A Reflection of Game Development (Patreon)

The Following Post has three major sections: 'Endings', 'Retrospective on Monster Girl 1,000' and 'Future Games.'

Endings:

This year, several manga have concluded, facing backlash from fans for their unsatisfying endings. As a writer myself, I find it fascinating to observe fan expectations and how they respond when those expectations aren't met. I can’t help but empathize with the creators. I've written stories with bad endings too.

But in order to avoid making mistakes like that, sometimes you need to make them. This post is going to be a retrospective into the development of my games—a documentation of where things went wrong and how I've learned from these experiences moving forward.

Friendship with Benefits 1 was my first story and game, and while it had the blemishes of an amateur developer in terms of art, writing, and most certainly its code, it still managed to capture an audience and deliver several tightly contained short stories that coalesced into a whole by the end. With the exception of its unfinished sequel, even three game releases later, I find myself reflecting on Friendship with Benefits 1 as the best story I've told and the best game I'd made. I got it right the first time, by pure coincidence, and it was only by fumbling around with some other releases that I was able to realize that.

However, even Friendship with Benefits 1, once upon a time, had a disliked ending. The original ending was a dour one that many remember as better than it actually was. Despite being a harem game that focused on freedom and variety, the ending forced you to choose one of eleven girls, and then the ending was a slideshow detailing the paths the characters would walk in the future. This didn't work for several reasons. Firstly, while the idea of choosing a girl to date and marry might be novel, it kind of sucked watching all the other girls go on to live solitary lives in the absence of the main character. Additionally, rather than leaving the future of the protagonist up to the player's interpretation, I solidified too much. Whatever I could have written in those future scenarios wouldn't have been as satisfying as the ending a player could imagine. This is why I settled on the finale I did, the spa harem ending. It showed how many opportunities the protagonist had for the future without directly committing to any of them. You may have your favorites, but a harem end is the best way a harem game can really end, and I want to return to this idea for Friendship with Benefits 2 and flesh it out even more, paralleling the way Unveiling the Unknown ended in a similar way.

Monster Girl 1,000's ending failed in completely different ways. For a long time, I've been obsessed with making underdog/weak protagonists. Almost all my games have had a protagonist surrounded by women and forces stronger than them, and they're merely a catalyst that brings people together. This can work in some stories, but Monster Girl 1,000 is an RPG. The protagonists should have been major players in the final missions, but I kept moving the focus away from them, even breaking away from the protagonist's point of view focus to show other characters clashing. Throughout the entire game, you’re often left twiddling your thumbs while other random characters are doing the cool things. Sometimes they’re not even interesting characters; they’re just ones introduced a few story beats ago.

Understandably, readers wondered why the protagonist trio was left so weak, even though the ending was the exact moment there should have been some serious catharsis and power fantasy. This was the big moment; I'd even set it up with prior events, but I completely failed to deliver. Instead, the finale of MG1K feels bloated and padded with side characters fighting, like I was too busy glazing my 'amazing' cast rather than delivering the experience the reader wanted. The worst part is that I did include this power fantasy in the form of another character. Swiftstroke has the exact hero's journey and battle odyssey that people were likely hoping for in the protagonist. Seeing exactly what they wanted for the protagonist given to another character likely soured people even more. Why does this interloper that's shown up twice in the story get to be the hero?

It's amazing how a minor story fumble in the last 5% alone can genuinely have gigantic consequences for the general perception of the game as a whole. Here's a quote from a real review: "The end of the game almost made me quit the game, delete it, and never come back. The only thing that made me finish it was the 70 hours of wasted time up to this point." - They disliked the ending so much; they considered the prior 70 hours wasted.

Despite that, I don't think the fans don't ask for much, not really. Attack on Titan. My Hero Academia. Bleach. Jujutsu Kaisen. All these shows could have had significantly better endings if the authors swallowed their egos and gave the readers what they wanted. Catharsis, fantasy, and closure.

