Hello everyone! The following is the commentary of the first build of By Your Hands condensed and re-edited to resemble the format I'll be using for commentary of future builds that will be available to Blooming Tier patrons. This version also includes screenshots as well, but these screenshots are actually from build 0.3.0. However, they should suffice in any case. The original and longer version of this commentary is available for all patrons, including Basic and Advanced Tier patrons. You can become a patron here and obtain access to the PDF (if you're a patron) here.

Welcome to the commentary to By Your Hands! I thought that since I wasn't the one writing this story I should make up for that by writing a commentary on the script. With my commentary, I'll be explaining my process of developing the game and what I think of certain lines. I'll also be talking about how I expected the audience to react and how it differs from how they actually reacted. I won't be explaining my or Nemo's intentions behind everything because I feel like that ruins the fun and might even spoil some things, but I will explain a few things because I'm me. I hope you guys enjoy my ramblings and find it entertaining. Anyways, let's go on with the show!

Before we start I just want to say how much I love the title screen music. I commissioned Emma AKA Brkn Hvn to compose this song and it's SOOOO good. I think this is my favorite track from him and I have commissioned a lot of songs from him just because he really is the MVP. I could go on gushing about how much I love love LOVE this song, but instead, I'll just say that my favorite part is the section where it's just a few instruments. It just sounds so beautiful and sweet, I love it! The only issues I have with it are that it doesn't loop properly and it I feel like the instrument used for the main melody could be more high quality.

I also wanted to talk about the title screen art. It's actually just a trace over a stock image. Now before you go rabid on me, I had to turn in the first build before BaraJam ended and I ran out of time to make a proper title screen. It was always meant to be a hand in a setting of nothing, but there's just one problem. I suck at drawing hands. I know, I name my VN "By Your Hands" and my hands look like ass. Eventually, it will be redrawn but right now it's a low priority. And every other piece of art in the game isn't traced.

So I want to elaborate on how this game was developed. I did the coding and art while Nemo did the writing. I was the one who came up with the basic plot line, characters, and some outlining but Nemo's the one who wrote everything else. I'll show the document of exactly what I sent him (minus content that's not in the game yet) but to give an example, I told him that for Owen's route on Day 1, he and Rex would come to Rex's house and study. That was it. Them sharing pizza, Owen being an MLG pro at History, him talking about what made him scream earlier in the day, and them being horny about Mr. Baker was all Nemo's doing. This process of doing things was what I felt was the most enjoyable way of doing it because I'm able to dictate what type of story By Your Hands is while still having the joy of finding out exactly how things will roll out.

One last thing before I go on. This game was built on top of the Ren'py GUI Template made by tofurocks. Barachoda Bloom was also built on top of that and I just wanted to take a moment to thank them for without this template Barachoda Bloom and By Your Hands wouldn't be half as badass as they are now. Also, the italic text will mention things later on in the build, so make sure you have read the entire build before continuing on!

So let's dive in (Heh, get it because one of the love interests is an orca?)! 

So I'm going to tell you something about the background images used for By Your Hands. They use the same filters used for Barachoda but with different settings. So unlike the backgrounds in BB, these backgrounds have lines. Also, all backgrounds are jpegs because they use up less space and there isn't enough detail in these images to warrant me using high-quality files. For this background and the next few ones, I made them to be as dark as possible so you're not looking at a black screen for five minutes straight but you can understand the type of imagery the dinosaur is looking at. 

Someone told me that they didn't get what "Sire" or "Egg-layer" stood for. They mean father and mother respectively in case you didn't know. But you're also not supposed to fully grasp what's going on in this section of the game.

Do you like these sound effects I got from freesound.com? I was really insistent on putting as much sound effects into this section as possible. You are looking at a modified stock image with shitty compression, the imagery here isn't exactly captivating you here. That's why I thought to put more audio components in this section to pull players in. It reminds me a little bit of the original When They Cry VN where the drawings were utter shit, but the audio design and writing were top-notch, which is what hooked players.

That same person who didn't know what "egg-layer" meant told me that there was a lot of simple words used in this section. He asked me why there were so many used in the beginning and I told him it would make sense later on. He's played through each of the routes in the build by now. I don't think he knows why. To put simply, it's to make the child sound a lot more animalistic. This will become (somewhat) important later.

That same person who didn't know what "egg-layer" meant told me that there were a lot of simple words used in this section. He asked me why there were so many users in the beginning and I told him it would make sense later on. He's played through each of the routes in the build by now. I don't think he knows why. To put it simply, it's to make the child sound a lot more animalistic. This will become (somewhat) important later.

One thing I'll mention about Nemo's style of writing is that he includes these wait tags. You have to click on the textbox for the rest of the text to appear. I never include these in Barachoda Bloom and there are only two instances of this tag happening early in All In Love And War. I don't like including these in the VNs I write because I feel like the reader almost always expects all the text in the box to appear after one click. The most I'll do is include {w=1} in a string of text, and very rarely make the value higher than that. However, I didn't want to mess with Nemo's style of writing, so I kept these {w} tags in.

Originally I wanted to include silhouettes of the parents, but I wanted to make the fact that Rex was a dinosaur a surprise. I also imagine them to be as big as what real-life dinosaurs would have been, but then I would have had to provide an explanation on how Rex is the same size as everyone else (probably stunted growth from being frozen for thousands of years) and I'm too lazy to do that. And for the record, I'll be calling the protagonist "Rex" in this commentary, because "MC" or "the protagonist" is both annoying to type over and over again.

