I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing the masterminds behind the Furry Shades of Gay series, along with other games of a similar type. I always get nervous when I have to come up with questions, or even ask game devs for an interview because I feel like my questions aren’t going to be good enough or I’m wasting their time.
Alas, such is the mindset of an antisocial introvert.
BUT!
I managed to reach out to the team, and here are the questions, as well as their responses.
Interview with Furlough Games
Hi! Felix and Drakonika here, we are the founders of Furlough Games. There’s a lot of people working with us – writers, artists and animators with us, and we’ve got some input from them, but it will be mostly us two answering the questions.
What made you decide to take on the task of creating the series of Furry Shades of Gay?
Drakonika: This was Felix’s idea originally. He was working on his own game and went “hey, why don’t I start on another one, I have so much free time, after all. Could you help me out?” I just quit my job at the moment and here I am now.
Felix: Yeah, I was spending almost all my time on my personal project, but I wanted to start something on the side to unwind a bit. I think that many furry artists are just unbelievably awesome, but I feel there’s too few decent furry games at the same time. I really wanted to make something cool and sexy for the community, even if it wasn’t the biggest game ever. I thought I’d be able to do everything myself just by commissioning artists and writers, but then it turned out I couldn’t and asked Drakonika to help. And the rest is history.
Regarding your visual novels, which storyline took the longest to create?
Drakonika: I think it would be the Dark Carnival from Furry Shades of Gay 2. It was the most weird, deviant and interesting!
Felix: Yeah, agree on that one. This story was also the most free of common sense limitations, being all mystical and stuff. We’ve come up with so many cool scenes and events, we had to pick only the best ones. And then somehow make them into a coherent story.
What kind of inspiration sparks the different storylines of the series?
Felix: Basically anything could be an inspiration. A cool book, a movie, a TV episode, some webcomic, even a meme or a randomly remembered joke. If it transforms into a cool concept for the story, it goes in.
Drakonika: We usually pick a day or two, get some pizza, some beers, and dive right into coming up with the stories. I mostly rely on comics and fan fiction which I read a lot.
From when you first started creating your games to the games in development now, what kind of user reviews have you taken to heart to better the games at this point?
Felix: I’m doing all the match-3 balance and I have this bad habit of forgetting that I’m getting pretty good at clearing levels while I’m testing them. And then we get people telling us “why would you make a dark souls of ero puzzle games?” So I’m trying my best to make the levels less intimidating now. And of course we’re trying our best to note which stories our players like the most.
Drakonika: One thing I took to heart is the fact the people want more… romance. This was quite a surprise since the games were supposed to be more of a cheesy funny porn than anything. But we’re adding at least one super sweet and romantic story to each new game now.
Possibly going hand-in-hand with the question above: If you could go back in time to when you first started creating your games, is there anything you would change for a better user experience now?
Drakonika: Hmm, I think I would pay more attention to the actual scripts. Make them less cliche, you know? And then artworks and animations here and there could do with more tender loving care.
Felix: In the very first game, Furry Shades of Gay, every story was concived as a very broad tree, branching at each scene. Because of that every story basically ended in 4 or 5 scenes, and thus the stories felt way too rushed. I think our players much prefer longer stories with either small diversions or big important choices with consequences.
A visual novel’s main focal points are the storyline and the artwork–do you find it better to come up with a story first, or can creating a piece of art first inspire a story?
Felix: We don’t really have a lead artist working full-time with us, so we have to start with a story. But if we ever add one to the core team, I’m sure some stories will start with a beautiful character or just a sketch of a cool scene.
Drakonika: Sometimes we see an artwork while browsing the internet and the whole story just comes into existence. Felix often sends me some random comic strips or some nifty artwork and goes “hey, we could make a fun story for our next game out of this”. But still we mostly start with an abstract concept for the story, then do the storyboard, and then the actual art.
Working with a smaller team size (I’m assuming), what’s the average amount of time it typically takes to create your visual novels?
Drakonika: Our games may look pretty simple, but it takes us at least a year to go from the basic concepts for the stories to the finished game. Managing all the writers, the artists, the animators, the developers (and starting from our next game, the voice actors) takes a lot of effort and time. And many of the people working with us aren’t working on the game full-time, they are either studying, working their day jobs, working on their own projects or just have some really time-intensive hobbies.
Felix: Yup. I have nothing to add, tbh.
You’ve got a Patreon page and Discord, so how much of your games are based on feedback from your supporters and how much of it is from the Furlough Games team?
Drakonika: Hard to tell, but I think it would be something like fifty-fifty? We try our best to listen to feedback, but the final decision always comes from Furlough Games.
Felix: Our Patreon is super young, but we’ve already done a few polls there. And our good Patrons helped us pick the best routes for the stories in development.
How do you choose which suggestion to go with if there’s a lot of ideas from your supporters that you really like? Do you put other ideas that weren’t used to the side, for a possible future reference to another game?
Drakonika: Oh, for sure. It’s usually me and Felix who come up with the stories, but there’s a lot of cool ideas coming from the community as well. Some are already making their way into our games and some are biding their time!
Felix: Yeah, that’s true. The thing is, we already have A LOT of cool ideas written down and waiting for their chance to shine. And some of those probably won’t have that chance since we just can’t possibly make that much content. Such is life.
Props to all the artists for their hard work on creating the scenes and characters. Every storyline of your games has a different style, so I’m curious how you go about hiring artists. Have some of them requested to create art for your games, or do you typically search for specific artists?
Felix: When I started the development of the very first game I was mostly searching for artists through my friends and acquaintances. The budget just wasn’t there to commission the more well-known artists, and I wasn’t going to ask anyone to work for free. Still, I pretty much failed at that so I begged Drakonika to help out.
Drakonika: In the beginning I started by asking random artists if they are interested. Those were mostly my friends or friends of friends. I draw a little myself, so I have a lot of friends in the art circles. Now we have a few artists who are working with us on each game, and we are always looking for more artists to join us as well.
What are your team’s top 5 visual novels that they suggest gamers go play immediately (after playing your own games first, of course ;))?
Drakonika: Yeah, so I don’t really have time to play anything nowadays with all the work. Can I just go with the Ace Attorney series? It’s VN enough, right? I just adore it! And from the games I managed to play recently, Knightly Passions was quite fun. But that would be it from me.
Felix: Oof. Sorry, I’ll go off the script, because even though I love VNs, I love hybrid games even more. But the first one is definitely a proper VN! So.
- Echo (from Echo Project)
- Max Gentlemen Sexy Business!
- Monster Prom
- Orc Massage (there’s only a tiny bit of a VN here, but the concept is so cool!)
- Ladykiller in a Bind