Catharsis:

At its core, catharsis is about emotional release. Audiences invest deeply in characters and their struggles, so the resolution should offer a sense of satisfaction—it could be triumph, tragedy, or peace. It doesn’t mean the ending has to be happy, but it must feel earned.

Readers wanted Dante, the underdog, to finally complete his character arc and become a hero. They wanted him to be the one beating the villains and having an impact on the story.

A protagonist who overcomes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle allows readers to let go of the tension they’ve held onto through the journey. Without catharsis, an ending feels hollow, like a song that never reaches its final note.

Fantasy:

Power fantasies aren’t just about strength or dominance; they’re about giving audiences a chance to escape into a world where their desires and ideals are realized. When protagonists fulfill their ambitions or rise above adversity, it’s not just their victory; it’s also the audience’s. Neglecting this element often leads to frustration.

Closure:

Closure ties everything together, addressing lingering questions and giving the sense that the journey was worthwhile. Readers need to feel that the characters have reached a point of resolution. A lack of closure leaves the story feeling incomplete, as though all that came before was pointless.

Balancing these three elements is what makes an ending resonate, and it’s some of the biggest failures in Monster Girl 1,000, but also the manga series I’ve acknowledged above.

It's not about pandering but about respecting the emotional investment of the audience while staying true to the story’s core themes.

The best part is that it’s easy to plan ahead if you know what matters. The worst part is that it’s not enough to simply include these elements; they also have to be well executed. My panned Friendship with Benefits 1 ending technically had these three elements but still lacked the punch required to make it work. The only way to make ‘picking a chosen girl’ work in a game would have been to make an entirely new scene for each girl, with a unique sex scene too. However, for ten girls, that’d represent a significant amount of work for a segment of the game that most players will only see 10% of without reloading a save file.

Friendship with Benefits 2, version 0.7.0, is currently in development. And it includes an ending to ‘Act 1’ that is big and explosive. Let’s hope these thoughts can materialize into something good, eh?

Monster Girl 1,000 Retrospective:

My thoughts on Friendship with Benefits and endings are over now; the rest of this post will be a retrospective on the development of Monster Girl 1,000 for those interested, and we’ll start off strong by saying that Monster Girl 1,000 was the fumble in every way an indie game can be.

It was a game burdened by too many characters, too large of a scope, and too many plot threads.

It's a gigantic project even in its current state, but the original intention was for it to be even larger. When first designing, I had a thousand ideas. In fact, Monster Girl 1,000 was made on a complete whim. The original plan was for a game called Monster Girl Paradise set in hell—I'd even started writing it; the world-building and first plot points are still fresh in my head. You'd wake up at a reception in hell, and a succubus (Alice) would ask you to fill out a form. In the process, you'd both come to the realization that you'd been sent here by accident. As a result, you'd be sent to 'Paradise', a resort in hell for the monster girls. There were two potential paths here: a Planescape Torment-inspired 'loop' story and a Vampire the Masquerade/Disco Elysium-inspired novel story.

But somehow, I pivoted to this fantasy game that I'd been planning for even longer. Some people in my server may recall that I’d already made an abandoned, unnamed RPGMaker project in 2018 featuring cat girl twins Luneth and Celeste, who were spiritual successors to Bessie and Ray, respectively. Celeste was particularly identical to Ray in personality. This game concept is older than FWB 1, and that blows my mind.

It wasn’t until January 2022 that I started developing Monster Girl 1,000. As you can imagine, the game had been brewing in my mind for years, with constant iterations to the point where the finished product is unrecognizable from my initial imaginings.

The first thing I did was excitedly write down several area names and biome, along with the varying monster girls that would be attached to a biome like that. For the beach, there would be a shark girl, crab, mermaid, scylla, naga… Then in a horror-themed place, we'd get a doll, ghost, vampire, zombie, oni, and pumpkin queen! I had these large lists compiled for each hub of quests, characters, content, and even mechanics.

