshots or the description on the game page. If your game is too divergent from these expectations, maybe consider that the FVN community isn't your target audience and try marketing it to a different demographic. This is an issue Gods of Savvarah faced as the creator labeled it as a furry visual novel despite a large portion of the main cast being humans and not really having the hallmarks of an FVN (although Part 1 actually did okay, it was simply that the budget of the game ballooned to an absurd amount).

As for demographic, an average FVN reader is typically a young adult (18-30), male, gay, single (this is not meant to be an insult that's just usually how it is), at least left-leaning, within the lower end of middle class income, and likes anime and video games. Due to a lot of FVNs being free and being on itch.io, there's also a lot of variety of countries fans can come from, although most of them are American. That's the type of person you're looking to satisfy.

DON'T: USE UGLY SPECIES

A unique thing about FVNs are the species of the characters can change the appeal of the VN. A wolf character is going to have an easier time collecting fans than a blobfish. People meme about furries being basic and FVNs having a lot of wolves, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just because the cast are wolves doesn't mean that the story or setting can't be interesting. At the same time, don't be afraid of having other animals as characters. Other species have their own fans so if you want your cast to be scalies, you'll be sure to find an audience for your VN. It's just that, you're more likely to gather a wider audience with canines and/or felines in your cast.

DO: HONE IN ON YOUR NICHE

Alternatively, you can hone in on a specific kink that people like and do everything you can to get people into that kink to read your VN. Spoil them, because they've been underserved when it comes to media and they will eat up everything you'll have to offer. This is what Sex Drive did towards people with the trucker kink. And I don’t just mean sexual kinks, I mean any niche that’s been underrepresented in the market. You are probably aware of a few, so don’t be afraid of leaning into it and figuring out what people in that niche want.

DON'T: PAY FOR ADVERTISING

Advertising is basically not an option for sexually explicit games. You can advertise on sites like e621 or furaffinity but ultimately it's not something you should worry too much about. If your VN isn't adult, then the best advertising you can pay for are Facebook ads and Reddit ads.

DO: KNOCK IT OUT OF THE PARK WITH YOUR FIRST BUILD

Now most FVNs tend to release builds while it's in development. The first build you release to the public is the most important one as that's what will inform people's opinions of your game. If you have a meh first build, it doesn't matter how good your second build is because people lost interest with the first one and it's harder to convince people to give something they don't like another chance rather than to convince them to try something they've never touched before. You can still turn things around, but don’t bet on it happening. My recommendation is to have the first build be around 20k-30k words, make sure you include the main hook in there, make the premise clear, and optionally include a cliffhanger at the end of the build. You really want to knock it out of the park with your first build.

DON'T: IGNORE FEEDBACK

Listen to feedback. Make sure it's feedback coming from your intended audience, but listen to them. While not all feedback is helpful, you will get some that will really inform how to improve your craft and what you're lacking in terms of VN development. Also get feedback from lots of people. One person saying this or that character is too nice might make you turn a popular character into an asshole, which could have been avoided if you have listened to the 19 other people who are fans of the character. Only change stuff if multiple people give the same feedback. Surveys help father feedback, which you can put within the game itself, but interacting with fans also works.

DO: OPTIMIZE YOUR GAME ON ITCH.IO (AND STEAM)

Most of your visibility comes from publishing your game. I'll talk about Steam later but for now the topic is on itch.io as that's the most popular site for FVNs. When you publish a game on itch.io, you will get a bunch of visibility just from people finding out about your game on the site and the algorithm pushing that game to people through tags and attractive cover art. MinoAnon goes more in depth here, but you really want good cover art that accurately depicts what your VN is about, a variety of screenshots, tags that associate you with more popular VNs in your genre, and a description that says what your VN is about. A good tip is to use this format: “The [protagonist] is [doing something that describes their ordinary life]. Then one day, they [either do something that alters their projectory in life or something happens to them that kickstarts the story]. Now they [the general premise or bulk of the VN]. Will they be able to [something that suggests the vibes of later parts of the story without outright stating any events]?” It’s a bit generic, but a little creative flourish can spice it up. Make sure the description is not too vague as you don't want it to be something that could describe a different VN. The number of followers you have on itch.io is also really important as any devlogs and updates you post will notify all of your followers. One last thing to remember is to NEVER publish your itch.io page without a build attached to it. You'll miss out on a ton of downloads if you do this.

DON'T: MARKET EVERYDAY

You really should go in short bursts. You want to really hone in on marketing your VN when you announce it and do everything you can. After the launch of your first build, you can go easy and post like every week or so. Post about every feature you add to the game. For big updates, also make sure you go all in.

DO: PICK A MONETIZATION PLATFORM APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR PROJECT 

For monetization, the main default for FVNs is Patreon. The beginning of 2024 saw Patreon crack down on creators of specific kinks so there's been some talk about it not being the best for creators as of the time of writing, but I'll lay it simply. Patreon doesn't allow any of the following content:

• Non-consent/sexual assault depicted in a glorified/erotic manner.

• Beastiality/feral.

• Animal genitalia (even on anthro sapient characters) in erotic situations.

• Sexually explicit incest.

• Pedophilic content/Sexually explicit content depicting underaged characters.

• Forcefeeding.

It's been pointed out that Patreon creators who have made any of this stuff public, even outside of Patreon itself, have been banned, so keep that in mind. If your VN has any of this content, you can't be on Patreon. Your best alternative is SubscribeStar. I'm just going to assume you can use Patreon without getting banned, however, since it's simpler that way. Patreon is generally used as a service where your supporters pay you monthly while you update the game each month. The tier that gets early access can be either $3 or $5. $3 gets more people willing to pay, but $5 makes a difference in revenue so you can really go with whatever. You can also make tiers that get builds even earlier than lower tiers, but this isn't necessary and often complicates things. This type of scheduling works for some people but doesn't work for others, so choose if this is what you want to do.

An alternative to Patreon is selling the game outright. This hasn't been done a lot of paid VNs within the FVN space, but it is an option. People are outspoken about not being willing to pay for a VN, but there are a bunch of people who are willing. If you do this option, make sure you have a free demo that anyone can play, as readers need to see what your VN has to offer in terms of writing and story before they can decide if they want to buy it or not. This is where Steam is better than itch in this case. Yes, you have to pay $100 to get your game on Steam and yes, they do have a 30% cut of your revenue. But Steam brings a lot of visibility on your game if you play your cards right and thus give you a lot more money than itch.io can. That being said, it's still worth it to put your game on itch.io, I’d personally just focus on marketing the game on Steam and then putting the game on itch.io as you don't want to divide your audience's attention. There's a lot on marketing a game on Steam that is better explained by this video and a bunch of other stuff Chris Zukowski has made.

As for if you should go with the Patreon model or the more “traditional” model, it really depends on whether you’re more comfortable posting more frequent updates and getting constant feedback or if you’d rather keep things more closed doors and having the demo as people’s only playable build of the game before it releases. It’s really up to you. Steam also has Early Access which you can do if you’re comfortable with people paying for an incomplete version of the game that you will (hopefully) finish later. Early Access has a bad reputation so make sure to gain your audience's trust first if you do EA. If you do go down this route, however, make sure to treat the Early Access launch as your full launch and your 1.0 launch (when Early Access ends) as basically a big expansion pack.

And that's it from me. Hopefully you enjoy all the tips about marketing from me and that this helps you sell your own VN. Have a good day and see you later!

EDIT 2 (11/25/2024): The Smoke Room has been decanonized from Echo Project and George Squares will continue the project under a new name and IP separate from Echo Project. I talk about it more here.

EDIT (09/22/2024): I added an addendum at the end of the blog which contains more of my general thoughts on the situation but only includes one more minor update to the story. I also made a few minor additions and general improvements to the main blog.

On September 2nd, 2024, it was announced on the Echo Project Patreon page that George Squares, the then writer of The Smoke Room, has parted ways with the Echo Project team and that The Smoke Room will continue development without his involvement moving forward. To say this shook the FVN community would be like saying that the Sun is hot. This not only saddened a lot of Echo fans, as a beloved visual novel now has an uncertain future, but also confused a lot of them as well, wondering why such a consistent and competent writer for the team had been removed. Taking a look at what the FVN community is saying in sites like Twitter or Discord, however, will uncover a lot about what's going on behind the scenes.

What Is Echo Project, The Smoke Room, etc.?

For those who don't know, Echo Project refers to the collaborative team that creates an assortment of different furry visual novels, FVNs for short. Common themes for these VNs are horror and romance, as well as dark themes in general. Their most well known VNs are Echo, Adastra, and The Smoke Room, the last of which will be the center of this story. These VNs are the most popular titles in the western FVN space, garnering attention from all corners of the furry community. The Smoke Room is no exception.

The Smoke Room is a prequel to the team's first project, Echo, taking place in the same town. Originally having several writers working on the VN, George eventually became the sole writer of the project, editors not withstanding. Despite being a prequel to Echo, the tone and style was a lot different. The romance is a lot more prevalent, there's a lot more sexually explicit scenes, the horror itself is written differently, and there's more social commentary and politics involved in the plot. The Smoke Room quickly became one of the most popular FVNs of all time, with fanart and memes coming from almost every corner of the gay furry community. That being said, even though it received a lot of positive attention, there were also a lot of people who were critical of the VN, pointing out the absurd frequency of sex scenes and the weak horror compared to Echo's type of horror. A lot of these criticisms became directed at the author's writing skills, but there were people who criticizing the man not because of his skills, but because of his behavior over the years. Little did he know that this would cause the end of his career.

The Cienie Drama

The story starts with itch.io posting about Cienie on their Twitter account on August 26th, 2024. Cienie is a Mystery-Thriller VN created by ArmoredStranger and BenBinturong. It's a fairly new VN with its first build being released during New Year's Eve of 2023 (according to the itch.io page anyways). This was a big deal for the FVN community as itch.io is basically the hub spot for the community to find and download FVNs. However, itch.io usually doesn't promote FVNs due to how most of them are sexually explicit and itch can't promote NSFW projects. Because Cienie was SFW and labeled as such, itch was able to post about it, finally allowing them to promote a project from the FVN community. 

Look at how many likes and retweets it has. I haven't scrolled up a lot but I couldn't find any tweet from this account that has more likes. The closest are tweets for Married In Red, which was made by someone with over 70k followers, and OneShot: pancake episode, a spin-off of one of the most popular indie games from the last decade. Even then, there's a gap of at least 700 between those tweets and the Cienie tweet. For a project that's not even a year old in a fairly small niche, that's pretty impressive. Of course, part of that attention came from the ensuing controversy, but that's still nothing to scoff at. It's also a quality VN. I haven't read it, but everyone I've seen who talks about it has only said good things about it, including people on the Echo Discord server.

Well, everyone except one.

A day later, George Squares made a tweet expressing his disappointment finding out Cienie had no sexually explicit content, apparently being mislead into believing otherwise. He then made another tweet that day along with some posts on Bluesky the next day, making his own personal observations. He was also complaining about the VN on this topic on the Moontouched Discord server, Moontouched being a werewolf FVN that released about two weeks before those tweets. 

Now, these skeets (I'll use the word "skeets" to refer to Bluesky posts for the rest of this blog) on their own are misguided, hot takes at best. I encourage you to make your own judgement on these comments. But put together, George gives the impression that the Cienie dev team, despite being willing to mislead their audience into thinking they're making an erotic VN by making a bunch of pornographic promotional art, secretly hates NSFW, which is why they're making their VN SFW... which is stupid. The VN doesn't have sexually explicit content because the creators hate NSFW content and the creators retweeting erotic fanart and their own indulgent horny art isn't lying to their audience. He's also using language that often gets used in NSFW vs SFW discussions, which are always heated. Even if he worded these comments in a less accusatory way, it's still inappropriate to complain about a VN from a fellow dev after such an honorable thing like that happened to them. It would be like if you were on the Jimmy Fallon show and then your friend tweets out, "Man, there really needs more attention to people who aren't prudes."

Now, to play the devil's sexy lawyer, I can understand why he'd hold such a position. It is true that NSFW VNs aren't going to be promoted as much as SFW VNs on platforms that forbid NSFW content such as itch.io's Twitter account, which puts erotic VNs in a rougher spot. It can feel like erotic content in VNs are criticized unfairly a lot, especially from the perspective of someone who does put in a lot sex scenes in their own VN. Also, a lot of FVNs are NSFW, so it's not really weird to expect an FVN is NSFW by default, especially when social media for the VN retweets a lot of NSFW fanart. I can see why George would feel like he's been mislead by Cienie even if the dev team didn't actually do anything of the sort. That being said, considering the size of George's following, his skeets could have caused people to unfairly harass the Cienie team.

Rotshild took notice of these skeets and decided to make a Twitter thread about it. Rotshild is the editor of Cienie, as well as the creator of the FVN, Supernova. I've seen him talk on various discord servers and he's a pretty decent guy who's not afraid to speak up for his opinions. In this thread, he says that George attacked the Cienie team and accused them of being liars, while also explaining why they didn't mislead or lie to any of their audience. I do think he is being a tad bit overdramatic, but the points he makes are still true. This tweet blew up, getting over 770 likes and 200k views, as well as 106 quote tweets. Keep in mind, the tweet George made that got the most attention in that group had 88 likes and 2.4k views. Rotshild's thread really extended the reach these tweets got. 

I think Rotshild just wanted to call out George's behavior, but it came with a lot of attention for him and his team, unwanted and otherwise. If I was in that situation, I personally would have made a Twitter thread explaining myself without mentioning George by name. He also worded these tweets in a way that would have provoked George and his fans. However, considering he worked with Lesli-Chu for Supernova, who we'll talk more about much later in this blog, he might have gotten the impression that George was a very dangerous person, so he didn't feel the need to self-censor even if it carried consequences for him and his team. There are ways he could responded to those skeets without this amount of attention, but I don't think any of them would have achieved what Rotshild wanted to do. Also the third screenshot might have happened after the fourth screenshot due to the timestamps on the posts. This has nothing to do with the drama, just something I noticed. I couldn't find any of these skeets on George's accounts, so it seems like he deleted them. However, I don't know if he deleted them before or after the Rotshild thread, so it's hard to say what his intentions were.

George Squares then made a thread listing out erotic FVNs he liked. At worst, this is an extension of his previous skeets and a bit clique-y. I don't think recommending VNs you enjoy under a specific theme is toxic, though it is a bit unhinged coming after the Rotshild thread. There were a few points that were kinda funny though. Firstly, he mentions that Shelter and Demons Within contains AI-generated backgrounds, and that even though he doesn't support the practice, he still recommends them wholeheartedly. This just sounds like a leftist who knows he has to virtue signal to avoid the wrath of his fans, while still supporting the things he likes. He also posts an link to piracy site for Kemo Collesium. Good job supporting the devs, dude.