So I was initially confused about what type of background to put here. Originally, I put like a desert-y background here because that's what I typically think Dinosaurs usually live in. However since the child later falls into a pool of water that's freezing cold, it would make more sense if he was living in a colder environment. I looked it up and there were dinosaurs that lived in freezing climates, but as far as I know, it hasn't been proven that Allosaurus specifically lived in cold climates. But it's possible, and that's all that I need to go with this story element.

Here's what I could make out of this sound clip:

"when we look at this ??? early on ??? we have many mindsets we're born we learn to walk we ride a bike we got to school we get a car we graduate we may go on to"

Here's the link to the sound effect. I modified it to make it even more muffled sounding.

I was thinking of saying what the default name is in the "what is your name" line, but I felt like that was too much clutter. Not showing the default name also makes the moment more "chaotic" I would say. The name "Rex" also makes it obvious that he's a dinosaur.

Ayyyyy, it's ya boy! I wonder how many people were expecting this. Wanted to give people a little surprise with the species of the animal. So surprise! Also if this CG looks a little stiff, it's because I was struggling to draw him in a CG so I just drew him directly off his concept art. Not tracing, just copying. There's a difference. Maybe I'll revise this CG later down the road, but not now.

Indeed it will be. I just want to let you guys know that the question, "How is a dinosaur living in modern times?" was originally going to be answered by this point in the story. It's not answered in this build because it would just be an exposition dump and we're kind of pouring in all the world-building we can.

I was supposed to format this in the game to make it look more like how it does in the google doc. Also, there was something in the note I wanted to talk about but I can't say it because of content is not in the game yet.

Someone mentioned they were excited to see the entrance to Purdue University in the game. It was a stock image I found that was a good fit for the scene, so it was a lucky coincidence. I did add a flag pole to the image, which will be important for later.

I was a little uncertain about drawing the eyes of the characters. Most people agree that furries, the characters not the community, are basically just human bodies covered with fur/scales/feathers/etc. with animal heads, tails, and maybe claws. But while there are artists that draw furries with eyes that are closer to animal eyes, most people draw furries with human-esque eyes. Usually, the irises are made smaller so they can show the sclera. A lot of animals do have white sclera, but their iris and/or pupils are so large that they're usually not visible. What I did was that I drew the eyes as somewhat human-ish, but made them resemble animal eyes in some form. I wanted the characters to be "animal-like" but also intelligent looking. So like, for Connor, chickens have very circular eyes, so I gave him eyes that are very circular. But I made his pupils really small to give him a distinct look.

I am the bait of my sword. I forget the rest, but UNLIMITED BAIT WORKS! Yeah, a little surprised these three weren't love interests, were you? Some of you guys figured it what I was doing, but a good amount of you didn't. I don't know why I was so keen on making it seem like these guys were love interests but I guess I trick you guys. But it's interesting, really. All you need to do is to make them a canine/feline and muscular and the fanboys go rabid.

One thing to note about Tucker is that he intentionally sticks out his fangs because he wants people to know that he's the apex predator and he'll kill you if you don't act the way he wants you to. Not literally but you know. Also, I suck at drawing teeth. That's the one thing I'll revisit for these sprites.

This was supposed to resemble a political cartoon made in the 19th century, but I didn't have time to make such a graphic before the BaraJam stopped accepting submissions. Thing is, I don't know about you but I definitely know a professor who would put photos like this in their presentation.

This line I had trouble understanding. At first, I wasn't sure how people becoming less racist did anything to make technology more advanced. But I think when society becomes more accepting of other races/species, they're more willing to look at things more critically. Once you realize that you've only been acting a certain way because society says so, you try to seek out the answer to how you should act. So the Earth isn't the center of the universe (at least not in the way we thought) and we figured that out when we stopped to wonder why we think it is the center. Not to mention, the willingness to communicate with different cultures allows people to become more multi-cultured and see more opportunities in advancing technology. So yeah, I hope that all makes sense.

So this part was something I was worried about. It's hard to make exposition entertaining. It's like making the color beige look vibrant in a painting. Or making sardines tasty to children. But this is necessary because the background for this world is important to know so you can understand the rest of the story and the context the characters are put into. Having an attractive man explain all this made it easier, but I felt like it wasn't enough. So what I did is that I put in stock photos for some of the dialogue so it doesn't feel like you're being exposition dumped for ten minutes. I hope people understand what the hell "primaries", "secondaries", and "apexes" are given I technically didn't explain. You should know what these terms mean by the end of the day, but it's possible you didn't by this point, so this section might be a bit confusing.

Let me explain this for a hot minute. Sentience refers to the ability to express and feel emotions. That's literally what Wikipedia says. In the real world, this refers to all living animals and humans. Sapience refers to the ability to express and feel human-like emotions. Now that we've cleared that up, you can see how the shit hits the fan.

This painting…It's based on a painting done by Winslow Homer. It's called "A Flower for the Teacher" and it's one of my favorite paintings he did. Here's what it looks like:

I wanted to include a similar painting to that, but I didn't have time to make such a painting so I edited stock images. Hopefully, I'll replace it with a nicer-looking painting.

So um, I shared her sprite a few weeks before I published the game and it had her with this slightly pissed-off expression. She never makes that expression within the game. Oops. But I do like her design, even if people kept confusing her for a man despite the lack of antlers. Just looks so cool. Also, she's totally looking at his bulge.

Mr. Baker's class was originally supposed to be Health so it can go along with, uh, some "special" private talk. I changed this to History because I felt like world-building was more important. Also because I forgot his original class was Health. But usually, the teacher in the FVN is an English teacher, so I guess I'm changing things up. Also, is Calculus usually a freshman course? I remember that Calculus wasn't recommended for most freshman students. I guess Rex is a math boi.