For the first few cities, I managed to achieve this: Misty Woods had a massive story with a large cast. Mistral Village included management systems, an arena, and a variety of rewards and upgrades. Elysian Colosseum might have the most content of any other area in the entire game. Each area was effectively a small game. I’m serious when I say I've played games that are around the size and scope of 2-3 cities in Monster Girl 1,000.

But I’m a solo developer, and this was my second game. Progress was glacial; each area was starting to take months. By the time I reached Magic Weavers, I was burning out, and for some reason, I didn’t have the awareness or sense to cut things down in a sensible way.

I saw my original plan as a commitment—a series of ‘goals’ I had to meet. But I wasn’t even halfway through, and I was so burned out by this and RPGMaker’s engine that I returned to the Ren’Py engine to develop Tuition Academia. That game was a breath of fresh air for me.

When I finally returned to developing Monster Girl 1,000 seriously, every area was half the size of the first few. New locations went from having 5-6 characters and quests to 1-2.

By the latter half of the game, I was genuinely rushing to the end.

More than anything, Monster Girl 1,000 needed was a change in mindset, a change in development philosophy.

I realize now that I could have made Monster Girl 1,000 significantly better while slimming the game down, reducing development time and stress. All with one simple question that I never asked myself:

Why have four shitty, smaller locations when I can dump all that energy into developing one big, interesting area?

Better yet, why make a cast of 70+ characters, each only having a miniscule role and development, with a singular formulaic sex scene, when I could just make a small cast of ten that are constantly developed and built up? Ray and Bessie are everyone’s favorites for a reason.

The scope and design of MG1K were always impossible for a single developer to bring to fruition in a time span that made sense. So many characters became forgettable and throw-away with sex scenes that became predictable and formulaic. Eventually there was almost no sexual tension and buildup.

Thankfully for me, Ray and Bessie effectively carried the story of the game, but so many areas and events felt pointless and padded because every area 'needed' a quest, and every character 'needed' a sex scene because that's just the formula I'd locked myself into.

That, combined with me rushing the end of the game, seeing it as more work than play, left the latter third feeling like a massive drop in quality.

Finally, there were several major story elements and mechanics in Monster Girl 1,000 that just didn’t work or were poorly planned out. Here are a few of them:

• Spirit: was the ‘power level’ of my game. I wanted to tie narrative strength to a meta part of the game’s progression, only to accidentally tie my hands in another way: the only way to get strong in my game was to be a mass murderer. Oops. That in itself could have been really interesting to explore, but I just kind of ignored this issue.

• Monster Girl Ancestors: This is some of the worst world building I’ve ever seen for a fantasy world, and its mine! Essentially, Monster Girl 1,000 is a post-post apocalypse. Humanity almost reached extinction, but Eris was able to use some of her power to create monster girls. In creation, she made a monster girl for every animal, every insect, etc. The ancestors were all immortal. The problem is, the setting of Monster Girl 1,000 doesn’t take place 1,000 years, or even 100,000 years after this. No, Monster Girl 1,000 takes place potentially hundreds of millions of years later because I needed these ancestors to not only repopulate the world, but for their offspring to evolve, and then reach the point of extinction once again. Meanwhile, these ancestors are still alive and about in the world. Alice, for instance, is the bunny ancestor. Now, tell me... How would you write someone that’s potentially 100,000,000 years old? Frankly, I have no fucking idea. We couldn’t even begin to fathom what that would look like. Injecting my story with 14+ of these characters was a terrible idea.

• Oh look, another world-ending plot: Did anyone else notice that MG1K is just full of these? The sun is near the end of its lifespan, meaning it’ll supernova soon. There’s a giant space creature that’s managed to corrupt and consume an entire continent. There’s an evil goddess using the population of the planet as literal cattle for her imminent resurrection. Also, there seems to be some ‘Elysian’ crystal capable of manipulating people to such a degree that it formed a religion and resurrected a few people. Why so many big ideas? I really ought to have stuck to one of these at most. I’m surprised that I managed to explain and tie them all up in the end.