He then was apparently complaining on other FVN Discord servers, which is just wild. Bro really had the spotlight placed on him only for him to double down on his actions like no one's going to get pissed. There's standing your ground and then there's not reading the room because you crashed right through the wall to get in. I'm not going to join these Discord servers to get screenshots because I don't think they'd appreciate people who haven't read the VN joining solely for the drama.

I looked at the tweet history from both ArmoredStranger and BenBinturong. I might have missed something because those two make a lot of retweets. However, I couldn't find anything about ArmoredStranger mentioning anything about this whole thing. The only thing Benny tweeted that I could find related to this was this reply:

He's not really commentating on anything, he's just making a silly little reply to a silly little tweet regarding the drama, which wasn't that widespread at the time. Do keep in mind that I haven't looked through their tweets after August 31st, so maybe that has changed.

On August 31st, Rotshild made a follow up post with its own document, which further fanned the flames of the controversy. You can read the doc yourself, but in summary, it's mostly repeating what was said in the thread as well as providing even more enforcement on the wrong doings Georgie said, just with more details. There are a few more points made in it though. He makes a point that George's opinion that SFW works shouldn't engage with erotic fanart is absurd. He also clarifies that the Cienie crew never did anything to mislead its audience into thinking it had NSFW content. Also he provides screenshots of comments saying the VN has no NSFW and you could see the amount of down votes they got, which is hilarious:

He makes a point about how even if they did mislead any of their fans, which he believes they didn't, he says that to say they did it intentionally is very hostile. He then mentions that George has doubled down on his comments on other FVN Discord servers, which shows that he doesn't see the writing on the wall. He responds to some comments he got from the thread, saying that it's fine to express disappointment that a VN has no NSFW content, he just felt like George was accusing them of false advertisement. He explains the dev team's had no ill will in making the VN SFW. He also includes a section on his opinions about sex scenes which he admits isn't relevant to the situation. Throughout the doc, he makes it clear that he has no ill will towards people who only read erotica and singles out George Squares for his wrong doing. It's also very notable that he never once said to not harass George either in his original Twitter thread or in this document. I can understand why he wouldn't say that in the thread because he didn't know the drama this would cause, but he's fully aware of the attention he's gotten by the time he's writing the doc. There's a clear intention behind the document. I want to be transparent that I think Rotshild means no ill-will to anyone, I'm just discussing how this come across to the average reader.

Now, you might be reading all of this and think, "Wow, George Squares said some stupid stuff, but why is everyone making a fuss about this? While it's lame and pathetic to insist that a SFW VN is intentionally misleading its audience into thinking it has NSFW content, this isn't something that would reasonably get someone fired." And you'd have a point, hypothetical person I just made up. If making dumb assumptions about SFW novels was George's only vice, then George and the rest of Echo Project could have let the drama run its course and move on with their lives. Yeah, that's a pretty awful thing to do and he's going to make a lot of enemies, but it doesn't matter in the long run when he's making quality work with The Smoke Room, a VN that has a formidable following. Well, if only things were as simple as that. These skeets didn't stir people up because of what George said, or the actions he did, but because it was George "on cap" Squares doing these actions. He's someone who has made a lot of enemies for various things he's done but has never owed up to. When Rotshild put out that tweet thread, everyone who had a grudge against George saw his bad behavior being put out in the public and came out of the woodwork to share their stories, because they collectively decided that enough was enough. Georges^2 had burned a lot of bridges in his career, which ultimately lead to his downfall.

The Undoing of George Squares

The same day Rotshild posted his response, Orion made a tweet saying he'd been mistreated working under George and that he's been keeping it secret for two years. He said he couldn't keep it secret after seeing George harass a smaller dev team. He also said he'd be willing to go further into detail if need be. Orion has also been retweeting a lot of the drama surrounding George Squares. Orion is now the programmer of Remember The Flowers, the most popular western FVN that hasn't come from Echo Project. He's a prominent figure of the dev team, having one of the larger faces on their itch.io page. However, he used to do programming for TSR. I have seen how he talks in Discord and he's pretty kind, chill, and considerate of others. He also doesn't strike me as someone who gets involved in internet drama at all. In this interview by Nero, which was done around the time Orion said he'd been mistreated, (at the 3:05 mark) George thanks Orion for all the programming he's done and (at the 59:25 mark) mentions that Orion cried at one of the scenes in the VN. Now what could have happened to cause someone to go from that to sharing personal information that makes George look awful? Seems like their connection really soured over the years. After George got fired, I've talked to some people who had talked directly to Orion in the past. They said that while Orion never directly talked about George, there was a sense of bitterness from Orion to George. My interpretation is that he'd only speak up if George acted out of line one more time. George did, so Orion spoke. Because Orion was a well-respected creator with a big following in the FVN space, his involvement is what really made the controversy spread like wildfire.

Later that same day, the Echo Project Twitter made a statement apologizing to the Cienie team and saying that they'd be looking into the current situation. The wording of this is oddly professional for an indie group like Echo Project. It seems like even they didn't know how to respond, so they used the most neutral possible phrasing possible, which makes it end up sounding like ChatGPT wrote it. Being serious though, if I had to guess who wrote this, it's probably Howly. The wording of this is consistent with previous statements he's made. In case you liked big numbers, this tweet has over 2.3k likes, over 350k views, 184 quote tweets, and 71 comments. Yeah, there were a lot of heads turned towards Echo Project and George Squares. Needless to say, this caused a lot of unrest for the Echo community, with some people clamoring for George to burn, while others expressed worry that he was going to get fired. On the bright side, at least Cienie got more attention...for better or worse.

Some past allegations towards him had resurfaced as a result of this drama. This Twitter thread by HYENABLOOD, posted the next day, claims that George is transphobic and has a habit of cutting off people for not being cis-gendered men. This thread got retweeted by Orion, which is what caused it to garner attention. Frankly, most of it is just him blasting George and I have heard that this person defended some heinous actions by some bad actors in the community, so the information he gives us shouldn't be trusted. The reason why I'm talking about this thread is because one of the tweets near the end of the thread (posted six hours after the initial thread; Would have appreciated it a bit earlier, buddy) contains a Twitter thread with some damning evidence of George's behavior, so let's check it out.

This is a Twitter thread from December 13th of 2023 by Keenan Marten who claims to have been George's ex-boyfriend from 2019-2021. This thread doesn't include any screenshots, so we have take his word on it. In it, he reveals that George's very controlling in what he describes as "petty fights with McSkinny". He also describes him as being an ass to Redd, basically being the reason why he left writing TSR. He threatened to break up with Keenan in several fights and used his private Discord server to manipulate him and his friends into doing what he wanted. He told Keenan's friends to leave because he was jealous he had a crush on them, and he told Keenan outright that he'd be willing to kick his friends if he didn't like them. That's not everything, but that should give you the gist of what's going on. Keenan mentions this isn't related to the current drama despite the tweet being from December of last year. I wasn't sure about what this was, so I asked someone and they said it was from about a furry twitch streamer vagueposting about George which caused some drama. Keenan also mentions that he can get screenshots if need be, although I haven't found any tweets from that contain screenshots. Either way, this is all toxic behavior coming from George. I'm inclined to believe Keenan due to a friend of mine mentioning that he remembers Keenan being a mod of the Echo Discord server, who had George's support before disappearing suddenly.

And then we wrap back to the beginning of the blog where, on September 2nd of 2024, it had been announced on their Patreon that George Squares had been fired from Echo Project. I was actually surprised by this, I actually thought George was going to apologize for his behavior and try to move on with the drama. Him getting fired reveals a lot about how Echo Project felt about him, however. In any case, it's hard to figure out what's going on behind the scenes, but we can try our best. Let's go more into detail on this post.

McSkinny mentions in the Discord server that these are Howly's words, furthering my guess that the apology tweet two days earlier was written by Howly. The post mentions "irreconcilable differences between George and EchoProject over the past few years". There's a lot going on in this statement, so I'll save it for later. They used the words "part ways" to describe them firing George, possibly to try to not alarm their audience. They mention they're going to restructure the development of TSR. Until then, the VN will be on hiatus. That said, they said that they will have updates on it later this month. This doesn't mean they will have another build of the game, rather it seems to suggest that they will bring news on it by the end of the month.

I'll save the general reaction to these events for later. Right now, I want to from herespeculate a little about happened between Echo Project and George Squares that caused him to get kicked off. And yes, I will be speculating about a lot of things simply because Howly is being frustratingly secretive on exactly why they fired George. This is my personal interpretation on what was going on behind the scenes and while there are some public information I can base these speculations on, a lot of this is just my intution. If you don’t want to hear speculation and just want to see what happens next in the story, skip to the next section (A Split Public Reaction). From Orion's and Keelan's accounts, we know that George has had a habit of being controlling and abusive. However, we can dig a little deeper into the situation to get a better grasp on the situation and see what was happening with Echo Project. I think now would be a good time to start from the beginning.

Echo Project: Behind The Scenes

Echo Project consists of several writers: Howly, who worked on three routes of Echo, Adastra, Khemia, Interea, and Arches, McSkinny, who worked on two routes of Echo, Echo: Route 65, and A Role To Play, and Redd the Shibe, who worked on Echo: Benefits, early parts of one route of The Smoke Room and Glory Hounds. Then there's George Squares, who worked on The Smoke Room and only The Smoke Room. 

Echo was the team's first project, being one of the first FVNs from the Western FVN community to be created and one of the first to get finished, meaning that it had a long time to grow its community. Howly was the one who lead the project. He later met McSkinny through his friend Kudzu, the person not the character, and then decided to recruit him to help him work on the project because he liked his writing. McSkinny also wrote Route 65, a side story to Echo. Another side story, Benefits, was written by Redd, who'd later lead Glory Hounds. After finishing TJ's route, Howly stopped working on Echo to work on Adastra, and once Adastra was done, he created Khemia, Interea, and Arches, the last of which is currently finished. After Echo was done, McSkinny would lead his own project in A Role To Play. Of course, we're missing one project.

The Smoke Room was originally conceived by Howly, which can be seen by some of the main characters appearing in photos in Echo. Originally called 1915, this VN started production around 2017. It was with this project that George Squares joined the Echo Project. The VN initially only had three love interests with their own associated routes: William the coyote, Nikolai the badger, and Cliff the stoat. Murdoch the fox was an addition by George Squares, as he felt like the cast needed a photographer. The original plan for the development of the VN was that Howly was going to work on William's route, McSkinny to work on Nikolai's route, Redd to work on Cliff's route, and George to work on Murdoch's route. McSkinny left before writing started for personal reasons. After only a few updates, Howly left to work on Adastra, leaving George and Redd to work on TSR. Eventually Redd stopped working on TSR, leaving George as the sole writer of the project.

Continuing from that last point, there is evidence to prove that George disliked Redd, and harassed him out of working on TSR. We already have the Keenan Marten thread that touched on this. A friend of mine sent me these screenshots. I couldn't find them on the Discord server so either they've since been deleted or these are from a private channel. These were screenshotted by Redd himself, note how George’s message replying to Redd is highlighted, but I definitely didn’t get these from Redd. If we look at them, we can see George lampooning Redd for making tidbits about his own character in a pretty snarky way. And when Redd sarcastically responds in a sort of "dude, you're taking this way too seriously, just let me have my fun" way, George takes it at face value and says "bless", happy that his "friend" is complying with him despite his protests. Like why would you care so much about your co-writer making details about characters they're writing?

Here, Redd's explaining a bit about TSR's development, elaborating on the development of the game, which my explanation is based on. He then explains why he left (also spoilers for TSR I guess lmao). It's here where he also implies that he sees George as the more experienced one, which may or may not be true. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then George gives his own explanation for why Redd left. He then insists that this is factually correct and back-handedly talks about Redd's behavior. Why would he feel the need to do this? Shouldn't he trust his peer in explaining his own situation?

In this interview with Redd from 2021, from 8:00-10:05, Redd keeps on stuttering and has a nervous tone of voice when describing the development of TSR, including when he talks about George. He even apologizes for stampering. Listen to the rest of the interview. He doesn't talk like that for most of it. Now he could just have issues remembering what happened, but keep in mind, he was still working on TSR when that interview happened. He shouldn't have issues remembering what George's involvement in the project was.

Going back to the Nero interview with George, from 28:05-30:00, George mentions characters he enjoys writing. He lists out all the main characters (and Yao) with the exception of Cliff. Keep in mind that Cliff is Redd's character. I've talked with some people and they've said that the reason why Redd doesn't want to return to the project is probably because of all the harassment he's gotten from George that made him leave the project. 

It's little things like these that don't mean much in their own, but when put together, paints a clear picture on what's happening between George and Redd. Keep in mind, these are all public. There are even more damning evidence that showcases George's poor treatment of Redd that I can't show due my wish to protect the privacy of people involved. Everyone who was just a tad privy to this knew what was going on. It's not just Redd though.

In my digging, I found this tweet. I looked through the Discord server and found George deleting a fat edit of Murdoch's sprite and calling it fetish art. He's not fatphobic, but this does show his tendency to be controlling towards his own audience.

I'm going to share some private DMs that have been shared with me. I have gotten permission to share them by the people involved. The exception is Lesli-Chu AKA Hop-Skip. I'm not going to censor out his name because his social media accounts have been deleted, so I don't have to worry about people harassing him. Plus, he definitely would have called out George in public if he was still on the Internet because he already did so a few months before this drama happened. And yes, I am aware of why he deleted his social media, you are free to dislike him for any reason, but those reasons are completely irrelevant to the point I’m making.

Here, you can see that George responded to being called out for his bullying by banning Lesli. There's another message by this guy who explains that, prior to this incident, Lesli also called out bad behavior from Howly for getting into some drama, which I'm not going to get into for the sake of my sanity.

In these DMs, they are pretty open about George constantly having drama associated with him, as well as how many enemies he had. These were messages in 2023. If you were in the right place at the right time, you had a good idea on what was going on behind the scenes.

Let's go back to that Patreon post: "irreconcilable differences between George and EchoProject over the past few years". This is not something someone would say if they wanted to kick a writer out of their team simply because of petty internet drama. The team had issues with George for years. If there's any one point I want you to take from this blog, it's this. George "NSFW" Squares did not get fired because of some Twitter drama. Not because of Cienie. Not because of Rotshild. Not because of Orion. Not because of some false allegations. He got fired because Echo Project realized that George was going to drag them down if they kept having him. This might be hard to accept. He usually acts pretty nice to the average person on Discord servers and the like. He actually gave me some advice once upon a time:

How could a person like this be the toxic man everyone keeps describing? The thing is, the ugly truth can often be found beneath kind exteriors. He kept mistreating people and cutting people off because he wanted things to go his way. And he could continue to do this because he was allowed to. Because he was in the right place at the right time. The Echo team were able to tolerate, and even support, his behavior because he kept making good work that made a lot of their fans happy. Even if he kept getting into drama and making new enemies, that wasn't going to get in the way of their reputation and strong fanbase...until it did. Once the drama reached a critical mass, once people decided that they had enough, once it spread to the greater swarm of people and tarnished their image, they couldn't let him stay any longer.

