Games In Hell Forever

When it comes to previous projects and ideas I tend to have a very never say never approach to if I’ll ever make or remake them, mostly because I plan to dev until I’m 100 and have a nurse dictating lines of code for me, so who knows what I’ll circle back around to wanting to make. There are, however some exceptions to this thinking -w-)ll As a fledgling game dev with not a single game to my name, I was incredibly set on the idea of my first game being a dating sim, because I loved them and wanted to make one to my tastes. Dating sims, to someone who knows jack shit about game development, look deceptively easy to make. You may need to do sprites and cgs but the actual game is mostly just writing, which is the trouble because writing is hard… especially writing good, satisfying romance… even now I feel I struggle with it. So, for fun today I think I’ll recount a few of my old abandoned projects, mostly dating sims, that I definitely don’t plan to return to.

Screencap of Pushing Buttons start screen.

Pushing Buttons start menu

Iiif memory serves my first ever attempt proper was Pushing Buttons, a dating sim where you played as a scrappy inventor named Nonnie as he makes his own robot boyfriend, Sonny. Rejoice! Thanks to my extensive DMs with my husband I was able to scrounge up screen caps for this game and many others in this entry. I was so proud of the custom UI I put together for this game, unfortunately this game did not pan out for writing reasons, baby Zed was super into the idea of having a big cool tv head boyfriend but the angle I chose for the game ended up not compelling me -w-)ll The more I thought about it the more I was like “Wait… we like made him and have to teach him about the world… we kinda feel like his dad now…”. Funnily enough another game, Dr. Frank's Build-A-Boyfriend, explores the whole “Make a perfect boyfriend- shit I’m his dad now” thing with a comedic angle, though its been years since I played it. Plus outside of how awesome having a robot boyfriend would be I had no real plot direction in mind so my motivation for it fizzled out, oh well.

Clover, Dandelion, and Other Weeds

My next attempt was another dating sim, Clover, Dandelion, and Other Weeds, a more grounded attempt at a story. This one had you start as a transfer student at a new school joining a struggling gardening club and doing your best to pull together a booth for the school fair with your love interest of choice. After Pushing Buttons fizzled out I had read writing advice and something I had read at the time suggested “writing what you know” when you’re struggling with story stuff, hence the sudden school setting and gardening club stuff since I was in my schools gardening club before, I even had to make a booth for it too! Way less romance in my gardening club though lol. This one I actually got an okay amount of work done on, several character sprites and backgrounds along with the plot roughed out. Ended up puttering out just because I got bored with the school setting, I picked it because I thought writing for it would be easier but turns out that only helps so much if you think it’s boring anyway, sorry fellas.

Hungry Like the Wolf love interest concepts

After those two attempts I bounced around a couple ideas that didn’t get past the concept art stage, one was a pretty generic demon dating sim called Datenomicon and the other was a werewolf dating sim called Hungry Like the Wolf. Datenomicon had you play an occultist who accidentally summons a demon, romance ensues, it was pretty half baked and got only some concept art and one sprite before I lost interest, since I never gave the plot any thought besides “ogh ogh hot demon boy cast”. Hungry Like the Wolf had you play as a werewolf who, after turning back the morning after the full moon, only to realize he isn’t the only werewolf who frequents these woods (hint: the others are love interests). This one actually has like, a lot of random concept art for it and like rough cgs, just no actual game dev work, almost all art for it is in the margins of class notes since I was in college at the time. I think I liked daydreaming about dating the dudes more than plotting any kind of story for them -w-)ll. I don’t think there was anything wrong with this one, I think I just had a lot of trouble writing the actual romance routes and realized around this time that maybe I didn’t want to make a dating sim fgjlk.

A pencil sketch of a rugged demon man in a hallway.

The lead in this murder mystery game is closer to my current tastes than any of the actual love interests in this entry.

Once I was through with my long string of dating sim attempts I only had a couple more, a very uninspired rpgmaker horror game that was basically what if The Crooked Man was Slenderman, that was dropped after a little concept art. The last game I mulled over before I finally released my first game was a point and click game that didn’t make it past the concept art stage, where you played a demon noir detective dude solving… some kind of murder… yeah I sketched a lot of scene and dialogue snippets I thought were cool but in practice I didn’t have a real plot -w-)ll This was going to originally planned to be the game I made over the summer for my first game, until previously mentioned FFXIV exposure that enthralled me until I made my actual first game, Mister Mandragora’s Special Errands.

A glittery gif of a rainbow kitty sleeping.

Me sleeping after publishing this.

Okiee I think that’s all of them. Honestly there’s not anything wrong with any of these ideas, a lot of me not doing more work on them is mostly taste changing and them not holding my interest anymore. Like the school setting one was probably closest to becoming a full game, but I just super didn’t care about that kind of story so in Hell forever it stays. Honestly if I learned anything from going over these old abandoned projects it's to always post about or have some kind of record for your shit, even if no one cares because if it wasn't for me constantly DMing people and posting about projects on my (at the time) dead Patreon these games would all just be memories, which is nuts. Well thank you for listening, I hope you enjoyed seeing my creative equivalent of cicada molts, goodbye!