• This story is miserable: For some reason, during the time I was writing MG1K, I was obsessed with trying to make the reader sad. I thought that a story that could make the reader feel sad automatically meant it was good. As a result, almost every major story moment is tragic. There’s unnecessary sadness, death, and brutality throughout. I genuinely toned it down at some places because even I thought I went too far. For instance, the original plan at Little Shroom City was for everyone except Dante, Bessie, and Ray to die. I chickened out and pulled a deus ex Deathclaw out of my butt instead. Which just ended up being another instance of the player sitting around watching random characters do cool things.

How would I make Monster Girl 1,000 today?

Mechanically, I still consider the game to be a remarkable success from the RPG front; I wouldn’t change a thing about the skills or weapons system.

However, I'd radically change the setting and story. I don't even have to think about it hard either, because an early concept of MG1K still exists cleanly in my head: it was a story about a protagonist that lived in a monster hunting village. In that village there was a ranking system, and you'd start at #1000 and climb your way to the top. This was before I had any plans about Ray, Bessie, or anyone else. At its core, there was just a village and its citizens. Rather than making a country-wide adventure with world-ending stakes, I should have focused on that coming-of-age story with a smaller cast and smaller stakes. The Michaela, Eden, and Eris plot could still exist, but they could have just been corrupt bureaucrats; there is no need to create a world-ending conspiracy.

This in general will be my approach moving forward. For some reason, I’d tend towards harem casts that just kept bloating up in size and scope. Even in my other games, I had this habit of injecting random one-off characters with one-off sex scenes, when that effort and development time could have been better spent developing a pre-existing character.

Future Games:

My next game will be “One Pump Chump," and it’ll be my first ever game that entirely focuses on a single character (with the soft exception of the female protagonist-led Tuition Academia). In this game you start as a weak, C-Rank hero, fighting a monster too strong for you to handle. Tatsumaki appears and saves you, but with the monster's dying breath, it casts a spell that prevents the two of you from ever feeling pleasure from the same thing twice. Handjob? That only works once. Blowjob? Only once. This is undoubtedly going to be a hilarious premise with a tsundere like Tats. I'm excited to really see how far I can develop and explore a single character emotionally and sexually.

Looking further into the future, my next planned titles have the preliminary titles of ‘Cat Girl vs. Dog Girl' and 'Seventh Heaven’.

Cat Girl vs. Dog Girl will be a visual novel rom-com focusing on the competition of two girls to win your affection. Goldie is the childhood best friend dog girl that feigns indifference, but as soon as the NameTBD cat girl comes along and shows interest, it’s war. This'll be a simple slice-of-life VN that serves as an evolution of a game idea I've had rattling in my brain for years now. For a long time I've wanted to make a 'Life Sim' game where you live with a girl and slowly earn affection with them, inspired by what might be the first game in this genre 'Teaching Feeling'. Since this'll likely be a very simple game, I'll be developing aspects and systems of my next game simultaneously, because the game after this is going to be pretty complex...

Seventh Heaven will be a female protagonist RPG where you control Tifa. It’ll be a parody of FF7, and it’ll lean a lot into that fun, parody aspect. It’ll be set in an alternative version of the infamous Wall Market section, where failing to corner Don Corneo, Tifa narrowly escapes with a bounty and will have to fight her way back up to the Don’s manor to rescue Aerith and Cloud without her equipment. You might initially suspect that this is a weird game for me to develop; however, it’ll be heavily inspired by Karryn’s Prison, which is one of my favorite H-Games. I think Karryn’s Prison and its systems could be built upon to develop something even better, and I want to give it a crack. However, I refuse to use RPGMaker as the engine, meaning I’ll have to develop some of my own game systems in Ren’Py.

Thank you for reading this retrospective and for supporting my journey as an artist, writer, and developer. I look forward to sharing more stories and games soon!