And yeah... If you haven't noticed by now, this doesn't exactly paint Echo Project in a good light, does it? More specifically, Howly and maybe McSkinny. Redd got harassed by George, someone who had more control over the project they were co-writing, so it's hard to put any blame on him. McSkinny was responsible for dealing with George's actions, but I haven't heard any bad things about him and he does seem like he was trying his best. He was the one who stripped George of his mod powers on the Discord server. The worst thing he's probably done was inaction, but he might have had difficulty trying to do anything significant due to circumstances we don’t know about. That's just pure speculation on my part, though. So that really only leaves Howly, who I've seen have the most authority of this group. George is responsible for his own actions, but making sure your co-workers are behaving themselves and punishing them appropriately instead of mindlessly having their back is also your responsibility. We don't know exactly what's going on, but the point stands that they shouldn't have let George continue to work on one of their projects if he was going to behave like this for years, regardless of how many people were drawn to his writing. It's a shame that it took this amount of online discourse for them to finally cut him off.

And so, The Smoke Room's main writer had been kicked off the team, leaving TSR without a writer for the time being. Who's going to be the new writer? Redd already has stated that he's not going to return to the project. Howly barely worked on the VN, not to mention he has Khemia to work on, and McSkinny didn't work on it at all. They'll have to get a new writer, but not just any writer. Someone who not only has knowledge of the Echoverse, but also has the same writing style and quality that George had. They also need to have a consistent schedule. Considering the amount of money EP makes, anyone that EP recruits is going to have a ridiculously large stronghold on them. As in, they could literally be as abusive as George and get away with it as long as it doesn't leak out to the public like it did with George. Echo Project should be careful if they're going to recruit a new member. Ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't want to bother with the project anymore. It's been tainted by too many bad memories of George that its going to be hard to work on it in good faith.

But that's the thing, The Smoke Room was the VN that kept Echo Project relevant. Of the projects that haven't been finished, Khemia and Interea kept getting stuck in hiatus hell, while Glory Hounds and A Role To Play didn't have nearly as many supporters as TSR had. George's output on the project was what allowed it to become one of EP's most successful VNs. Without The Smoke Room, what else is left of Echo Project? Unless Howly starts making more frequent updates on Khemia, they have to continue to work on TSR in order to keep their fans. Regardless, it's clear that the structure of Echo Project needs to be rebuilt now that George is out of the picture.

A Split Public Reaction

Okay, now we can talk about the reaction to the news. As you can imagine, the fandom response was...mixed, to say the least. On one hand, you have people who were celebrating that George left, now that a person they hated has been served justice. On the other hand, there are people who were really sad that their favorite writer is no longer working on a VN they love. Then there are people who are somewhere in the middle, who understand why he left but still are grieving the fact that this happened to a VN they enjoyed. The comments on the post and the reactions from other places like Twitter and Reddit reflect this. The number of patrons they got dipped a fair amount as well. I know a lot of people are dissing on George's fans for siding with him, but you have to understand this: TSR was one of the biggest FVNs out there that captured the hearts of many. You might not like the VN, but these people love it. Since they don't know the full context of why he got fired, they're obviously going to assume that the drama was made in bad faith and his haters just made up lies to make him look bad, especially since a lot of these tweets don't have any receipts to prove this behavior. I'm not defending their actions, or saying that the people criticizing George are in the wrong, I'm just explaining why they'd behave like this.

A couple reactions I want to pick out is this fanart by Burrrnt, which expresses relief that George has left TSR. 

On the opposite side of the spectrum, is this meme that was posted on r/furryvisualnovels, expressing grief on the news. 

Probably the funniest reaction I saw was this comment where they suggested to make The Smoke Room into The Woke Room. I have a broken sense of humor. On the flip side, the most heartbreaking one I saw was this Reddit post that discusses how, despite being a huge part of his life, George was only part of the problem with Echo Project.

The Cienie team also got a lot of harassment and review bombing that they had to close ratings, which just sucks. I will say that while this backlash is undeserved, Rotshild was responsible for his actions. Yes, he just wanted to criticize someone who was bashing a VN he worked on. But publicly directing strongly-worded statements toward someone with a large following is going to cause the most unhinged part of that following to attack you and those you've associated with. Rotshild should have known the dangers this could have brought him and his team when making those tweets. Again, I'm not saying he or his team deserved the harassment, I'm just saying that's the way it is. It's terrible! I wish it wasn't like that, but those are the consequences you're dealt with when you do those actions and you can't pretend that it's not the case.

Not that the George stans are the only people misbehaving. There were also a lot of "gooner" and "coombrain" jokes made throughout the whole drama and like c'mon. Rotshild's document said that he embraces erotica and its fans, he just had an issue with what George said. This type of mockery of George just seems to be anti-porn attitudes disguised as virtue signaling. George was bad for reasons other than his fixation on NSFW, so let's not jump to the coomer label and potentially offend innocent people who also have a coombrain. And no, that's not an oxymoron.

But wait, aren't we forgetting someone? How did George Squares react to the news?

Well…

George's Last Stand

Yeah...On September 4th, in an unnervingly calm tone, he states that he's going to try to claim ownership of The Smoke Room from Echo Project. I call it unnerving because this isn’t something you’d expect something someone who just got fired from a project he’d been working on for over four years to say. That's just insane, he really is trying his best to hold onto this one project he got kicked off of instead of moving on. This tweet also doesn't allow comments, because when the Internet has decided that your time is up, and you respond by saying it's not…yeah, I can see why you'd do that. In my opinion, I don't think much will come of this. Even if he brings this to the court, there's just too much stacked against him for him to actually gain the rights to the project. TSR was Howly's idea and he and Redd wrote parts of the VN. Even after George became the sole writer, the art, music, and programming was done by other people. At most, he'd be able to secure ownership of the parts he did write, while also having to alter things he didn't create, including characters and names of settings. I highly doubt he will actually succeed. Even if he does, he's definitely not going to get the old artists who have worked on TSR to work with him. Still, I'd press Howly, McSkinny, Redd, and anyone else who has worked on TSR to screencap as many private discussions they've had with George in case the worst happens. 

Honestly though, him gaining ownership of TSR might not be the worst thing in the world. None of the Echo Project want to work on it, so they might as well give it away instead of trying to scramble to make something of the IP. The issue, of course, is that instead of punishing George like people wanted, they'll actually give him one of their biggest projects away for him to work on. He's not going to make as much money, but now he'll have full control over the project. I don't think EP wants that. Either way, George seems determined to finish TSR somehow. He said that in the Nero interview, around 1:21:48-1:22:42, that while he's sad about leaving his characters, he hates leaving things unfinished. He really wants to finish TSR his way. The possibility of there being two TSRs, EP's version and George's version, is pretty interesting. This is a joke, but if George does succeed in getting the rights to TSR, EP should make their own prequel to Echo and name it, "Echo: 1915". Regardless, the end result of this legal mess will most certainly be entertaining. And no, I am not going to update this blog with further things George has done concerning this situation. Anything in the world of law takes months to years to deal with and I am not going to sack my mental health like that.

I also want to bring up this now deleted skeet he made concerning Keenan Marten and Orion. Not only does this sound like something a defeated supervillain would say at the end of a story to hint at a sequel, but it also basically confirms that Keenan is his ex. And since he doesn't deny what they've said, this gives more credence to their words. Welp, I also wish them ample karma... because they've done good things and I want them receive good things. And before you ask, Orion did retweet a screenshot of this skeet.

Summary

Here's the TL;DR:

• The itch.io Twitter account posted about the FVN Cienie, which generally got a positive reaction from the FVN community due to it being one of the first FVNs to get promoted by itch.io itself.

• George Squares, author of The Smoke Room at the time, saw this and made a tweet expressing that he felt Cienie mislead him into thinking it had NSFW content when it didn't. He also talked about this on the Moontouched discord server and made a few tweets and skeets saying some hotly-contested statements about how people react to erotic FVNs in the community, which inadvertedly made the Cienie team look like they did untoward actions despite them never actually doing any of them.

• Rotshild, the editor of Cienie, noticed George's tweets and made a Twitter thread discussing how his statements were wrong and inappropriate while explaining that the Cienie team didn't do anything George insinuated. This is when the drama first started.

• George doubles down on his behavior on some Discord servers, insisting that the Cienie team was misleading him.

• Rotshild makes a follow up document in response to George doubling down, reinforcing his initial thread with more details as well as addressing some of the responses he got from the thread.

• Orion, programmer of Remember the Flowers, retweeted several tweets relating to the drama before revealing that he'd been treated unfairly by George while he was working under him. This causes the drama to rise into immense heights.

• Echo Project makes a tweet apologizing for the situation on George's behalf and states they're looking into the situation, further spreading the controversy.

• A Twitter thread made by George's ex resurfaces in wake of the drama, where he reveals that George had harassed co-writer, Redd, out of working on The Smoke Room as well as acting toxic and controlling towards several of his friends.

• Echo Project announced that George had been kicked out of the team due to "irreconcilable differences" over the years and is no longer working on The Smoke Room.

• In response, several of George's supporters started to harass the Cienie team, attacking them on the itch.io page's comments and review bombing the game. This caused the Cienie team to disable ratings on their itch.io page.

• Meanwhile, other fans simply expressed disappointment and confusion on this decision. What they don’t know is the full context of Echo Project's relationship with George and how his behavior, the controversies he's had over the years, and the amount of people he antagonized caused a lot of difficulties for the team and the people around them. Other fans celebrated George getting fired, viewing this as the rightful punishment he deserved.

• George then made a tweet claiming that Echo Project doesn't have sole ownership of The Smoke Room and that "negotiations are still underway", implying that he'll try to take back the VN so that he can finish it himself.

If you only care here to learn about what happened, you can stop reading now. So far, that’s all there is to this story. The rest of the blog will just be me giving my own perspective on this which is more on the subjective side of things.

Conclusion

​This whole situation is a mess. Twitter drama, Twitter threads, long-hidden grudges being revealed to the public, someone's ex getting involved, a public apology, someone getting fired, legal drama, it really has everything. I joked about George being a supervillain, but I don't think there's a clear good or bad guy. There's certainly were people involved who were a lot more at fault, but blindly taking sides isn't the appropriate decision here. It's up to you how you want to judge this situation. While there was some good that came out of this, this really is the worst outcome for everyone. Cienie got more attention, but that included negative attention which caused the team to disable the game's rating system. Echo Project got rid of a toxic member of theirs, but only after years of dealing with him and having their reputation deteriorated. The Smoke Room now has the potential to clear its bad image started by its writer, but is currently in a state of limbo, and isn't yet finished. And George finally got the reality check he needed, but he lost the biggest work he’s ever worked on and that wasn't enough to stop him from continuing his bad behavior. If George was still on the team long enough to finish The Smoke Room, then things could have ended more cleanly. They could have quietly kicked George out of the team and he probably wouldn't have minded since he at least finished a project he considers his own, and no drama would have ensued. Alternatively, EP could have kicked out George a lot earlier when it was clear what type of person he was. There still would have been issues with TSR, but they wouldn't be as severe because George wouldn't have contributed a lot and switching writers wouldn't have hurt as much.

But that's not what happened. George always made sure that things were the way he wanted, no matter how small. He'll cooperate with you if you fit in with what he wants, but he'll never compromise on any of his desires. What led to his downfall was that he burned too many bridges and never owed up to his toxicity. And it's the fault of Echo Project (not Redd, maybe McSkinny, but definitely Howly) for allowing this behavior to continue by keeping him in Echo Project and letting him lead one of their biggest VNs for so long. George was one of the most popular and successful figures within the FVN community whose list of enemies became larger and larger with time, and who couldn't continue his project without the assistance of several other people. This made him a ripe target for people to collectively tear down by the force of online discourse. It was inevitable that people would eventually say "enough is enough" and destroy George Squares. And when they did, the people who had his back to save him when he screwed up previously were no longer there, so now he's trying to scramble to claw back his creation. I hope Howly and McSkinny learn from this, and make sure that they prioritize the well being of both their team, their friends, and their audience over anything else. And I hope this serves as a lesson for you guys to maintain good relationships with other people in a community. You never know what someone will do to you when you cross them. And make sure to own up your misgivings, so you can actually become a better person in life. Otherwise, you might end up like George Squares.

George, if you are reading this, first of all, I am gravely scared about my mental health. Second, I want to thank you again for that advice you've given me. It definitely helped direct me in my FVN journey, even in just a small way. If you want to finish The Smoke Room, that's fine. No one's stopping you. But you have to accept that it's not going to happen in the way you want. You're stuck trying to avoid the consequences of your actions and are trying to get back to the place you once were. Once you learn to move on and accept things as they are, then you can truly grow as a person. I don't hate you. I would hate you if you did anything heinous to me, but for now I don't hate you. Frankly, the world's too chaotic to hate a random guy who writes gay furry porn. This is probably the lowest point in your adult life. I genuinely want you to become a better person. I know it's not likely, but I hope that my words reach you and learn something from this whole mess: Not everything has to go the way you want it to go.

I also want to point out: Look at how long this blog is. 

This all started because the itch.io Twitter account tweeted about Cienie. 

People are weird.

Closing Statement

I'm so sorry that I wasn't able to get this blog earlier when the drama was hot. There was just so much to cover and I kept getting more and more information. It was also extremely stressful because I was deathly afraid of how people were going to react. On the bright side, at least this means that I won't be getting as much attention than if I had posted this when everyone's eyes were on George. But if this blog does well then that means I'm bringing the drama back to the forefront…all's well that ends well? I originally wrote this blog before Rotshild posted his follow up tweet, and the whole message of that initial version was vastly different from what I have here. Hopefully, this blog explains the situation well enough for those out of the loop. I will say that I felt motivated to write this blog because I recently accused a friend of gatekeeping people from liking Echo Project by talking about how toxic it was to his friends. This… was obviously wrong and he had good reason to believe they were toxic. I should have trusted him but I didn't. I apologized to him a week later but ended up saying a bit more than I should have, which caused him to tell me he doesn't want to talk privately with me anymore. It really shook me when that happened, so I felt obliged to write this blog even if he thinks that it’s better to not get involved with this drama. I like to think of this as an emotional debt I have to pay, and I hope this satisfies that debt. Anyways, please don't harass anyone mentioned in this blog. Don't harass Rotshild, Orion, Howly, McSkinny, Redd, Keenan, Lesli, Cap'n, or even George Squares. Harassment is lame and a waste of time. If you harass any of these people, then you're just the worst of the worst.