And it's our boy, Owen! I mentioned this earlier but Owen was one of the hardest characters to draw due to how it was hard to find good references for anthro orcas. Most orca anthros were muscular and their heads were face on. I'm pretty happy with how he ended up looking even if I did end up modifying his appearance in build 0.2.0/0.3.0.

(When you ask what happened)

I've meant to mention this for a while but Nemo does these wait tags that are a very small number. Whenever I put wait tags in my story, they usually have a wait time that's 0.5 or 1.0. Occasionally I'll put in a wait tag that has a wait time of 0.3 to indicate stuttering but that's pretty rare whenever I did that. So these short wait tags are quite interesting.

I added the slower text speed (cps means characters per second). I always worry whenever I change the character loading speed because I'm like, will anyone notice this or am I just putting extra work on myself for no reason? I don't remember Nemo saying anything about text speed. However, moans are using said slurringly or stretched out, so the slower text speed makes more sense.

(When you decide to peek through the window)

Bet you weren't expecting this, were you? First of all, that's not so much a gap between blinds so much as a conventionally broken blind that allows you to see all of time and space. When I was first outlining this, this was meant to be a creepy scene. A freaky fish out of water dinosaur stalking a shameless professor. I tried to make Brendan's expression here look a bit off-putting. Unfortunately, Rex was established to be a well-meaning but native person, and it's hard to make an attractive guy masturbating creepy. Maybe if he was jacking off to something weird like Barney the Dinosaur, but that's going into territory I'm flat-out not comfortable with. And now I have imagery of Barney rule 34 in my head, God save me. I hope this scene didn't feel like out-of-place fanservice because it is important to Brendan's route later on. Trust me on this.

God this head was a bitch to draw. I almost abandoned it if Nemo didn't tell me it looked good.

[Pretend there's the relevant image here, I'm not going to bother censoring it]

For erotic scenes, I tend to have the moment where they cum to be only a small moment. I can understand why some people would want to pause on that moment but I personally prefer it this way. That said, I think I should have given at least a little pause because right now the animation looks a little weird. We'll see.

[Again, pretend there's the relevant image here, I'm not going to bother censoring it but the text here says: "His cock shot out a geyser of cum, with his chest and chin catching the spurts of seed which gushed out of him. His hips bucked in a desperate motion as he bit his lip — probably trying to muffle his moaning."]

He originally covered the head of his cock with his hand when he cummed. This was rewritten because I didn't want to draw his hand covering his cock. Also, "geyser of cum" sounds kind of freaky, but also kind of grandiose?

[When you decide to wait outside and resist peeking inside]

Originally this wasn't an option, either you peeked at him or you left. Thinking about it, it didn't make sense how you were forced to do something questionable (peeping on someone) and then be expected to behave for the rest of his route to get the good ending. I feel kind of bad for Nemo since I asked him to add this option a little late into the script but it all worked out in the end.

[When you choose to think about Mr. Baker jacking off while outside]

I showed Mr. Baker (not while he was jacking off, god forbid) to a friend and they said it was pretty unlikely for a professor to dress like that without the other staff putting him into question. I mean I've seen professors dress very casually during class, so this shouldn't be too fantastical. 

Ever noticed how in some furry VNs, or in bara in general, there seems to be an extra space in the guy's pants to hold their junk? I mean I know a few guys who'd do that, but maybe not Mr. Baker.

Do you like the little detail I added there? I added a whole section in the layeredimage coding for this, you better appreciate it.

So I didn't see any problem with Brendan's horns going off-screen until this moment. His sprite moves down to reveal that I didn't draw the rest of his horns. So I had to add a sprite that finished the rest of the sprite and it was a pain coding. But most of you guys probably didn't notice.

[If you answered his question correctly during the lecture]

So this line. I was actually waiting to talk about this. I've talked with some people and they say that it's creepy to date your friend's kids, even if they're adults. Now I'm not sure if I'd call Dr. Abraham Brendan's "friend", but a similar principle applies. I think I'm just destined to make romance with older guys creepy to at least someone. I haven't seen anyone mention this so I guess most people who play the VN either don't mind or didn't notice it. Still, you have to imagine the conversation that would ensue between the two. "Greetings, Dr. Abraham. It's good to see you again. Your son's cock has came inside me multiple times now." "What" "What."

Why'd he paused at saying "father"? Coincidence? Maybe. Oh, you guys know the answer already. Anyways, originally he didn't offer you to take you to a seminar. Instead, Brendan's offer was to drive you home. I changed this because Rex also had the option to study with Owen or go with Connor for the first day. I couldn't have Rex spend time with both Brendan and Owen/Connor because that would defeat the point of the route split and then we'd have to bring in another route split which I didn't want to do. But Rex rejecting spending time with someone at his home… so he could get a ride home didn't make much sense. So that's why Brendan invites you to a seminar. 

With all of the options relating to Brendan's route out of the way, I want to mention that, assuming you've been trying to get every route, Brendan's route is the hardest to unlock. There are four times where you'll need to make a choice in order to get onto his path. In comparison, Kamil, Owen, and Vlad only require you to make two choices each in order to unlock their paths. Three of them are relatively easy, while one of them is slightly harder. It's easy to get that you're supposed to listen to Brendan's lecture in order to get his route, but answering the question correctly might throw the reader for a loop when they didn't pay attention to his lecture. Some people might think that answering his question doesn't have any effect on obtaining his route, especially when the lines the appear when you come to his office but don't answer his question seems to imply that Rex would meet him again one to one. Admittedly, you could just scroll back to find what the answer is to get the question right, but some people wouldn't care enough to do that. That being said, Brendan's route is by far the most popular route out of the five, so it's clear that most people were able to access without much trouble. Speaking of, I can't really tell you why Brendan's the most popular character other than GIANT MAN MILKERS, but I'll talk more about his possibly appealing traits when we get to his route.

