Hello! Thank you to everyone for all the positive feedback and support on my first project! I am absolutely honored that over (now) over 1000 people have played my game, it's only been 5 days holy moly. I’ve also noticed that people have left tips when downloading the game??? AAA THANK YOU!!! It means the absolute world and I will never forget having my first ever donation!!! A huge confidence booster. I really hope you guys enjoy whatever I come up with next!

Comic/Sketches/Concepts

The entirety of WLF was made in about 2.5 weeks and concepts/assets were done in 2 nights so there aren’t many concepts…

A short comic with unused dialogue.

^ The technician is basically a bum and workaholic. They’ve lived in the apartment for at least a month already and have not unpacked anything. There was supposed to be a bathroom you can enter in the apartment (between the kitchen and closet) but it was removed.

^ Cathode was originally going to have all limbs 

Title Concepts

Wired Affection, Hotline ROMance

the comma matters…

"WARM LIKE FLESH" a pulse of synthetic longing… a love letter from a machine that learned to lie

"WARM, LIKE FLESH" the loneliest lie a computer ever told

Tagline

"Love is just another peripheral... until the machine learns how to love you."

[Peripheral - an internal/external hardware that connects to a computer to extend its capabilities]

Retrospect

I’ve always wanted to make a game myself but never written a fully fleshed out narrative. It wasn’t until I came up with the idea for WARM LIKE FLESH (WLF) 2 hours right before my comp sci final funnily enough (wow. comp sci computer freak? who would’ve known). Though it wasn’t until the end of May I made my first sketches and began coding. 

I definitely could’ve made it more visual novel-like and used the engine Ren'Py or used RPGmaker, but I disliked how limiting both engines were. So I took it upon myself to learn Godot. To be honest most of the time developing WLF went into learning and making all the systems myself, 4/10 experience but at least I can reused it now. I am absolutely thankful for the Dialogic 2 plugin, literally a huge timesaver and handled all the dialogue/text, including localization.

One grievance I have is the length of the game/dialogues. There were many things I had planned, like cutscenes, different object interaction dialogues (specifically the tv and router), variation to wire minigame, and 3 more days. But after the coding and artwork, I was kind of burnt out by the time I got to writing–especially the flirtatious route since those were one of the last dialogues I wrote.

I hope to do additional comics/writing about the two though! More specifically Cathode. Maybe that will fill the Cathode shaped hole in my heart and others who've played lol.

QnA

Were there any inspirations you went off of during development?

Deadplate was one of my biggest inspirations!

Aesthetics wise: Buckshot Roulette, divine machinery, and whatever genre these pictures are.

^ Hey look! Warm like flesh.

What projects are you planning next?

I don't want to say specifics here but some ideas I've had are “Doctor, oh Doctor”, one about cupid, and another one about a knight, princess, and a jester. Not sure if they will be games or some other medium yet.

Fun facts about Cathode?

Hmmmm…. I was going to make Cathode very negative/pessimistic because cathode rays are negative charge (hah. haha… I scrapped this for obvious reasons).

There were two meanings I had in mind for the name:

Tech - source of elections, the “heart” of old machines. Greek – descent or the way downward.

Facts/backstory/pronouns of the technician?

They don’t have a name officially, I’ve just referred them as technician or #37. I mentioned earlier but they’re a bum & workaholic. They’re in their mid 20s. They/he. You can look at how their coat buttons right over left and deduce something.

There’s not much else to say about the technician to be honest, they’re just a ‘cog’ in the machine though.

Was it on purpose that Cathode’s pronoun changes depending on the ending?

Absolutely.

Are you thinking of doing more with the concept?

For sure! Besides additional comics/artworks, I was thinking of making another game where you play as Cathode or a previous technician (if there is interest for it).

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments. :]

Music I listened to while making WARM LIKE FLESH

Thank you for your support and see you in the future!

- Tatsumelon

Fanarts/Fanocs

Inobii_

jeremiah_putomaya

ufo2nowhere