In any case, I'm glad I got this finished. There were a bunch of things I wanted to mention but couldn't either because they intruded on someone's privacy I wanted to protect, or because it wasn't really relevant to the story. We might be seeing other people come out with their personal stories about George that will reveal more information about this situation in the near future, so it’s better to let them decide what information to share and when to share. God only knows what will happen, though. I definitely recommend you watch the interviews with Redd and George I linked in this blog, as well as this interview with McSkinny that I wasn't able to mention. They reveal a lot about Echo Project and the development of some of their projects. There's also an interview by Nero Valzer of the RtF devs, including Orion, which I didn't watch because it included spoilers and I haven't read RtF yet. Who knows, maybe it revealed even more critical information that is relevant to the story. Thank you to Cap'n who provided some of the screenshots of deleted messages and personal DMs with Lesli. And thank you to everyone who provided me information on this story and provided feedback on this blog. Recently, the Glory Hounds team announced changes to its development plan which includes more frequent updates, which is great news! Even though I kinda dunked on Echo Project this whole blog, I hope they get out quality updates more frequently and be able to fill in the hole created when George got fired. Let me know if there's any inaccuracies or mistakes in this blog, I want to provide the truth to you guys! Also, feel free to post in the comments any potentially interesting pieces of information that is relevant to the story. And don't be afraid to ask for clarifications on some things. Anyways, that's it from me. I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw George Squares again.

My one request for the FVN community is to make this a meme everyone keeps saying.

Addendum

Hello, it’s been over two weeks since I posted this blog and now I’m making a mini-follow up to this post. I’ve seen a bunch of different responses to this blog and I’ve been thinking about this blog since I published it because I felt like there was something missing from it. I still stand by most of what I said, but also, my opinions tend to fluctuate over time so while there might be minor points I will disagree with in the future, I did believe in them at one point in time. Originally, I was going to edit large sections of the blog and I did end up adding a couple of sentences here and there, although I didn't outright remove or change anything aside from some typos and incorrect facts. However, I decided that I wanted to leave this drama behind because it's just too much. I'm not going to make an entire follow up blog for the time being because I don't want any more attention on this drama. This isn't going to be organized so hopefully it isn't too hard to follow.

First off, I mentioned this before, but I want to stress that EP firing George is actually pretty shitty. There's the fact that they kicked off the lead of their biggest ongoing project after he worked on it for almost five years. He worked so hard on that project only for him to get removed from it. I'm not saying he didn't deserve to get fired, but that still must have sucked big time for George. There's also the fact that they were very vague on why they fired him. I already said that you'd have a good idea if you were in the right time and place, but if you saw what was posted on Twitter then you'd have a lot less of an idea on why George got fired. If you just saw what was completely public, then all you'd see was that George made a few heated tweets, started some drama, and then people threw a bunch of allegations onto him without proof.

This is a decision that alters the development of a project that has a very large following, many of those fans not even aware of the drama, let alone anything else George has done. The explanation for such a decision shouldn't be shorter than the itch.io page for the game. This should have been a thorough explanation that goes into the exact details and motivations of why he was fired as well as informing people unaware of the situation on what happened. I understand if they didn't want to reveal any personal information, but they could have done a better job than what they ended up doing. And like you can't just replace George Squares and think everything will be dandy. The chances that the VN will continue with the same type of writing George brought to the table is extremely low. There's a very good reason for people to be concerned.

Finally is the timing. I already said that they either should have done it either much earlier or after TSR was finished, but they could at least have the decency to not make this decision in the middle of the drama. Why not do it when things calmed down or even after the planned good ending for Nik's route was released? Instead, they made this decision during a time where people were at their most tense. This combined with the former point I made, was what really caused people to go after the Cienie guys and Rotshild. Because when the writer of your favorite visual novel gets fired for vague reasons and the only other clue for him getting kicked off is controversy that a random guy you weren't aware of before got involved with, you can who'd be the target of disdain. I'm not kidding when I said that this is probably the worst timing they could have chosen to fire George. Literally everyone involved came out of this for the worse.

Another thing I want to mention was that a lot of George's behavior, while not appropriate, could have been explained by what he had to deal with. George didn't cultivate an audience on his own, he joined a team that already had an existing audience. The Smoke Room is easily EP's most erotic VN. Echo had a few text-only sex scenes, Arches’ sexual content is very hidden away and is only suggestive, Adastra has two sex scenes, Khemia has one suggestive scene, and the other projects currently don't have sexual content. There was such a quantity of sex in TSR, that there would be updates that added more sexual content than all the sexual content in Adastra to the game. And not only does TSR have a lot more sex scenes, but it also has stuff other than vanilla sex. Drunken sex, threesomes, orgies, dirty talk that gets a bit degrading. Someone who played TSR after playing Echo and Adastra, VNs that are often the only FVNs someone would have played, might have been turned off by the sexual content.

Of course, TSR is not for everyone. Not everyone who liked Echo is going to like TSR. And yet, because it was connected to Echo, that caused people who didn't like sexual content at all, let alone in The Smoke Room, to be unreasonably critical to a game they were never going to enjoy in the first place. Like he was getting shit for being into hypnosis and I'm like, "who cares?". Let the man engage in his own kinks as long as he's not hurting anyone. If you don’t like something, then don’t engage with it. This isn't something you should bother people about. It's especially sensitive since George is a gay man and he values the ability to express gay sexuality a lot. The FVN community is one of the few spaces where gay erotica is respected and enjoyed, so hearing all those fans call him "gooner" or "coombrain" might have affected him a lot. I don't know what was going through his mind, God knows people have been complaining about me speculating enough times, but I believe that those comments were just his submerged frustrations made into fruition in response to Cienie. Just to be clear, he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it’s not hard to guess why he said those things.

I would just like to mention that the big mistake George made was talking about other FVNs in the first place. My mentor told me that talking about your peers in a way that doesn't promote or uphold them just isn't worth it. Words can have a lot of power, especially by those with large followings. When someone in the same space says something about you, even if they mean no ill will, that can affect the way people treat you, and that can be extremely stressful and anxiety-inducing. If someone says that about another creator, how are other creators in that space going to feel safe around that person? It just feels clique-y to do. And yes, I do realize I’m doing the exact thing to George, but I’m also encouraging people to disagree with me if they believe I’m wrong on anything, and I’m not probably not going to talk about other creators in this fashion from now on. Anyways, I personally wouldn't have done what Rotshild did, but I understand why he reacted like that.

That being said, I wouldn't consider what George said about Cienie to be a great offense, but more as a small blunder reflective of a bigger issue. Which is why it's kinda annoying when people overstate how bad this action actually was. Like if Rotshild didn't tweet about those posts, do you think people would treat those actions with as much seriousness? People are also overstating the power gap between the Cienie crew and George. Cienie got 250ish ratings in eight months before it had to close ratings. That's pretty impressive and I've also seen a healthy amount of fanart coming from the community. The Smoke Room obviously has a much larger fandom, but it's not like they were all religiously reading every single tweet George made. The Echo Project Twitter, the Discord server, and the itch.io were the platforms most of these fans were following with only a much smaller portion of people looking at George's tweets. What he did was still inappropriate, but the power gap wasn't as bad as people make it out to be.

I've been seeing people say that the Cienie tweets George made was the straw that broke the camel's back. This is true...but not in the way they probably think. George had his fair share of controversies before this, but all of them were either instigated by people with small followings, like Leslichu calling him out for something he did in the past, and/or were too unreasonable for most people to latch onto, like the drunken sex scene in TSR. Rotshild, however, was a fairly respected person within the community and he was calling out George for disrespectful behavior he shouldn't have done. Orion getting involved made sure the drama was widespread within the community. What makes this the straw that broke the back's camel was that there were likely several issues EP had with George, which made the controversy cause EP to sever ties with George. It wasn't so much that the controversies kept piling up to a tipping point, this was more of a growing problem that happened behind the scenes that spilled into the public eye with this controversy.

You know how I said I wasn't going to update the blog with news? Well...George Squares actually responded to one of the tweets I made about the drama. I didn't realize this until days after the tweet was made so it was fun wondering where the heck I got all this sudden attention. Thanks for the attention, George? I wonder if he's saying I'm making false rumors in the tweet I made or in the blog because it's like...I didn't say anything false in that tweet. "Claiming" doesn't mean he's lying. Anyways, he says here that he does actually own the rights to continue working on the project, he just doesn't own sole merchandising rights. I think he's trying to say that he's trying to negotiate with EP on where the monetization of merchandise should be allocated between them, which is understandable. George made a lot of tweets and skeets after he got kicked off, but I think this is the first time he has mentioned merchandise rights.

If we take this statement at face value, then yes, he owns the right to work on The Smoke Room. That probably means he's going to continue working on it? That still leaves a bunch of questions, however. If I'm not missing anything, why did it take my tweet for him to clarify that when people were reacting with much concern? Does Echo Project also have the rights to continue working on the game? If they do, how is George going to continue working on the game if EP is also working on the game? Could George monetize working on the game? And that's assuming George is not lying. However, I've been bullying George a lot in this blog, so let's trust his words in this instance. It's still going to be interesting to see what will end up happening, but it's probably a lot less interesting than I initially thought it was going to be. And yeah, I was doubting George way too much when I was talking about the legal issues. The truth is that it's a lot more complicated than how I originally implied it was and we can't make any meaningful assessment without more information about how EP handled the rights to TSR. This is another case where we'll have to wait and see what will happen. So I'm not going to speculate any further.

A fan of mine posted the blog on r/furryvisualnovels and the comments were made in very good faith and were purely healthy criticism directed towards me. In all seriousness, there were some comments that actually contained genuine criticism, like this comment made by ragingboniva, but most of them just didn't like it because it was long and I speculated too much. But hey, it's just water rolling off a duck's back for me, even though I don't usually get this type of attention a lot. The biggest criticism of the blog I got, however, aside from the fact that I was speculating too much, was that a lot of it was very against George Squares. A lot of the comments that support George have a bunch of upvotes while the comments that supported me got downvoted by a lot. And to their credit, there were parts where I wasn't giving George the benefit of the doubt when I should have.

However, my opinions about George have mostly remained the same and I don't regret anything I've said. I will say I do wish I was fairer to George. He wasn't acting the best in this whole situation, but things weren't exactly easy for him either. Now there were a couple of reasons why I didn't act nicer to George in the blog. While writing the blog, everyone I talked to who knew anything about him behind the public image of him either disliked him or thought he had it coming, so it was very easy for me to get into the same mindset as them and not think from his perspective. I also didn't want to cause EP, Rotshild, and the rest of the Cienie team to get any more attention than they were already getting at the time of writing. I wanted to make sure I didn't make them out to be antagonists. The final thing is that because Howly was so vague on why George was fired, I wanted to provide my personal interpretation of what happened that didn't involve the Cienie drama, which necessarily painted George in an unflattering image. You can decide if I made the right decision, but those were my reasons.

The main reason why I wanted to include this addendum was that I felt like the behavior of everyone involved in the drama, including me, felt off. I want to remind people that I still think George should have been fired. But the way he got fired was undeserved and a concerning sign of the community's attitude. We have a tendency to only uphold people with the right politics, the right beliefs, the right ethics, and the right behavior, because we believe that anyone who doesn't have all those traits will hinder the greater society. Any wrongdoings must be repented for or else they'll be exorcised by the community. The thing is though, people aren't perfect. They make mistakes, maybe they were tired, had a bad day, or were uninformed on the subject. People aren't so forgiving for those blunders unless they get an immediate apology. One too many missteps can cause people to get excluded out because, to the greater public, they deserved it. Judgements of people aren't based on nuanced assessments of their personal experience with the person, but a small string of key moments highlighted in bad faith.

So the best way to function in such a community is to...shut up. You can't be ostracized if you never say anything. I mean you can, but it's a lot harder. Now, I don't personally mind this. You shouldn't speak all of your thoughts and opinions out loud. No one's going to give you shit if you want to punch a kid as long as they're unaware that you want to punch a kid. If you really need to talk about opinions that are potentially controversial, talking about it with some good friends is good enough for most people. But for some people, like George, they don't want this. George wanted to express his own opinions to the world. He didn't want to keep them private. He didn't want to keep fearing how other people will respond to him. He didn't care about the potential backlash, he just wanted to say what he wanted to say.

That's why he didn't apologize. He believes it's not his responsibility for how others act. But it is his responsibility. You can dislike it, but refusing to accept it is only going to be the cause of your downfall. Not only that, but this isn't just George's audience, this is also EP's audience. If he was going to stick with EP, he had to take responsibility for dealing with their audience along with his. But he refused to do so and that's why EP cut ties with him. And this isn't unique to our community. I've seen people compare his behavior to what J. K. Rowling did, but a more apt comparison in my opinion is Lindsay Ellis. Lindsay Ellis was someone who cultivated a community that encouraged this type of "all sins must be repented" type of behavior, and she ended up getting destroyed by that very same community because she wanted her voice to be heard. She didn't want to take responsibility over her actions, which led to her getting an onslaught of harassment by her own audience. I think George is in a similar position. He was just not suited to the position he was given.

His fans are also tired of this attitude. They've seen cancel events where the worst transgressions were "someone said something that was kinda racist" and there was no sympathy from anyone involved. They're tired of people getting dogpiled for minor mistakes, of people policing others on how to act, of people joining the dogpile without actually assessing if this was deserved, of people making allegations without any proof, and of people losing their jobs because of drama. I don't think Rotshild or the rest of the Cienie crew should have gotten harassed, but you can't say that Rotshild was blameless, that he didn't do anything wrong. Rotshild engaged in behavior that these people didn’t want to deal with. They just wanted to enjoy what they enjoy without all this noise.

I don’t want this to come across as a generic “We as a community should do better!” but I really hope that you learned something after reading this. I honestly believe that we should be more careful about how we treat others in the community, even if they’re acting moronic. We should try to show empathy and respect for everyone within the community. Treat them how you want to be treated. Like there are some people in this community that I simply don’t like, but I still respect them because I have nothing to gain from disrespecting them. I try to avoid them if I can, but if I have to interact with them then that’s that. All actions have consequences and if you don’t take responsibility then it’s going to drag you down. Stick to your morals and do what you believe is the right thing, but understand that some people will disagree with you and you have to be open to criticism and honest discussions, not burn bridges and create echo chambers. Put yourself into solid friend groups that care about you and are willing to start conversations where you can think through actions before proceeding through them. And if you get harassed for something you’ve done on the internet or something bad happened that upsetted you, just step away from the screen and take a break from it all. I know you don’t want to hear it, but sometimes that’s the best thing to do when things become too much to handle. Or you can see a therapist if it goes into actual mental illness. That would be the appropiate thing to do in such a situation. I hope the community comes out healthier after all this, because it really was a low point for a lot of people.