[If you decide to meet Kamil at the fields]

Notice how he refers to them as "males". I once read an article on Grammar Girl talking about when to use "female" and "woman" and I found it interesting that she didn't really talk about using "male" and "man". I think it's a gender thing. But anyways, it's supposed to indicate how he sees the world and how he's not quite integrated into society.

I added the "Salam". He's supposed to say Farsi phrases since he's a Persian mythological creature, but neither Nemo and I know anything about Farsi. I know he would say Salam because I talked with a Persian guy and he told me that's how people greet others in Farsi. Someone asked me what "Salam" means, which is weird because it should be obvious that he's greeting Rex in this scene.

Must not make fun of Kamil's ass getting slapped. Must not make fun of Kamil's ass getting slapped. Okay, now we can go on with this. I like how I animated Reggie to walk all the way to Kamil's backside just so I can make it clear that he made contact with his ass. He didn't walk up to Kamil just to smack his ass, it was just to show his arm reaching it. Also, so far I've seen only one person make a comment about this action which is a shame. I spent all that time coding that making sure it looked right thinking that people would go blitz bananas all over that scene and most people didn't say nay a word about it. I'm going to change this. Also once I'm done drawing Reggie's sprite and add Kamil's football outfit, I'm totally going to send this as an Eid Al-Fitr card. "Eid Mubarak! Here's this image of this muscular anthropomorphic karkadann with a tight bulge in his pants getting his ass smacked".

How come Rex never told the researchers though? I talked to Nemo about this and he said he'll be elaborating more about this at a later point. So yeah. Also this whole section about Rex talking about his urges was originally in the part where Brendan was jacking off. I suppose this was moved so that the player would hear Rex narrate this regardless of what choices they made.

"His use of the childhood best friend trope combined with his use of the college jock trope… His [REDACTED FOR SPOILER REASONS]..." I mentioned this before but Kamil's route was originally supposed to be the first route players were supposed to take before the first build was released and Brendan stole the show. I will say that while the friends-to-lovers trope is one I love, I generally find thinking sexual thoughts about your friend to be weird in real life. As in, it's an issue you should deal with lest the dinner conversation with them becomes awkward. Then again, it's Kamil we're talking about. With a body like his, I think I can give Rex a pass.

I want you guys to pay attention to this. Noticed how Kamil tries to get both sides to agree with each other regardless of the situation? Like he didn't to blame on anyone when Wyatt and Rex were defending themselves. He doesn't like taking sides it seems. I wonder if this gets more developed later on in his route.

Wanna talk a little about this. Originally it just straight-up gave you LiamHate and WyattHate points upfront. But then it didn't make sense for Liam and Wyatt to act differently toward Rex for something he did within his head. It could be assumed that his behavior toward them would be different depending on how much he hated these two, but I think it would make more sense if the effects of this choice became more apparent later on instead of right now.

I almost thought it said picket sign instead of poster and I was like "Well now I gotta draw her holding a picket sign now." Also, the poster originally said something else. I changed it because it was too similar to protest phrases in our world. Having this line of dialogue allows the reader to ask themselves, "Are they people?" For the record, "People Not Property" is a phrase used to discuss racial topics, but as far as I can tell, it's only used as a title of a historical non-fiction film and not during protests.

So here is the only place so far where we get to see Vlad's first name. I'm not sure if it's worth it to put quotation marks in his name. "Vlad" initially was just a nickname that he insisted on using however over time I'm keener on the idea that he seriously wants his name to be Vlad, so I'll be referring to him as "Vlad" for the time being.

Initially, I thought "diurnals" meant urinals that are super nasty or something but no, it just means an animal who's awake mostly during the daytime. Black vultures are diurnals but he works pretty late into the night so he considers himself nocturnal. Still, interesting choice of words.

Noticed how he didn't refer to Kamil just then. This indicates a character trait about him, but that's edging too close to spoiler territory that I'm going to reveal what that trait is at a later point. But keep a mental note about this. What I will say is that Kamil has this weird ability to be liked/tolerated by just about everyone. This might become important later on. The keyword being "might".

[If you said that his event sounds like fun]

Wanna talk about the Wyatt and Liam Hate points. This is an interesting mechanic that even I don't know what it will do, but I am looking forward to seeing how it all pans out. I imagine that a lot of people would want to avoid as many of these points as possible, but I'll be honest and say I'm really curious about what happens if you earn a lot of these points. Now whether or not these points are "good" things and if they'll affect the ending, I'm not too sure. I guess it will depend a lot on the situation and the route, only time will tell.

[If you decided to be quiet during Vlad's conversation]

So this conversation. I initially thought that this was supposed to happen regardless of what choice you made with Vlad. But then Nemo told me it only happens if you stayed quiet while everyone was talking to Vlad. Otherwise, Rex would be talking to Vlad while Kamil and Wyatt order the food.

I will admit that there's no reason for Rex to be so rude in this situation. I've talked to some people and even those who don't like Wyatt or Tucker say that Liam's fine. It reminds me of "After Class" where the player character can choose to either lend a pencil to a Lion character or not and it's really funny when he refuses because he's just being a dick for no reason. Now that was a load of shit. Socially Awkward's dinner conversation with Tom you ain't. Great Liam content, wasn't it? Liam's kind of weird, I'll tell you this much. Wyatt, Kamil, and Tucker all exhibit characteristics of the typical jock you'd expect from fiction. Wyatt's brash and energetic, Kamil's friendly and cheerful, and Tucker's cruel and power-hungry. But Liam has none of those characteristics. Take off the letterman jacket and you would never guess that he's a jock aside from possibly his physique.

[If you have zero WyattHate points by this point]

One thing I realized was that even though Wyatt doesn't know Rex's real species, he's able to tell that he's a carnivore because of his sharp and large teeth. I don't know any reptiles with teeth like an allosaur's, but he's got to stick out like a sore thumb because of that. Interesting how they're ignoring that even though Rex didn't give an answer. Like I said earlier, they're probably assuming that he's some mythical creature or animal they haven't seen before and feel it's not worth the trouble to ask him.

So this is kind of weird. From the context of the scene, it would seem that Rex would always have the option to accept this offer no matter what he picked earlier. Unlike the other route instigators which require love points from the other characters, Kamil always asks Rex if he wants to join him in the frat party. In order to accept the offer, however, you'll need two love points from Kamil. You might be wondering why this is the case, but I only wanted there to be one route you'd always had access to regardless of what choices you made because I didn't want to add a bad ending where Rex doesn't hang out with anyone for the night because that's a pretty lame excuse for an ending. It's entirely possible to ignore Owen, Brendan (Not like most people would ignore him), and Vlad, so it was either Connor or Kamil who would get the guaranteed route. I chose Connor because I personally believe that it would make more sense for Rex to want to hang out with Connor more than Kamil after seeing that Kamil's hanging out with a bunch of assholes. To me, Connor's route should be the one that's always accessible instead of Kamil's. Plus, I already know that most people think Kamil's hotter than Connor, so I felt like it would make more sense for the more desirable route to require a bit more effort on the player's part.

Ah, finally we get to this part of the game after a million years.

So we get to choose between… 

The guy whose route was never intended to be played first but still has a good amount of fans dedicated to him…

The guy the creators intend for you to like the most but ends up having the route people play second because he ends up getting overshadowed in popularity by another character…

The guy the creators knew wouldn't be that popular but they still love and they get a small but dedicated fanbase…

The guy who ends up being the most popular due to how slutty he is…

And the guy only cool people like.

Before we get into any of the routes, I want to talk about a few things. First the difficulty of obtaining access to these guys' routes. From easiest to hardest, the order is Connor > Vlad > Kamil > Owen > Brendan, assuming the player is trying to get access to all routes. Connor's route is the only one that doesn't require the player to make specific choices before this point, ergo he's the easiest by default. Vlad, Kamil, and Owen all require the player to make two specific choices to be granted access to their routes. Of the three, Vlad's the easiest to get right, assuming you wanted to access his route, as both of the choices are pretty straightforward: the first choice is just having Rex take interest in this event of his while the second is just accepting his offer. Of course, if you didn't notice him on the banner of the itch.io page, which didn't get added until a few weeks after the first build was released, you wouldn't know that he's a love interest at first blush; It's entirely possible for the player to stay quiet because they wanted to get in good with Wyatt and, to a lesser extent, Liam and Kamil. Kamil's route is next down in difficulty: the first correct choice is easy because there's no reason to not go to the fields, but the second one isn't as straightforward. It's clear that Kamil wants you to accept Wyatt and Liam, but the choices are so similar that a player with a less than keen eye would pick the wrong choice without knowing it has consequences for the future. However, at this point the player would expect Wyatt and Liam to become better people later on due to how typical their designs are within the Furry VN sphere. And at this point, all Wyatt's done is get up close to Rex and act rude to him. And Liam didn't do anything at all. Because of that, and with how Kamil wants Rex to act nice to them, it wouldn't be hard to figure out the correct choice. And for the most difficult of three, we have Owen. The first correct choice is straightforward but the second one is harder. All the player knows about Owen at this point is that he's shy, socially awkward, and screamed earlier in the day. It would be harder to figure out which choice he'd like better. Now if the player picked to pry further, they'll see that Owen didn't like it a lot and can just scroll back and pick the other option, but not everyone would bother to do that. Finally we have Brendan, whose route is the hardest to unlock. For his route, the player needs to make four correct choices. Two of them are easy, one of them is slightly harder but still easy, and another one is tricky. It's possible that the player doesn't know that they need to get the question Brendan asks during class correct in order to obtain access to his route, especially since it's so early in the game. And since the question deals exclusively with the world's history, the player has to be paying attention to the lecture before in order to get it right. Of course, the player can always scroll back to see what the correct answer is, but that's a little tedious. For the choice that's not as easy as the remaining two, the choice you have to make when Brendan asks you if you want to go to the seminar with him can throw some people for a loop. The obvious thing to say is that you'll go with him, but you aren't exactly given a choice like that. Most people would say the correct choice because it's the closest to the obvious answer, but they may err on the side of caution and mention that it's not exactly appropriate. Ironically, Brendan's route is easily the one most people have done, so it doesn't seem like anyone had trouble accessing anyone's route until someone makes a topic asking how to access any of the routes. I feel like I was supposed to mention something else at this point. Ah, it's probably not important.

Connor's Route

Mibinamet is Farsi for "I'll see you". Pretty easy to get that from the context given, but there are some people who are less… intuitive and need explanations for stuff like this. A good way to remember this is to think "See me in a bit" when saying "Mibinamet". I would say if there's a Farsi word you don't understand, look it up, but it's kind of hard to look up what Farsi words mean on the English internet. I also asked chatGPT what mibinamet means in Farsi and they said they don't know such a word so… Just trust your instinct.