And that's all I have to say, for real this time. Thank you everyone for reading this long section. If I ever do a real follow up, I'll try to be a lot more neutral and less speculative. As fun as speculating and filling in the blanks can be, it's better suited for more private avenues, which is why I didn't really share this blog around. I do hope I'll be able to interview some of the people involved so we can have an honest discussion about their perspectives. Again, we will have to see what happens. Have a good day and I'll see you later!

Hello everyone, today I wanted to write about something I've struggled with and have been fascinated by. Marketing. Most devs dream of a successful game and a good chunk would like to make it a sustainable job. However, if you're making a furry visual novel, then it can be extremely difficult getting the word out there. I know a lot of the community find business talk to be boring or worse, but I just wish to make the process easier and help you figure out what you're supposed to do.

Before we start, I’d like to make two plugs here. First, the Melbourne Queer Games Festival is currently accepting submissions. It’s an online festival that accepts queer games of any kind, including furry visual novels. Not only do they accept itch.io and NSFW games, but it’s also free to enter. Minotaur Workshop is also a partner and giving the “Emerging Game Developer” cash award to one of the entries. If you have your own queer game, I strongly urge you to enter before the deadline of August 23rd. You can enter here. Second, my friend is making an incest game about a rat who fucks his own dad. If you like that sort of thing, he just released the demo on Steam. You can check it out here. Now let’s get on with the blog.

Full disclosure, I'm not by any means a professional. I'm just a guy who likes to read a lot of blogs and watch a lot of videos on this topic. Some of the things I say here will probably not apply to every single one of you reading this. If you find something that has worked for you and isn't mentioned here, feel free to mention it and your experiences. This is to mostly serve as a jumping off point for those wanting to make their visual novel a success. I'd recommend you doing your own research so you can gather information specific to your interests. I’ll also tell you upfront to “do as I say, not as I do” as a lot of this stuff are things I've learned from my experience fucking things up. This blog was written with the intention to appeal to progressive working class and lower-middle class people. This is part 1 where it’s mostly about philosophies and broad strokes to follow rather than specific techniques to do. Part 2 will be more about stuff specific to FVNs.

What is Marketing?

In essence, marketing is basically everything done to promote and/or sell a product. This includes advertising, branding, and community. It tries to find a specific demographic for something and make people in that demographic aware of it. Basically, it encompasses a lot of stuff, but the important thing to remember is that it's what actually gets people to play your game.

Why should I market my visual novel?

When people start making games, people are mostly interested in, you know, actually developing the game and not doing anything to promote it. And that's perfectly reasonable, marketing is not an easy task by any means. However, games cost time and money. The bigger your game is, the more resources you're going to need. But if you have people supporting you financially, then you'll be able to have more resources to make your VN. It's also more fulfilling to make something that many people enjoy rather than making something only you enjoy. Also, marketing plays a major factor, but not the determining factor as I'll elaborate on later, in why games become big for seemingly no reason.

The first thing you should do is to figure out your goal with your project. Is this project just going to be a hobby? Are you trying to stay true to your artistic vision without any compromise? Then maybe don’t put much stock into marketing. Do you want to make a lot of money? Then don’t make furry visual novels and invest into something else. It’s a balance. You should consider how much of development should be enjoyable to you, how much should be dedicated to making a good piece of art, and how much should be focused on making money. The game launching and having 100 downloads on its first day would be exciting for the hobbyist, but the artist would be apathetic, while the business man would crumble. Setting a goal for yourself allows yourself to know what to expect and what to focus on. You can’t focus on everything, it’s just not managable. Figure out your priorities.

Not All VNs Are Hits

Now I'm going be upfront here; some works just aren't going to be a hit with people no matter what you do. 90% of your success is determined by the game you make. Sure, never making any attempt to spread the word about your game is probably a bad idea, but that doesn't matter if your game is so incredibly good that people are going to talk about it for you. Meanwhile, millions of dollars can’t make a bad and unappealing game break even. You can't force a VN to success, not because it's impossible but because no one knows for sure how to accomplish that. You have big wigs in fancy suits who specialize in coming up with shows and movies that should make millions and yet they still make duds. If they aren't able to guarantee success 10 times out of 10 despite their knowledge and experience, how are you?

Meanwhile, some guys in their twenties are able to make cultural phenomenons with only a couple of years of experience under their belt. There's just some people who have the ability to create hits left and right. Their success is basically pre-determined by what actions they partake in. People who want something and do the things to get that thing, will most likely get that thing. Now, if that "thing" is success, then how do you get it? No one knows! Half the path of success is practically invisible to most of us. We can point in directions where success is more likely, but it takes someone who is determined, creative, and resistant to set backs to get to that level. A person like that will eventually gain the knowledge and intuition into making successful works as an effect of those qualities.

You can get really far by just following trends and good practices, but even then it's not sacred. "Safe" and "low-risk" aren't the same as "guaranteed" or "no risk". What people want, especially within this community, are new ideas and fresh stories that are executed well, not "safe". With the furry visual novel space, it's a secluded ghetto as it combines two niches that tend to be ostracized by outsiders. It's really tempting to just stick to your own lane and never try to expand. Why innovate when we know what gets attention. Thing is, competition within the space is getting more and more crowded, where good VNs have a high likelihood of being buried. Adastra didn't become one of the biggest pieces of furry media of the past decade because it only appealed to people within the community. It had something that made other people pay attention, even if most of them were furries that don't usually read visual novels. Does that make it the best FVN in the world? Probably not, but you can't deny the large amount of appeal it has and how unique it was compared to its contemporaries at the time. Don't be afraid of not fitting exactly into the FVN mold people have come to expect and bring in new ideas.

Finding Success In Work You Love Creating

Ultimately, the most sure way to become successful isn't by becoming the most awesomest creative mind the world has ever seen, but to create as many works as possible. That means short projects you can make under a year. Occasionally, you don’t have create entire games to figure out ideas that pop off, but instead proof of concepts in the form of a piece of artwork, a single comic strip, or a blurb of text, and share that with people to see if there’s any spark. Your ideas, the projects you are the most passionate about, are usually the ones that are unlikely to resonate with audiences without adjustment or a lot of convincing that your project is worth it. The things large audiences want tend to only have some overlap with your passion. When talking about business you need to maximize output with a minimum amount of work. If a VN is a flop then finish it and move on. If it's a success, then expand on it, either by making a longer sequel or simply making it longer. If you want to work on larger projects that take years to develop (especially if this is the ever so present "dream project"), then either scale it down, do it purely as a hobby, or do it after you've achieved a significant amount of success. 

The only things you need to change about your projects are the length of them. Otherwise you can stay true to your vision as if you keep it up, you'll eventually either gain a following who follows you for your unique style or you'll create a hit that blows you out of the water. Now, that's an option if you want to stay (mostly) true to your creative vision, but you can also prioritize serving an audience and creating stories that a specific niche would want to see. Obviously, you should still enjoy what you create, why would you be making a furry visual novel if you didn't, but if you want to be super-duper business-centric, then honing in on a specific (but not necessarily small) audience and bringing them what they want will probably give you the most success. 

More importantly, your VN should bring in new ideas and execute them well. Going super marketing-mode, if a VN has an "eh" reaction, but there were some parts that people liked, don't abandon those ideas and instead try to gather aspects that people liked and turn them into something new yet still holding some of that appeal. Or you can create something completely different in hopes that things fare better. Remember, you should use the experience you've gained from making these VNs to create better, more appealing VNs in the future.

Community

Another important thing is getting involved in the community. They say that it's not what you know, but who you know that brings you success, and for good reason. Most of the really popular VNs from last year, like Cleaved or Devil's Gambit, were worked on by either well-established people in the community, or people who had connections with the first group. Having the support of someone really popular will bring allow you to bring yourself to the forefront faster. You might find it unfair that this is the case, but it is what it is and there's nothing stopping you from becoming known by the bigger creators.

You could just directly contact them and try to become friends with them, but understand that they might not be open to talk to random strangers and that it's going to take a lot of effort for anything to come out of it beyond them retweeting a post about your VN. Another thing is to work for other VNs, either for free or as a paid side gig. Obviously, you want to work on your own VN first, but working on other VNs will help you establish you within the community and let you become known. Most projects would love an extra pair of hands, whether they know it or not. You will then show off how competent your skills are to more eyes. There's not going to be a lot of benefit at first, but as you accumulate a portfolio for yourself and get in the credits of more and more games, your own projects will gather more attention within the community.

Conclusion

I'm writing all of this to make sure people understand that there is no one path to success. Most people, readers and developers alike, are understandably hesitant about making FVNs a career. Having a creative career is risky in general, and working in a niche within a niche makes it unviable for most people. But you don’t have to make it career, because there still is some success to be had. So don't feel like it's impossible to achieve whatever your goals are just because you've had frustrations in the past. Whenever you don't succeed, don't view it as a failure. You're just not there yet. If you are dedicated to your work, then your best bet is to keep on keeping on and never give up. Just take it easy when things get too rough for you too handle.

To close things off, here are some of the resources I looked at that helped me write this blog:

Nobody Knows If Your Game Will Pop Off - An article that made me realize how it’s nearly impossible to figure out if a game will succeed or not until it’s close to release and why it’s better to make a lot of games instead of just a few. It also made me realize that most people succeed because they had a specific set of traits, which was really enlightening. I really like Push to Talk’s content in general; the blog, Games Marketing on Easy Mode, Hard Mode, and the Dark Valley Between, is both entertaining and informative.

How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit - I like this presentation because it shows the perspective of someone who hasn’t made a famous game, but still manages to make a living out of game development. He follows the advice of making a lot of small games to make a career and shows how his experience has lead to making more successful games. He also has a good perspective on how it’s not necessary to have a hit game in your career.

The Game Dev Success Ladder with Chris Zukowski - I follow Chris’s blog a lot, but this video is a good introduction to him and his content. Provides a lot of advice on video game marketing, primarily on Steam but his more general advice is applicable for FVN devs. You can read his blog here.

How to Actually Succeed as a Creative - This video came up during the writing of this blog and while it’s hard to apply the information there to FVNs, I did get some ideas from the video to implement into the blog, specifically about getting involved with the community. There’s also this comment by Crowmudgeon from the video that I found informative as well:

"You don't break in as a visionary, you break in as a servant" is a phenomenal piece of advice---very much lines up with my experiences here on YT as well, it's just that you aren't serving producers, you're serving the audience. One thing I learned early on is "it's hard to make people care about things, but it's easier to make things that people care about."

A vast majority of audiences don't care about your idea that they've never heard of UNLESS they can latch on to some point of familiarity within your project. That's why stories that twist pre-existing ideas tend to get more traction than stories that are 100% original. Audiences can't value something until they know it exists. You generally have to save your extremely original stuff for when people know and value you as a creator, regardless of what you're making.

Edit: I'll also add, I'm not saying to make things you don't value just to appease other people. I'm just saying to find the intersections where the things you value line up with some existing audience, community, or interest.

I struggled writing this blog as I was hitting a lot of creative roadblocks and I just couldn’t figure out something that I’d be happy with. I think this blog was just too broad a topic for me, but hopefully this will help you guys in your journey. Also, sorry for not having many images here, it’s very hard to come up with images for a blog like this. Anyways, have a good day, and see you later!

This doesn't have anything to do with the survey but if you have been reading By Your Hands, I'm hosting a little Q&A session in celebration of Owen's route now being updated. Send your questions here. Anyway, let's get on with the results.

(Note: Due to the size of the blog, I can’t fit everything in one email. The full blog is available to read here. Enjoy!)

Hello everyone! I have a new blog for you guys! Before I start, I just want to remind people to take the GFVN audience survey if you have the time! The survey will end at July 7th, so make a decision soon! You can take it here!

One common thing I see in the FVN community are the amount of people who either make FVNs or want to create VNs. Go on itch.io, look through the furry + visual novel tag, and you'll see the sheer amount of FVNs out there. And if you go on any FVN server, you'll see regulars talk about making their own VN. This is the furry fandom where creation is encouraged after all. But with it, comes a lot of caveats. There is the usual issue seen in other communities where a lot of FVNs are poorly made either because of bad writing or other issues. But another issue is how many VNs either get abandoned or go on development hell. That's a little intimidating. How are you supposed to make an FVN when there's a real risk of tripping on your shoes and falling? That's what this blog is here for. It's intended to be a jumping off point for any aspiring devs looking to make an FVN. It's a long and hard process, but as long as you enjoy what you create, it can be well worth the payoff. I will admit, this is a "do what I say, not what I do" situation, as a lot of this I had to learn by fucking up a lot. If I have done something that goes against any of the advice listed out here, just remember that. Also this blog is intended mainly for project leads, so there isn't going to be as much advice for other parts of the team. Don't worry, I'll get to you guys someday.

Setting Intentions

This is the obligatory but completely necessary section where I tell you what to do before you start even thinking of developing the VN. The first thing you should do before anything is think of what it is you want to achieve with your work. You might have gotten advice to only write for yourself and your audience will naturally come through. That's a bit of a newbie trap though. You "can" only write for yourself, but I believe most writers write because they want their work to be enjoyed by others. Why would they put their work online and spend so much effort trying to get other people to read it? Human beings naturally want to make connections with others, that's why we have families. The very first stories were made to entertain and inform others. If you think that writers should only write to express their creative vision and like-minded individuals will simply come to them over time, you are a pretentious dipshit. Okay, that's a bit harsh, some people will read their work. But if you're only writing for yourself, then an audience is a luxury not a guarantee. People, especially writers, are into very specific things. I've seen someone who desperately wants to work on a contemporary romance story set in Bangladesh revolving a horny gay goth gamer meeting various local older men that's heavily inspired by 80s Ani- oh wait that's me. 

The point is, a lot of us are into very specific things and it's hard to find someone who's also into that specific thing. Adjusting your work into something that more people can enjoy is a natural thing and has the potential to make your stories better. Of course, there's a limit on how much you can change before your story becomes something you aren't passionate about. Writing for yourself is perfectly valid. Writing to make your work enjoyed by people in your niche is also valid. So is writing so you can become popular. But remember that the more your goals rely on other people, the more likely you'll be burned out as you can't directly control how other people react to your stories. Just remember to be persistent, make sure you're getting something out of doing this, and that you don't have to stick to this goal. Goals can change, maybe you initially wanted to create the most popular FVN out there but then didn't get the amount of attention you wanted, so you decided to focus make the audience you currently have happy. Or maybe you initially wanted to write for yourself but then you got a good amount of people who talked about how much they liked your stuff so make sure they're satisfied as well. That's just how the creative process works. It's a balance between making what you want and making what makes others engaged. Figure out what you want to do with your FVN.

The only time I will tell you to not make an FVN is if you're unsure about making one. Ask yourself, if you had all the money, time, resources, and creative people in your disposal, would you still make an FVN? If the answer is yes, then go make one already. Otherwise, what are you doing here? This blog will focus more on making a FVN you're happy with while my next blog (after the GFVN audience survey results) will be the opposite and instead focus on appealing to audience and making your story known. Even if you're more interested in making others read your FVN, I'd still read this blog however because people like better FVNs.

Parts of A VN

Now the next thing you should do is figure out all the parts of a visual novel and see which of the parts you want to do, which of the parts you should leave for others, and which of the parts you should use pre-existing assets for. Visual Novel development consists of these parts more or less:

• Writing - This is probably the most important part of a FVN. Really good writing can carry an FVN even if the other aspects might be lackluster. Writing consists of story beats, characters, dialogue, themes, and narration. Mastering all of these aspects will make your writing excel. Make sure you plan out all of these aspects of the story and the direction it will go first so that you aren't lost in the middle of development. Only other thing I'll mention is that there will always be pantsers (people who don't plan ahead when they write) who will complain how there's no advice for them. My tip for those people is to write the entire story first and then go in and dissect it into something cohesive and readable. If that sounds like a lot and you have a large story, write 50k words, do the dissecting and editing progress then, put that writing into your VN in an update or more, and rinse and repeat until you got a complete VN.

• Character Art - Another important aspect of FVNs. If writing is what gives you fans, character art is what makes people read your VN in the first place. The most important thing for your art is consistency and theming. You (except in rare cases) don't want grotesque, grungy sprites in your cutesy, slice of life romance and you also don't want your characters to look like they come from different games. Some of the most visually striking games have stayed close to their style without diverting from it no matter what. This includes their GUI. That being said, CGs and character sprites can be in different styles if it's an absolute necessity, as long as they have some cohesion. Going for a different art style for a specific section in your story can be really effective if you know what you're doing, but keep in mind you shouldn't do this willy-nilly or else it will cause your VN to lose focus.

• Background Art - It's generally a low priority for most devs as readers usually don't pay much attention to them unless there are some oddities with them. As long as they indicate where the scene is, that's good enough, which is why most VNs use stock images for backgrounds. That being said, custom made backgrounds can really add to a VN's style and subtly make your VN look more professional. This goes for any aspect of a VN (except maybe programming) but I'd recommend not using generative AI for backgrounds because, beyond the legal issues, the FVN community by in large tends to avoid any FVN that uses AI regardless of how little it uses it. If you do use AI however, make sure you mention upfront that you used AI, how it's used in the development of the game, and what AI programs you used, as that will make it slightly less likely to cause friction in the community. And I shouldn't have to say this, but do not steal assets from other works without permission.

• Graphic User Interface - This is in the same boat as backgrounds in that they don't have high priority among a lot of devs but can add to the VN if extra effort is put into them. Custom GUI can make a VN look more professional than the standard fare and it's also a lot cheaper compared to custom made backgrounds because there's just less work needed to make original GUI. Unlike backgrounds however, good GUI needs both art and programming, and the skills needed to make good GUI are different from making good art.

• Programming - This is something devs often bemoan doing, but honestly it's not that terrible once you learn the basics. The biggest hurdles when it comes to programming is the knowledge you need to code VNs and adding features and functions to VNs later in development. If you plan out all the features the VN will have during the pre-dev stage and learn everything you'll need, then programming shouldn't be an issue for you. The only reasons why you would need to hire a programmer is if you want to save time or if you just lack any motivation to code whatsoever. As for what program to use, just save the trouble of choosing and use Ren'py. It's open source, free, has a ton of resources for learning it, and has plenty of built in functions that you don't need to code in yourself. The only reason why you should use another program is if the game you're making has a lot of non-VN gameplay in it.

• Sound (Music and sound effects) - They can really add and breath life to your VN if you're willing to put the effort into it. Kevin MacLeod is a meme in the FVN community due to how many FVNs feature his music but he genuinely has a good and large library of music to pick from. Just be wary about using a commonly used song, as that might take readers out of the experience if they've heard the song before. Like with art, if the music of a FVN sticks to a style, then it adds to the experience and gives the VN its own identity. Custom made songs aren't necessary but they can give you exactly what you're looking for in a scene, especially if you use leitimotifs. Custom-made sound effects are basically never necessary due to the large amount of royalty free sfx out there, but there might be edge cases where you'd need a specific sfx. Side note about sfx, don't use the same one too much or else skipping will become an ear grater sooner than later.

• Marketing - It's probably the one thing FVN devs pay the least amount of attention to as they'll usually just put their game out there in the open and then do a couple of tweets whenever they update the game. Marketing is a lot more involved than that and going the extra mile can be worth it, but it's a lot of work. I already have written up a blog for marketing which I'll post sometime in August, but just know that the benefits of marketing isn't exclusively money. You'll have more people interested in your work and you'll have a large community who want to see what you'll make. That being said, marketing can't save a dud, so don't expect to do a lot of marketing on any game and expect it to do numbers.

That's a lot to handle for one person but not impossible, there are examples of people who make everything for their VN, examples including Nikko's Burrows and Eddio's Killigan's Treasure (that's a mouthful). 

To ensure you don't go insane, try to pick one or two of those things and leave the rest to other people. One skill you definitely need is a perception of quality. If you have no prior experience of making music and you think a song you spent an hour on is the awe-inspiring thing to ever grace this Earth, 99.9% of the time, you need a reality check. It's better to leave it to other people who know what they're doing and what quality looks like rather than trying to do something you're not well versed in. 

Making Development Easier

Now, how to get that help will vary depending on your situation. The most straightforward way of doing that is just by paying someone. Of course, that can be difficult and might inflate exponentially quickly, but it's frankly your safest option as long as you watch out for scammers. Also keep in mind you don't have to pay immediately; it can be later in development, although keep in mind that some people will ask you to pay upfront. You can also ask for volunteer work but the work you'll find tends to be more low quality and unreliable (as in, they might not get back to you quickly). I'm not saying all volunteers are bad and/or worse than people who only do paid work, but it's much harder to find good work when you don't pay versus when you do pay. 

As for how you can find these people, you can put up notices in the appropriate discord servers. People on Xitter, Bluesky, Furaffinity, or whatever also usually mention if they're up for freelance work or comms in their profile. Search for people who worked on projects you have enjoyed and try to contact them. You can also use websites like Upwork or Fiverr to find freelancers, although be aware that furries don't really use these websites. The last option are your friends, although make sure you don't ruin your friendship over this sort of thing, obviously.

One issue I will mention is that people who work for you might have real life issues that would get in the way of getting their work done. Or maybe they're just lazy, but I'm not going to shame anyone for that. In any case, this might halt development if the person doing work for you deals with assets that are very important for the VN, such as a CG artist not being available. There are ways to prevent these issues. One is setting deadlines, specifically deadlines that are at least a week before you actually need them. This makes sure the people doing work for you know that "oh, I need to get this done". This isn't going to work all the time of course, but it can help. Another thing is that you can always get other people to do the assets as well. Don't hire another artist to do spritework when you already got sprites done by your regular artist, but it's not uncommon for CGs to have different artstyles than the CGs, so it can be understandable if your current artist is busy. Art is usually the one aspect of VN dev where inconsistency is noticable among readers, so other aspects such as writing, sound, and/or programming can be handled by multiple people. Also you can use placeholder assets if you just can't get the final assets you need in time for a new update. The exception being writing, as that's kind of an important aspect of a VN that can't be simply replaced in another update. If you absolutely need assets from someone you're working with, but they haven't been available for a long time, it's time to make a choice. Either you wait until they get back at you and put the project on hiatus, or you replace them with someone else. It's not an easy choice to make, but it's better for both your audience, yourself, and the person you're working with to choose.

You can use royalty free or store bought assets to substitute for some of those aforementioned things and most people won't mind. There are websites that provide royalty free images, music, etc. that you can use for backgrounds, music, and sound effects. You can also buy assets for the same things, which you'll typically find on itch.io, DLsite, and/or the Unity Asset Store. These are where you'll find decent VN gui, although you can just use the default Ren'py GUI if that's necessary. You might even find some assets available for free, although they usually ask you to credit them in the game. I'll provide links at the resources section. 

Now you can't really use pre made assets for character art, writing, programming, and marketing. Public domain art and writing exist, but you're probably not making an FVN to adapt the Bible (which already is available on Steam). It's incredibly important that these two aspects are not only good, but stand out from the other FVNs out there, because those are what many people will judge your FVN on. Marketing and programming on the other hand, just doesn't really have public domain assets associated with it. You just have to make marketing assets unique to your game because that's the point of marketing, while programming is something that has to be done by a person.

What you want to do is to create a plan of everything you will do with your VN. It's highly recommended that you make a game design document for your VN, chronicling every single detail about your VN as well as the general decisions you've made so far on the VN. You will be prepared to work on your project with this document and your team members (if you have any) will have something to follow along while working with you. Planning ahead also prevents potential hurdles in development as you know what you'll be including in your VN. You can also adjust plans if things come up.

Oh dear God, look at all of those words! Surely, this means we're almost finished, right? Nope, it's a me blog, which means we still have a few things to talk about before I can finish things off. To be more specific, there are a couple of pitfalls devs can fall into if they're not careful.

Mistakes To Avoid and General Advice

The first one is don't have a large project also be your first project. You can do this but it's going to be a lot easier if you have your large-ass project as a second or third project. You are just starting out in FVN devving and while you might be experienced in writing/art/music/programming/etc, you have never finished a project before, so you will face some bumps on your first project. I'm still facing bumps in my third project, imagine if By Your Hands was my first project! Just completing one project before doing anything large in scope will give you a lot of experience, exposure, and confidence that you can carry into your next project. If you really want to make your large scale VN, try making a side story/backstory within the same setting that's small in scope. My recommendation is to first create a 5k-10k word VN with two characters max in a month, then a 30k-50k word VN in six months, and then you can work on your super epic and enormous VN. Also, make sure you actually know how large your VN is. It can be easy to underestimate how much work it will be to complete your VN. A game design document will give you a good idea on how large your game is.

Next, adding features or story beats to a VN in the middle of development is a big mistake. The plan you had for the VN at the beginning of development was the VN you had envisioned making when you started. You told yourself that you were going to make that specific VN. When you add stuff to your game, you're now not making the VN you set out to make a year ago, but a different game that's 50k words longer than that old game. You essentially have to stop development so you can transfer your focus between two different games. This is what causes games to go into development hell, an unhealthy amount of reiteration and perfectionism. It's fine if you change aspects of your VN, but increasing scope can be a death sentence and leave you with a lot of work that can kill motivation. I'd only increase scope if the features added are small and come from a lot of audience feedback. In general, try to make the scope of your VN as small as possible even if you're going in expecting to make a large-scale VN. You really don't want to dedicate your time developing aspects of an VN you aren't particularly passionate about and frankly are unnecessary, so cut that shit out. Kill your darlings, as they say.

Take as many breaks as you want. Chances are that this is just a side hobby for you. You don't want to force yourself to do something you simply don't have the time or energy for. Don't stress yourself over this. Just make sure to be transparent with your audience as radio silence can cause friction with your audience. If you need a break, let them know. The monthly update system isn't for everyone so don't do it if it doesn't work for you. 

Lastly, make friends! Talk with your readers, other devs, and readers of FVNs you enjoy. This is a community, so make yourself a part of it. You don't have to, of course, but your audience wants to know who you are. Talking with others will form connections that will cause your VN to reach more people and make your fans even closer to you. Don't be self-centered, don't gatekeep, and be kind to the people around you. We're all in this together.

Resources

Now I was going to put a list of resources here but pretty much all the resources a developer could need is all over here. That being said, there are a few resources that aren't in there that I feel like I should mention:

• Even though the post I shared already has resources for writers, I still would like to recommend LocalScriptMan's channel, specifically this video, and Save the Cat! The Last Book On Screenwriting You'll Ever Need are really good resources for writers that are easy to understand and will help you a lot in the long-term.

• freesound.org is a good website for getting sound effects. Just make sure to select "Creative Commons 0" while search for sfx to avoid having to deal with any copyright issues. Also keep in mind that all the sounds are user-submitted, so make sure to do a little digging and make sure it really is legit. You can also get music from here, but there are better options for public domain music.

• https://musopen.org/ is a really good for royalty free music, containing a lot of free to use compositions of public domain music, although keep in mind that most of the music is classical. 

• Completing the trifecta of music asset websites, we have http://ilicensemusic.com/. You do have to pay a $90 fee for 10 songs, but the music library is vast and diverse. I haven't personally used this service but I have listened to the music, and a lot of the songs are good. Might just be an option you'll consider for your project.

• In addition to the above, there's also the aforementioned Kevin Macleod. The vast majority of his songs are free to use and there's a ton of variety in his library. And there's a lot of good stuff there.

• The aforementioned dlsite.com and itch.io have assets available for purchase. itch.io has a whole section on game assets where you can find all sorts of assets for VNs. Same thing for dlsite, although keep in mind that the website is in Japanese, so you'll need an automatic translator. 

• This video does a good job explaining how to make a game design document and it can easily be applied to VNs.

• Vimi's channel has a lot of good resources and videos that will make your visual novels better if you apply his advice.

• Proko's channel and Uncomfortable's channels have a ton for artists of any skill level to learn and are good jumping off points for any beginner. For Uncomfortable in particular, I highly suggest you watch this playlist while also taking a dive into drawabox.com as well before looking at his other stuff.

• This is an oddball addition but Dr. K's channel has good resources dealing with productivity and mental health. You can start out by just searching issues you have on his channel, but this playlist and this playlist are good starts.

• Finally, we've got the Gay Furry Visual Novel Audience survey, a survey which has over 500 respondents and covers over 100 different questions. The survey isn't closed yet, but we've got enough to work so far. You can view a summary of the results here as well as the full results here. Just remember that the results don't represent a clear formula for success and should be used more as a point of reference rather than something to follow.

One thing to note about the resources is that it's better to look at resources from many different people and pick out what's best for you because what works for one person doesn't work for another.

Conclusion

And that's it. Hopefully this is helpful to all you guys and will give you a head start on working on your FVN. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments! I hope you guys have a wonderful journey. Have a good day and see you later!