So someone actually mentioned something in their response to the first build's survey. They said that a lot of avians don't kiss like humans do because of their beaks. They prefer to rub their beaks together. If they were to kiss like a regular human, their sharp beaks would harm each other. Now a kiss between the protagonist and the love interest is pretty much the most cherished moment in any romantic arc, arguably more important than two characters having sex for the first time depending on who you ask. It is the confirmation that these two characters are in a relationship. Wouldn't you know it, it's also one of the hardest things to draw two characters doing together. I just can't really imagine making a romantic arc where they don't end up kissing regardless of what species the characters are. Also, most furries don't really show affection in the same ways their real-life species do. And how interesting that both choices lead to the same outcome. Connor is really determined to make you and him a thing.

This was something I really wanted to include in the VN. A shot of the main character holding hands with Connor. Was based off a moment from an anime. Which anime? I'll tell you, guys, later. Anyways, I wanted to put visual focus on certain elements like this moment to tie the visuals in with the narrative and make the reader focus on certain aspects more.

So first day of Connor's route. Man, I did not expect Connor and Rex to get together as a couple so early in their route. Except I did, considering I was the one who planned this all out. I feel like we've done everything. Confessions of love "and" hot, sweaty sex? What else is there to do? Well, I know the answer, but I can't exactly give out the answer so easily now, can I? But yeah, this scene will set the tone of the rest of his route pretty well. Oh, I guess I should address the moderately sized elephant in the room. Just because Rex bottoms in this scene doesn't mean he's going to bottom in every other route, let alone for every other sex scene. Rex is a virgin before this scene so the first time he'll have sex, it's going to influence what position he'll take. I am a bit nervous about the first sex scene setting up people's expectations, but I'm sure it will be fine. But why did Connor confess so early? Well… I can't say at this point. Also, Connor's penis looks a bit weird but I have no idea how to remedy that.

Kamil's Route

[If you say there's no one at the party you're interested in]

Okay, you might not get why this might be weird for him to say. This is a gay furry visual novel but the audience might just think that the society this VN takes place in expects everyone to be heterosexual and that Kamil just hasn't come out yet. It is common to see in other FVNs such as Tennis Ace and Extracurricular Activities. While I'm not going to say much about what will happen in Kamil's route, you have to understand that he's a karkadann. I'm not going to say why that's a big deal, but look up what a karkadann is and you'll see how strange it is that he's trying to get Rex laid. Obviously, you usually don't want to see your friends to be single but who's to say that they'd want to start a relationship with someone they met at a party? I hope this shows how Kamil is so ingrained in the society and culture he lives in that it goes against his common sense. Also, I like how the player can pick that they aren't interested in anyone at the party but it just ends up with Rex admitting that he's lying. It's almost like he's sassing the player for picking that option while in Kamil's route.

[If you say you rather spend time with him]

Think what? Pina colada? Racism? Chickey-China the Chinese Chicken? Amongos? The Game? Getting jinxed? That one DDR song that I find to be a guilty pleasure? Something that's topical? People with foot fetishes? That thing I'm trying to think about but I can't remember what it was? How long this joke is getting? MF Doom?

Don't worry, I know what he's talking about. For those who do know what he was going to say, I'm just going to say that the blowout that will ensue from this will be well worth the wait, just please be patient.

Ozr Mikham means "I'm sorry" in Farsi.

I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that Kamil would have done his best to make sure Rex didn't notice whatever happened back then. I want to talk more about this, but unfortunately, I'd risk spoiling what this thing is. I'll talk more about it when it's properly revealed within the story.

[If you decide to take a piss]

So this is our second (third?) instance of an optional opportunity to gain a Lust point. If you have a lot of love points with a love interests, then getting an extra lust point isn't going to hurt you in the long run. However, if you have a low amount of love points with a love interest, lust points can do more harm than good depending on your viewpoint. I'd say the two love interests you should be the wariest of when it comes to gaining lust points for are Kamil and Mr. Brendan. You'll find out why those two are in due time.

[If you decide to peek on him while peeing]

First of all, Kamil in this CG has gigantic pecs in this CG. And that's saying something considering he already had big tits in his regular sprites. He was originally going to have smaller-sized pecs in the CG, but people told me to make them bigger so here we are. I've gotten some people talking about how he blocks the view of his dick with his hand. Originally, Nemo intended it so that he was doing it unintentionally, but I interpreted the line as him doing it intentionally and we both accepted that this is what he's actually doing lest I redo an entire art asset in the limited time I had. He does have his own reasons for doing this, considering he doesn't want to risk someone in the streets seeing his dick in the alleyway. But I've been told that most guys don't bother covering their dicks while peeing even if they are technically in public and not in a restroom, so let's just say this one act of covering his cock made people make assumptions about what he liked in bed. If you want to learn how accurate they were, go read the document about their sex positions here (BTW I was concerned about people not knowing this doc existed but I saw one person reading it while getting the link for it despite me not mentioning it outside of my discord server. People really are curious about the sex positions of furry characters.):

By Your Hands Sex Positions

I chose to have mammal males in this universe to have their dicks like humans in our world. As in they hang out even when not in use. I didn't have them in sheathes because I wasn't comfortable drawing sheathes considering it's a little awkward asking people around "how to draw sheathes on furries". I don't mind looking at sheathes on furries I just personally prefer without.

"Farda" means "tomorrow" in Farsi. Also he said "ass" twice today. Just felt like mentioning that.