It's that time again. Kamil's route has developed into quite the beast and I received some feedback on it. As is the case, I'd like to take a step back and see how developing this part of this route has turned out.

Before that, however, today is my birthday! Happy birthday to me, I'll be sure to enjoy it to the fullest. Anyways, onto the meat of the devlog.

WARNING: COMPLETE SPOILERS FOR ACT 1 OF KAMIL'S ROUTE.

I mentioned this before but Kamil was initially intended to be the first route to be updated. My intention was that his route would be the one players would read first since he’s more welcoming than the other LI. Due to Brendan's popularity, however, Kamil's route ended up being developed later and I believe that changed his route quite a bit. I think you can tell in the game itself. In Day 1, Kamil is the friend Rex relies on when needed and Rex just learns about some things about Kamil he didn't know about before on that day. Starting with Day 2, Kamil’s distance with Rex becomes more apparent and it's shown that Kamil isn't as close to Rex as the player would assume just reading the first two hours of the game. That's how things ended up as we went through the development process and it's definitely not a bad change.

I came up with a lot of ideas for Kamil's route while I was still working on Brendan’s route, a lot of them going into stuff that would become relevant in Acts 2 and 3. I had a bunch of rough ideas at the start of 2023 but I really polished them up before we started proper on Kamil's route. Kamil's character became a lot clearer in my head in that period and I figured out who exactly he is. There was a point where everyday I would message Nemo a new thing I wanted to implement in Kamil's route. Even after development on his route started, ideas kept coming that I couldn't resist adding to his route. This is why Act 1 of Kamil's route just has more stuff in it compared to what's currently in Brendan's route. I just had a more vivid vision on how Kamil's route would play out compared to the other routes. I'm not sure why it's specifically Kamil, but I guess it could be that his values and struggles resonate with me a lot. Regardless though, he became a fixation for a good amount of time.

From what I've seen, Kamil is a divisive character. While I haven't seen a lot of people say they outright hate him, there have been a noteworthy bunch who say they can't really get into his character. He's a nice and dependable guy, but his distance, his doormat tendencies, and, of course, his homophobia are sticking points against him. I understand if people don't like Kamil for any of those reasons, they don't make him favorable to the player. It doesn't help that there are a bunch of lows in his route, putting Kamil into more situations where he can't really show his good sides well. However, you're supposed to not like those aspects and when it’s time, the player would want to see Rex call him out and find out what's motivating him to act like this. A lot of the big moments that needed to be written were difficult to pull off, but I think we achieved what we wanted to do. I'm glad he's gotten a lot of fans so far. He's a very complex character, and it's great to see people appreciating what he has to offer and what we were going for with his story. That he's a good person who truly cares about his friends but he has a lot of room to grow. And like with Brendan, a lot of my sexual preferences were put into his character. I'm not sure if I have said this before in public, but I find that insecurity can be really sexy. Combine that with Kamil's appearance and personality and you can see where I'm at from a spiritual perspective.

The side characters are also worth mentioning. I'm glad that Fiero and Yousef got the love they eventually got considering how they rock the boat. Fiero in particular makes me more confident with Vlad's route. Yousef didn't get much attention initially but Day 5 made sure he had gotten a following. Him being unremarkable in the beginning was intentional as it feeds into his character arc. He's the support Rex and Kamil need in order to make things start to happen. He's also a sweet baby boy. Dai is the opposite. Initially being popular for his design, the reveal of his homophobia dampened public opinion of him and caused a bit of a ruckus in my server. Saul and Kyle became very popular for their attractive designs and being sort of detached from the drama that's going on in the route. The rest of the football team didn't get much attention, aside from Liam and Wyatt getting the reactions you'd expect them to have. Finally, I'd like to mention Paul and Hank, the two guys that approached Kamil during Day 3. I've gotten mixed reactions on them, with some saying they were really suspicious while others didn't seem to mind them. I just thought that was interesting and enlightening.

Developing Kamil's route was a huge stepping stone. If developing Brendan's route taught me what BYH is, developing Kamil's route taught me what BYH should be. Kamil's route marked a huge turn in how Nemo and I worked on the game. A lot of ideas were solidified during this period and I became more accustomed to working on the game. We started a document where Nemo and I would spit ball ideas about the game. I learned more about how to best work with Nemo and I even wrote large portions of the script myself. I started to implement cut ins into the game and made use of the camera function and ATL in Ren'py. I remembered to focus on the new content first before reworking old stuff. And there's a lot more side characters in Kamil's route compared to Brendan's route. Basically we did a lot of stuff with the game and made it evolve into something we're really satisfied with.

We've gotten a lot of help by one of our patrons who's an athlete who used to be on a highschool American football team and he's been a big help for information relating to Kamil. Nemo got a lot of inspiration from his musings. I also talked to other people to help work on some concepts in Kamil's route and it was really fun working on the themes and getting even more material to work with. Some of these people included a FVN dev friend of mine and another writer friend who's Muslim. I just want to say, “thank you for everything”.

We also can't forget to mention the first side story the game has gotten. I'm going to be frank with you guys, I love Victor and writing him and I'm so happy people have taken to him well. I wish I'd have gotten this side story out after Day 6, but it couldn't be helped with how things were going at the time. Still, the performance of this side story has given me confidence to work on more of them and give spotlight to other characters.

I will say, I have gotten critique of certain aspects of the game from people. Not just randos who I barely know but also my fans. And I get it, there are some things about the story that aren't perfect. However, Nemo and I accept that. While we can change story as we develop it, we'd rather avoid changing parts of the story people have already read as much as possible. And it's all subjective. Some people might find one aspect of the game to be brilliant while others find it quite lame. I'm quite sensitive to feedback and will either makes changes in response or talk about it with someone worrying all the way. Recently, I've been trying to make sure to restrain myself whenever someone critiques my stuff because even if it's true that it's not perfect, it's better to trust your instict than trying your best to please everyone when that's impossible.  And keep in mind, the people who you hear talk about your work are just a small amount of people. So far, I've gotten 35 responses in the form about Kamil's route when currently there are over a thousand people who have downloaded build 0.14.1. If I were to respond to every critique I got, I'd ignore everyone who didn't say anything because they had no problems with the VN. Some critique has value, especially if it's a sentiment shared with multiple people, but not all of them, and that's certain I've learned these past few months.

Development was overall both exciting and exhausting. There was just a lot of work to be done, especially for Days 3, 5, and 6. The downside of having so many ideas is implementing them all. We might have gone a bit overboard. I had this online acquaintance of mine that was obsessed with planning out all of his writing projects. I didn't get it at first since I think too much planning can be boring. But now I can see why he acted like this after working on a project like this. It's the snowball effect, you can add an unremarkable feature early on and it can grow into a huge thing that you have to work on. Things can spiral out of control if left unchecked and you don't plan ahead. The end result turned out great, but I think I've gotten the experience to make the development process go a lot smoother moving forward. And one of those things is to pay attention to your health, especially your mental health. It can become really easy to burnout without even noticing so always make sure to slow down when things are becoming overwhelming. You can't work without yourself. I feel assured of myself and Nemo that Owen’s route will be easier to develop.

All in all, the future is looking bright for By Your Hands. Both me and Nemo are still in the middle of taking a break from the game and hopefully we'll be able to return to development with much gusto. A lot has happened in my life since I started working on Kamil's route and all I can say is that I have no idea what the future will hold. I hope you guys enjoy Owen's route when it starts updating!

Thank you for reading and have a good day!

Over a month has passed since Day 6 has been released to the public and over that time I've received feedback on the game and Brendan's route. I want to share my thoughts looking back on it and what development on it was like.

Before the first build was released back in 2022, I was intending Kamil's route to be the first route to be updated beyond Day 1. My reasoning was simple: Kamil was the most approachable to the protagonist, his friends are attractive, and he himself was attractive. I thought that he'd be the most popular love interest but, to my surprise, Brendan was the most popular at the time. But it makes sense considering he's got two big qualities on display at all times. Not to mention he has the most memorable scene within Day 1. There are other reasons but you get the gist of it. His popularity made me decide to update his route first instead of Kamil's. It wasn't too hard to make since I was initially planning on updating his route after Kamil's anyways. Considering the amount of work I needed to put into creating art when developing Kamil's route, I'd say I made the right choice as I'd have a whole plate of work to do along with everything I had to do that first half of the year. Development would have definitely been a lot more tuberous, and the route would look very different from what it is now, if I worked on Kamil first. So it was Brendan's route that was being worked on.

Now the update schedule I had planned out for By Your Hands was particular, and got me a good amount of people asking for clarification about it. I planned it like this because a single day doesn't have a lot of content. If it rotated between routes each update then you'd only progress a route by a little bit and then you'd have to wait at least five months before the next update comes out. Also, each of the routes start out slow before becoming more intense as it goes on. Having the schedule rotate between routes each month would have the story progress at a slug's pace before it gets to a point where it's just emotionally intensive update after emotionally intensive update. My point being, it would be very exhausting for my audience. My solution is to have the updates focus on a route until it reaches a "checkpoint", at which point it starts to focus on another character's route. These "checkpoints" would signal the end of an "act" (or "arc" as I keep misnaming them), with three acts in total. This should provide a more pleasant update schedule for people and so far, most people do like this update schedule.

Now onto Brendan. Brendan is a character I have mixed feelings about. I love his character design, I find it incredibly sexy. He's also quite charming, really kind, endearingly nerdy, and cares a lot about his son a lot to boot. The trouble comes when you find out about his major flaw at the end of Day 6 and his apparent irresponsibility, it starts to become harder to be attached to him. I don't like drug addicts and I don't like someone who can't control their urges. Considering he's a father and a professor, I just find it careless. The initial concept of Brendan was basically my ideal guy (DILF, middle age, submissive bottom, musclegut, kind)… and then emphasizing the potential problems that could come with that type of guy. Because of this, Brendan is in the weird place where he checks a lot of boxes for me but his flaws keep me from growing too fond of him. It's partially why I was initially surprised at how he was such a big hit with my audience. When people read Day 6, it was quite the experience to see people share their thoughts on how they felt about Brendan's alcoholism and how they dealt with the revelation. But it was necessary for people to see the story I wanted to make with Nemo. Day 6 was really important in showing what type of VN By Your Hands is. To be honest, I wish more stuff happened in Brendan's route, particularly during Day 4, and that Rex was able to guide the narrative more than he ended up doing. But I think some people do like the slower approach to storytelling, so I don't think it's too big a loss.

Developing Brendan's route was strange as it was happening during a bunch of stuff. Ramadan was going on, I was participating in a game jam, I had a somewhat busy semester in college, and I had issues with hand pain. And I wanted to redo some art as well as implement some stuff that didn't have to do with developing the new content. I had a lot on my plate despite how simple and few art assets Brendan's Act 1 needed. This is why I ended up taking two month-long breaks during this period. I really wanted to get as much of the old stuff done as soon as possible so I could focus on the new stuff. Brendan's route alongside Kamil's Day 2 and 3 makes me realize that I really should have focused on doing the necessary assets first before I worked on redoing the old stuff. It's really tempting to just make sure that there's no stone left unturned before working on new stuff. But well, people are paying me to work on new stuff, not redo old stuff. I do want to dedicate a month solely on polishing what's in the game so far, but I can't find a good time to do just that. People are pretty content with new features being trickled in each month rather than big updates being added all at once, even if I did have people say they wanted bigger and less frequent updates.

Some other stuff I learned is that while being polite and nice when working with others is important, what's more important is making sure you're communicating everything you want. You want to be clear on what direction you want them to take. Miscommunication just leads to more stressful development. It took me a while to realize that I should be telling Nemo basically everything I expect from him. Particularly, I wanted him to have freedom in what he was writing and let him direct the flow. I didn't want to mess with his craft but then he told me that it was better if I told him as much as possible so he'd have a clear direction in the story. I gave a lot more input into Kamil's route, and the difference between Kamil's Days 2 and 3 and Brendan's Act 1 are very apparent. Now don't micromanage every single little thing, but make sure your needs are being met while they get to have enough freedom to allow their creativity to flow within your needs.

There was also the issue of meeting people's expectations. People in my discord server had certain expectations for Brendan's route. While they were relatively easy to meet, it was something we had to take into account while developing. One thing I learned is that your audience tends to be understanding of any setbacks as long as you're being honest with them. If anything, people have been telling me to take more breaks, but I frankly suck at taking breaks, so I'm wary about that. The VN has been growing its audience at a steady rate, both in terms of Patreon money and itch.io stats. I do wish that the game was talked about more, but I can't be greedy, and I can only hope that it gets a lot more eyes on it eventually. Another thing I've learned is that I know a lot more than what my audience knows. Obviously, I know what's going to happen later on in the story and I have to keep my lips sealed whenever people are theorizing on what's going to happen. It's certainly entertaining to see people guess what will happen and maybe even get a few things right. But another thing is that you know every line of code… but your audience doesn't see that. Most (if not all) readers don't know 100% of the game, therefore there's going to be stuff that they don't know about. Because of this, every person's experience with the game is going to be different and yet they discuss the game with each other. Most people don't know exactly what triggers what, the different consequences of certain actions, and what this all means. I used to be more open about what's happening under the hood initially before I realized I should tread carefully talking about these things.

The story's a little hodgepodge at the moment. We were still figuring out what development process works so things got a bit messy. When Nemo was writing Day 4 for Brendan's route, the plan for Kamil's Day 3 was completely different from the actual Day 3 we got, so that's why some things may seem a bit odd. Stuff can and often changes. We can plan something one day and then the next day one or the other decide it's better if we do something completely different. As long as it improves the game then it works for us. I can never get behind planning every single aspect for a project and sticking to it no matter what when I tend to enjoy doing creative work better when I get to be spontateous. It's just not my style, and I'm pretty sure it's not Nemo's either. It's simply how we do things. Like, all this time I thought I was crafting this emotional and impactful story when really I was just being a pervert. Now I want to create an emotional and impactful story while also being a pervert at the same time. I hope things go well for Nemo and I.

One last thing I want to talk about is how I kinda regret making fun of wolves and big cats in the game. I do enjoy the cast, and I do think the species of Tucker, Liam, and Wyatt work well for the story we're trying to weave. But I wish we were a bit more, how should I say this, subtle about it? Like, I think we ended up attracted a group of people who were fond of the game just because it made fun of popular species, which I don't think is a good reason to get into the game. Like yeah, wolves are everywhere, but you shouldn't like this game simply because the sole wolf in it is just an antagonistic side character. Like honestly, I've grown to like Wyatt over these past few months and he didn't even have any new dialogue. But yeah, wolves and big cats are cool. And so are chickens, karkadann, bison, orca, and black vultures.