And that was Kamil's first day! That was interesting, wouldn't you say? It was nice seeing Tucker and what he's like before he kicks the bucket. Part of me wanted Tucker to do more before he died, but I think we got the point on what kind of character he is from just Kamil's first day. As for Kamil himself, there hasn't been too many oddball qualities about him yet. He just seems to be a regular, friendly football player who has lots of friends and likes to party. Out of the five love interests, he seems to be the most put-together love interest alongside Vlad. But that means that it's going hit harder whenever the cracks of his armor start to show. The biggest flaw he has is that he's buddy-buddy with people like Tucker and Wyatt. How can someone so nice be friends with guys like those is a little suspicious. There's also his insistence on Rex going out with a girl and his concern about being seen with Rex getting his hands wrapped all over him. Considering that he has a route in a gay erotic VN, the fallout that will come from this will be… something. There's a lot that's going to happen in his route so I hope you guys enjoyed what we got so far.

Brendan's Route

Notice how Rex thinks in this scenario. You'd expect him to say something like "I don't know why, but his smells make my peepee very hard" but instead he justifies it by saying it's natural. This comes from a combination of his background of being a feral animal in the past and being educated on this sort of stuff by Dr. Abraham. I just find it very interesting.

One of these shows is a reference to the sitcom "Dinosaurs". Which one is it? You'll have to trust your instincts on this one.

I talked to Nemo about this. The punctuation in this sentence is intentionally supposed to be like that in order to indicate that Rex is getting in touch with his feral instincts.

I really like this scene. Just everything about it. Brendan's being so sweet and understanding here. Here he encompasses what an older man should be like. And the funniest thing is that this scene couldn't have existed in the first draft. Originally, he wasn't going to take you to a seminar, the difference between wilds and sapients was a lot bigger, and he wasn't that dorky. Just goes to show the importance of improving your craft and giving feedback.

And that was the first day of Brendan's route! Judging from the surveys, a lot of people enjoyed this day a lot. I think a lot of people enjoyed the horny aspect of the day, as well as how charming Brendan himself is. I do have a concern that people will keep on selecting the horny choices for his route, which sucks because I generally think the choices where you're holding back your lustful side are better in general. Then again I get to draw Brendan in horny situations, so it evens out more or less. Since Brendan's route is going to be the one most people will read first, I hope everyone will enjoy it as it does have a few oddities not present in other routes. You'll figure out what I mean in the future. Also, word of advice, make sure you have two love points with Owen before you do Brendan's route. It's going to give you more options later on down the road. Please enjoy what we have to offer for Brendan later!

Owen's Route

[If you have zero Wyatt Hate points at this point]

There's that himbo personality that I originally intended him to have coming through.

I suppose that means Mr. Brendan is the History advisor. Though you have to wonder how he gets treated considering he's a history professor. I mean STEM people get access to a lot of high-paying and respected jobs, Art people are able to express their creative passion as a career, and then there are History people who… spend their life talking about a bunch of dead people. I say this as an Art History major, orz.

So I'm going to tell you, guys, something, Owen originally had nostrils on his snout. I removed them and added his blowhole because I remembered that orcas don't have nostrils. I'm not sure if I told Nemo that orcas can't smell or if he just knew that and decided to implement it here, either way, this works out because it's what I intended. Also is it really a nose if it can't smell things?

And that's Owen's route. It's pretty cute, I'd say. There are some… darker things that are hinted at here, but so far it's nice and sweet. Owen seems to be one of the simpler routes in the game, not having a history with Rex as well as not having any complications in dating him aside from his asociality. But there will be more issues explored in his route if the yelling in the hallway is any indication. Hopefully, that as well as his asocialness will be resolved by the end of his route. And his apparent crush on Mr. Brendan is a little interesting. Wonder if that will go anywhere. But you guys will just have to wait for more of his route to be developed.

Vlad's Route

It is impossible for Liam and Wyatt to have zero hate points at this point in Vlad's route due to them disliking you for doing something so audacious as saying that drag seems cool. I've seen some varying opinions on Liam and Wyatt and I can't help but wonder if it has to do with the alternative text that comes with the hate points and whether they've seen the hateful versions or the non-hateful versions.

So far this is the only time where any of the characters have their ages said out loud. Since Rex said that Connor's a year older than him, that would make him nineteen years old. Now, I wasn't really thinking much when I decided on Rex's age. I just figured that him being eighteen years old made the most sense for him. The thing is he's still very young, which means that he's more vulnerable to a relationship with someone of Brendan's age than a 20-year-old, especially since he's been so sheltered all his life. My reasoning is that he is not only well-educated but also really mature for his age, so it's not as questionable as it is at first blush.

I was talking about this with Nemo and thought it would be good to reach out to some trans people. We tried finding some transwomen but we could only find transmen, however, what they said was really valuable. We've learned that the pheromones of transpeople are likely to resemble scents of their gender identity if they have done hormone therapy. Mama Belle is a drag personality of a man, so this line is still appropriate, but it was good to know so we don't accidentally offend anyone. We're still learning, so we might make mistakes! Just let us know if we screwed up or not.

Tying into the comment I made about scents before, this line was originally meant to indicate that there were trans animals in this place. It was changed due to how inaccurate and possibly insensitive it was. 

I've been asked why it's called "Freeks'" when there really isn't anything freaky about it. It's mostly an ironic title. They don't really consider themselves "freaks" but they're considered freaks to general society. There's also that it could be a play on "getting freaky" since it tends to be a very sexual club.

It will become more apparent why he looks down on diurnals later in the game. What I will say right now is that part of the reason he acts like this towards diurnals is to provide social commentary on people being discriminatory of privileged groups they're a part of and they avoid hating themselves for that reason by associating themselves with more marginalized groups and trying to make their lives better while secretly knowing in the back of their mind that they're the privileged assholes they hate so much.