Overall, I learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn't. I've learned ways to make development smoother and I streamlined my Patreon to something that's manageable to me. With Brendan's Act 1 done, I think Nemo and I are more confident in getting the other Act 1s done in a more efficient manner. So far we've had some hurdles with developing Kamil's route, but things are looking up for us. I think I'm close at figuring out a development cycle that is a good fit for me. I'm glad with how Brendan's Act 1 came out, but I'm more grateful for how it made both me and Nemo grow in our skills. It was an essential step in becoming better devs. With that, I hope By Your Hands continues to flourish within this nice little niche.

Thank you for reading and have a good day!

Hello Habibi! Before I start this blog, I just want to say that I'll be posting these a lot less frequently from now on. It's not that I stopped enjoying writing blogs but… take a look at how long this one is. That's a lot of words for a simple blog when I could be putting that time and energy into making VNs. These blogs don't give me a lot of benefit and they take a lot of time to make. I originally made these blogs during my down time when I was taking a break from drawing and I needed something to do. I also wanted to help enrich the FVN community but well, I didn't exactly succeed in doing that. I'll still be doing blogs, just don't expect them every month anymore. I hope you guys aren't too disappointed.

Introduction

Anyways, I'm here to talk about something that I hold dearly to my heart. I know I said that before but shut up. It's choices in VNs. But choices are a prickly subject in that no one has decided how they should be used in VNs. Should they be in every VN? Do they just detract from the story? How common should choices be in a single VN? Should they have consequences or just be for fun? Should there be a good and bad choice or should we have more neutral choices? What a dilemma we have with choices despite being the most famous VN gameplay mechanic. I think a lot of people (both devs and readers) end up not really understanding the point of choices and devs just put in choices because "that's what a VN's supposed to have". I'm here to explain what types of choices there are as well as what I believe to be the purpose of choices in the first place. Hopefully you'll understand my points as I go through the intentions behind choices.

Do VNs have to have choices?

No. 

To further explain, there's a sort of hierarchy with VNs with choices. First there are kinetic novels. These are visual novels with no choices. Some VNs that are generally considered to be kinetic novels might have a choice here and there but overall they are extremely minor and unimportant to the rest of the VN. Then there are linear VNs, which have choices and branching paths but they only affect a small part of the plot and are generally considered to have only one route. Then there are multiple-route VNs which are VNs… with multiple routes (I don't know a better term for this type of VN). But these VNs can end up not having many choices or branching paths after the player has got into one of the routes. On the other end of the spectrum, you can have choices and branching paths for… basically everything. I'm going to focus on multiple-route VNs as they cover the widest spectrum of VNs in terms of choices and I'm the most familiar with them. That and choices tend to not matter as much for linear novels and they don't matter at all in kinetic novels. Kinetic and linear FVNs have been becoming more popular lately, so don't feel obligated to make a multiple route VN, but make sure you state that upfront as there's a considerable amount of people who enjoy making choices in VNs.

Instant choices vs Gradual choices

One thing about choices is that the weight they have on the story can vary depending on VN to VN. Some VNs rely on choices that have instant consequences on the story. Choose between staying in the asylum or escaping it and you either end up with great company but bad hair or you end up homeless. Those would be what I call instant choices. It's a complete binary where the choice is the sole decider in the branch. Sometimes the branch split lasts just one scene while other times it lasts until the end of the game. These types of choices are usually used for endings, particularly choices which either lead to a bad ending or continue with the main/canon/good route. These are good for inconsequential scenes and when the game wants to be simple and direct with the player but be aware that it can be frustrating when major consequences to the story are limited to one or two choices, which can take away the player's sense of agency. 

Gradual choices on the other hand have little effect on the story on their own, but can build up to have major changes to the story. The most obvious example is the love points system several dating sims use but other examples include the Noble/Barbarian spectrum in Killigan's Treasure where each choice can push Killigan to either side of the spectrum by a small amount. These types of choices can lead to branching paths in a more organic fashion. The downside is that they can be really obtuse on what leads to what. Also one caveat of gradual choices is that the result you get can feel artificial. You can get into a situation where you can cheat on a love interest and still get a good ending with them because you still have enough love points. Make sure that erroneous situations are accounted for. Maybe have it so that the player can never get a good ending if they cheated regardless of how many points they have or have the love interest justify why they'd still want to be with a cheater. Use instant and gradual choices when appropriate.

The purpose of choices

Now we get into the real meat of this topic, which is why we have choices in the first place. I believe the appeal of choices in VNs can be summed up in four categories: Judging, Directive, Expressing, and Performative.

• Judging choices is probably the category most of us think of when we think of choices. Essentially they're choices that the player doesn't know the outcome of. The player has to figure out which choice will lead to the result they want. They're meant to judge the player on whether or not they understand the story well enough and if they would do good in the setting if they were in the protagonist's shoes. They can be either instant or gradual, but linear VNs gravitate towards instant Judging choices while VNs with lots of choices often use gradual Judging choices to determine routes. These can be simple good or bad or they can be more neutral like traditional or modern. They can even use more than one determining factor and use multiple stats in determining routes and endings. The point is that the player is trying to get the ending or route they want without knowing if they'll get them or not. The appeal of these types of choices is that it can feel either satisfying for the player to make a choice that leads into something they want or make the player feel awful for picking the wrong choice. The player feels like they have an impact on the game with their choices. Used correctly, it can give the player an experience tailored to their wants without being intrusive to their immersion to the world. The issue can come when choices lead to outcomes that don't make sense. I'm not sure why choosing pistachio ice cream instead of chocolate leads to the love interest gaining a foot fetish. It can especially be bad with games that use gradual systems, because then it's like trying to find a needle in the haystack and then using it to pick a lock without breaking it… and you have no idea how to pick a lock. Make sure that the reaction to what choice the player has made makes sense, is fair, and informs the story you're trying to make.

• Directive choices on the other hand have the game essentially tell you, or at least heavily hint, what the outcome of a choice is. The game might not outright tell you what will happen if you pick a choice, but context and wording can make it clear what the outcome is. The appeal of this type is that you can choose what direction the story will go. Say there's an antagonist in a story. You can choose to either try to redeem them or kick their ass to the curb until no one remembers their name. While it can overlap with a judging choice, the difference here is that the player doesn't have uncertain, significant consequences for their actions. Each choice has an obvious reaction (antagonist becomes your friend or they get lost in a ditch somewhere) but either one doesn't affect the rest of the story in a major way. This is what usually ends up happening with linear games with multiple love interests, as the story stays mostly the same except who you kiss is different. This can be even more dramatic like the player deciding where the setting is or what ending the game has. That said, it is highly recommended that you don't have a directive choice that decides the ending. It just takes away any suspense on how the story ends if the game outright gives you the option on the ending without making it hidden. That said, I can't really recall a game where this type is used to decide the ending, so I'm not worrying if you guys will do this or not. These types of choices give the player a lot of power and you should make sure that they don't have too much power. Used right, they can make the player feel like they have agency in how the story continues. Also allows them to pick and choose what content they want to see out of the game. Problem is that it can feel weird making such a big impact on the story when the person making the choice (usually the protagonist) doesn't seem like they'd be able to have such power. And it can reduce suspense in a story too much because if the player feels like they have a lot of power then where's the fear of failure?

• Expressing choices have the player decide parts of the character for themselves. They have unseen consequences, but they don't impact the story in a major way. Let's say a person robs a bank. You can choose to either sympathize with the robber or the bank. Or maybe they get to decide what their favorite soft drink is. These decisions have no major impact on the story but bits and pieces of it may change depending on your choices, as people who agree or disagree with your choice might react differently to you. Customization for protagonists tends to fall under this category. This is an opportunity for the player to voice their opinions in a story and reflect on who they are. They have a lot of similarities with Directive choices but the key difference is that the expected consequences of a Directive choice are major while the expected consequences of an Expressing choice are minor. Expressing choices also tend to only change the in-fiction character making the choice (again, usually the protagonist) which leads to different, but minor, reactions from the world around them while Directive choices affect other characters as well and outright change their actions. Expressing choices can be good because they allow the player to think more about what has happened within the story and personalize the protagonist's character without changing the story too much. The issue can come when things are decided by Expressing choices when they really should have just been predetermined. Like, why have a choice that determines if the protagonist is bisexual or gay when it muddies parts of the story and it would have been simpler to just have the character be one or the other? There's also the fact that since they're so cheap and can be added to literally any part of the story, it's easy to fill up a VN with this type when the player probably doesn't care what brand of coffee the protagonist had for breakfast. They have to be choices the player would likely have a strong opinion on or should be thinking about while reading. Otherwise it's just filler.

• Finally, we have Performative choices. These are choices that give the player agency in a different way from the previous three types. VNs are different from most games in that you usually aren't "controlling" the protagonist, you're just reading about them. Some VNs have mini games or extra gameplay mechanics, but typically choice-making is the only time the player gets to control the protagonist. These types of choices tend to focus on letting the player step into the protagonist's shoes and make it feel like they're the one doing the action instead of the in-fiction character. Choices where you can only make one choice are almost always this type, forcing the player to make the protagonist do something specific. Used well, this can be incredibly cathartic for the player, allowing them to take action in a big way. You can also use this type of choice in order to make the player feel like they're struggling or forced against their will alongside the protagonist. Most of the time though, they should be used sparingly. If you have the player make a choice multiple times for no other reason, it feels less like taking action and more doing busy work. Remember the novel part of a visual novel.

As a rule of thumb, you don't want to stick to one type of choice unless the amount of choices in your VN is rather small. It can make the choices feel same-y and boring. Try mixing them up so they can keep the player engaged. Also, I mentioned that choices can fit into multiple types at once, but I'd suggest deciding on which of the four types the choice fits in the most. The point of the types is to figure out what the purpose of a choice is and you can't really say a choice has direction if it's equally Judging, Directive, Expressing, and Performative.

The relationship with the protagonist?

One last aspect I'll mention is how the choice affects the protagonist's identity. Are all the options in a choice part of the protagonist's character and that we're helping them decide? Or as we're picking choices for the protagonist, we're dictating what character they are and that the choices represent mutually exclusive characters? If the protagonist mentions considering the option they didn't do, then it's probably the former. If the protagonist says they "instinctively" did something after the player has made a choice or if they say they can't imagine being someone who would make those other options, then it's likely the latter. This is important to think about as it helps assess the protagonist and the branching paths (as in, should their behavior in a bad ending be accounted for their overall character regardless of branch?).

Pitfalls of choices in VNs

I already mentioned potential pitfalls of choices of specific types but there are some more general issues choices any type can fall into. The most common issues I've heard are that there are too many choices and that they feel unnecessary. These can come from the creator not really having a direction or purpose with the choices they put in the game. My advice is to ask which of the four types the choice falls into (it can fit into multiple of them), ask yourself if it helps build the narrative, make sure it doesn't fall into any of the specific pitfalls I mentioned, and then decide if you should keep it. The number of choices doesn't really matter, as long as you feel they all fulfill a purpose. Another issue is that they can be non-indicative. What does that mean? Well, if we use an example from Wolf Among Us, there's a point where the player has the option to "glass him". What this does is that it makes the protagonist assault the person he's talking to with his glass when a lot of people thought it meant to share a drink with him. You don't want to frustrate players and make them unsure on what a choice actually does. Make sure it's clear that the immediate results of the choice are obvious before the player makes a decision. 

Another issue that can occur is that you can have choices that make no sense for either the player to make or the protagonist to make. There are egregious cases where you have the choice to either "flirt with your love interest" or "push them into the pool of lava" and like everyone would know what to pick. But more subtle cases can happen where you get choices that are either out-of-character or are just flat out worse than the other options. Don't write choices that make zero sense for the protagonist to do no matter what, it's just going to make your story suffer. As for choices that are outright worse, make sure that there's some reason why any reasonable person would pick that, other than "oh this unlocks the bad route where the protagonist becomes the devil and shit." Generally speaking, you want all the possible choices to be more or less equally valid. There are a shit load of people out there in the world, all of them with their own beliefs and opinions. What's good or bad is highly subjective so you want to at least respect people who would pick choices you wouldn't. Sure, some choices can have worse consequences, but you should show why they have worse consequences in the writing.

One other pitfall that can happen is that the player makes choices based on what they think would get them the route they want rather than what they'd actually do. There's no way to prevent this, but one piece of advice I have is to make sure the choices aren't so obvious when it comes to which results in which. You don't want players to go like "oh this choice will lead me to the horny route and that choice will lead me to the romance route." Or maybe you do, I have no idea. Also try to make it ambiguous what branches there are if you want players to make choices in a more natural way. Finally, we have the issue when the difference of choices is very small. Used effectively, it can make the player think more about which choice to make instead of picking one that's "better". On the flip side, having the difference be too subtle can make your players wonder what the point of the choice is, doubly so if the choice does have an impact on the rest of the game. I'd say get people to look it over to see if you got the right amount of difference down.

Neat bells and whistles

Now for some fun stuff. Here are some tricks you can do with choices. The examples I gave you so far are very big picture-esque, but you can also have choices on a small scale. This can bring a sense of mundanity for either the entire story or just part of it. It can also be used to prep the player up for bigger choices later on, so they can get a feel on how the game utilizes choices. Another thing you can do is to intentionally put choices that make no sense in order to add a joke route to the game. No one is going to pick the bad option on a first playthrough anyways, so might as well have some fun and reward/punish people who pick the bad choice. Alternatively, you can have an option that seems like the reasonable choice, but then when you pick it, the character you're talking to reacts negatively, introducing an unexpected character trait through choice-making. One other thing you can do is have the characters call back to specific choices you make. It reminds the player what choices they make and personalizes each playthrough. Also makes the playthrough more organic instead of having the VN specifically avoid mentioning what the player has done before. Finally, you can use choices to make the player pay attention to the story and characters. Particularly in whodunit mysteries where the player is given the responsibility to find out the perpetrator. It can make the player really invested in your story and make them feel satisfied when they get the right answer should you reward them appropriately. Or it can be smaller scale stuff and you can just reward them for remembering certain aspects of the story. Choices can be used in a lot of different ways.

Conclusion

There are people out there who think that VNs are best read as regular novels. That you should focus on having a good linear reading experience and that choices detract from that. While VNs being read in the same manner as traditional novels is fine, there is so much more you can do with VNs, and choices are just one way you can make them shine. I watched a documentary on text adventure games called "Get Lamp". They described them as "books that you can play" and talked about the wonder that is interacting with a story and dictating how it progresses. VNs are in the same boat, choices can bring so much value in a VN. I think it's important to think about the purpose of each choice and how to enrich our stories with them.

I hope you have a good day and see you later!