Just kidding.

One of the "real" reasons why he acts like this is because his coloration is very dark, therefore he gets mistaken for a nocturnal animal more often than not and he's come to embrace this false identity people mistake him as and would rather hang out with people who wouldn't judge him for being a supposed "night" animal. Another thing is that he oftens works late into the night, so he often relates and spends time with nocturnals who are naturally going to work night shifts.

[If Rex has one Lust Point with Vlad]

So a little thing about this "gift" Vlad gives Rex. Originally Nemo suggested that Vlad was going to give Rex a handjob as an apology for not telling him what the show was going to be like. I talked to him about this and I decided that I felt like it was a bit much considering it's not like Rex got upset over this. It just felt too weird. Rex is a virgin at this time and while he would watch a lot of porn, he wouldn't know what it's actually like. I wouldn't have mind if Rex asked Vlad for a handjob and Vlad accepted, but throwing a "Hey, sorry I didn't clue you in on what a drag show was, should I go start jacking you now?" to someone you just met is a little strange to me. It would be very easy for it to seem like Vlad is taking advantage of the situation and Rex's general inexperience to give a handjob to a guy he finds attractive, which I don't think fits Vlad's character. We talked and settled for him just giving him his underwear as it shows Vlad's loose ways with sexuality while also not taking it too far.

And that was Vlad's first day! Judging by the surveys, his day is the one least people have done, which is a shame really. I really enjoy Vlad's route because of how unique and fun his character is. He has a lot of endearing qualities. If you compare his route with the other routes, so far it's actually the most light-hearted one of them all, not dealing with or hinting at any emotionally-tense baggage. It's ironic considering that Vlad seems to be the most cynical one of the five. I think a lot of people get put off by Vlad because of his appearance or his personality but I find him to be one of the coolest love interests in the game. Hopefully, more people will learn to love the vulture later down the road.

We had a little kerfuffle when it came to this section. The first two numbers would allow for 100 possible different countries, and while our world has almost 200 countries, it can be reasoned that this world somehow has half as many countries so it's not too big a deal. The next three digits allow for 1000 different species when a quick search on the internet says that there are over a million species in our world (At least there's bound to be a species that hasn't been used before that you can use in your next furry project?). This number goes down a little when you only consider animals that can be distributed for widespread use. Politics might also group certain species in certain ways so that the number can make more sense. The final group of numbers also has 1000 different combinations and well… there's just no way there's less than a thousand animals of a certain species in a highly populated country. The letter bumps the number to 26000 or 52000 (depending on if you count lowercase numbers or not) but it's not big enough. Our justification for this is that it works like your SSN (in the states at least) so that's why the digits are like that.

I asked Nemo what the fuck is a Banyian cattle is, and apparently it's a play on the "Yanbian cattle" which is a type of cattle originating in China. I assumed that he changed it to "Banyian" because real life locations don't exist in this world and Yanbian is a prefecture in China, therefore it would be weird for there to be a species called "Yanbian cattle" in this world.

This is so funny! I feel whoever writes these descriptions should deserve a raise for how entertaining they make them. We should have something like this in our world. I'm not trying to make some sort of political statement, but wouldn't it be great if you ate the most delicious lamb chops (Lamb chops are greeaaaat) and then you looked up the code you got from the receipt and found out that the meat you just ate was a fabulous sheep who stepped on her racist grandpa and tipped over buckets for fun? Oh my god, it would just be amazing. Also, I feel like social media in this world would totally have posts of profiles in the database that have descriptions that go like "Cause of death: suffocation from being between a DILF gigolo boar's two fat, hairy ass cheeks. Nice." or "Cause of death: slipped and fell on the shower floor after getting too into singing and dancing Madam-MILFs-A-Lot's new single 'Fruit Tasta'. She was a fruit tasta 'cause yo papa won't date-hah!" and they just go viral overnight. Oh, I almost forgot. You're probably wondering why sapient animals are still being eaten despite the wild population. I could explain that now but I think it would be more appropriate if we explained that in the game itself.

You're getting the sense that having fun with Kamil would be difficult for Rex because his life is so much different from Rex's. I don't want to make it seem like Kamil's route is just the two of them hanging out not really enjoying whatever they're doing and only having fun because they spend time with each other, it's just that going to Tucker's party indicated Tucker's character pretty well and none of the other routes had a good opportunity to do that (two of the other love interests hate Tucker while the other two don't have any apparent connection with him).

[If you picked at least one non-sexual choice on Brendan's first day]

[If you picked the two sexual choices on Brendan's first day]

You can see the difference between being sexually upfront with him and acting appropriately towards him. Rex cares less about Brendan himself and more about the sexual needs he provides if he's being more sexual.

And that's the end of Build 0.1.x. Or at least build 0.3.0 pretending to be 0.1.x. I'm really proud of how that last reveal came out to be. What a cliffhanger that was. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to say here because it's all just "I rushed to get this build out, I really enjoy the writing here, I'll try to improve it in the future, I'm happy with the reception this build got." I will say that for a first build, it's very well-rounded writing-wise. Almost 40k words and five routes to pick from at the start. I think I did the best I could in making a good reading experience but obviously, I want to make it even better. I think the future of the game is bright. I'm looking forward to what this game has in store!

Once again I'd like to thank Nemo for doing all of the writing and Brkn Hvn for composing the title screen as well as other tracks in the game. This game wouldn't be what it was without their help.

Also, this is unrelated to the game but I just completed Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and seeing the name "Rex" again after watching that ending is just… an experience I can tell you.