Hi there, this is Polly! I am the Community Manager for Team Treats! On August 16th 2024, Team Treats developers Rae and Ivo hosted a Dev Log Recap Event on the Official Tender Lovin' Cannibal Community Discord. Below is the full transcript for the event, including the Live Q&A portion! Thank you so much for your support of TLC, and enjoy!

EVENT START:

Polly: Alright Rae, if you’d like to kick it off? 🙂

Rae: Yes, I would love to! Hello everyone! My name is Rae, I’m the Lead Developer for TLC, Tender Lovin’ Cannibal. And today, we’re going to be doing a little recap presentation! Basically, going over the different stages of development, what we accomplished in each (stage), and what you can be looking forward to in the future- It’s going to be FREAKIN’ awesome.

Rae: Today’s presentation is going to be co-hosted by Ivo Atlas and Polly! Do you guys have any words to say before we start?

Polly: Yes, I’m Polly! The Community Manager for Tender Lovin’ Cannibal and Team Treats! Super excited to be here!

Ivo: Hello! My name is Ivo. I don’t have any other crazy names (lol). I’m here to talk about the writing, and a little bit about the sound design!

Rae: We’re going to be going over the different stages of development. The first stage we’re going to go over is the Early Concept Stage- Basically, the ideation phase; where we were just putting together ideas for what we wanted the game to eventually turn into. Next, we’re going to be covering the Alpha and the Beta Stages (of the demo), which includes actual tangible assets and deliverables. Things like art, writing, sound design- All the good things you guys like listening to! Then, the next thing we’re going to look at is the Roadmap for what we plan to do in the future. Essentially, what we have left to do for the demo, and when we want the demo to release! And then finally, at the very end we’re going to do a Live Q&A! We had a Google Form where you guys submitted your questions regarding the game, and we went through and picked out some good ol’ questions to answer! 

Rae: What THE FUCK is this game, What is TLC? Essentially, TLC is a dating simulator, where you can romance Bob Velseb, the antagonist from Tender Treats; one of the best Spooky Month episodes to ever drop in the history of anything at all. We have a sort of blurb[referring to Content Warning description] here, but I’m pretty sure you guys already know. You already know what’s hip-happening. But I will read out the Content Warnings! In this game, there are depictions of cannibalism, murder, violence, gore, jump-scares, mentions of cults, loud noises and flashing lights. There will NOT be any NSFW/Sexual Content in this game. This game is 16+. There IS fanservice obviously, because this is a dating simulator. But no sexual content of any kind will be included.

Rae: So, we started working on this game, ABSOLUTELY FOREVER AGO. Two years, almost! 2022. My goodness gracious, there’s a LOT of ground to cover. So, in December of 2022, Ivo and I started working on the story for the game. Not just for the demo, but for the rest (of the story), in a more conceptual sense. At around this time, while we were working on the general narrative, and some of the script, we also worked on things like thumbnails and placeholders. We would create assets, or find assets, or ask the Art Team to make assets that would be added into the code, so we could make the game functional from start-to-finish. At this time we also had a Theme Song made by our amazing Musician, Lav (Lavandula). Absolutely insanely talented. And, a logo design both for the team and the game itself, was made by Nicky, also known as Rawrbot.

Rae: So here- Moff is probably going to loathe this slide- This is one of the oldest pieces of concept art for the entire game. Old Art Moment. At these early stages of development, we wanted to lay out a dynamic between Bob and Y/N so that we had something to work with going forward. As you can see in these images, we’re basically just playing around with his (Bob) personality, trying to set up a whole “straight man versus silly little guy” dynamic. 

Rae: This image, I really love the expression in the top middle because- Like, look at this fuckin’ guy. At this stage, which was after the initial conceptualization, we were trying to figure out what sprites we would need for the characters. That’s a little bit of an undertaking, because when you’re figuring out the sprites, and the emotions they’re conveying, you have to sort of, have a lot of  “catch-all” emotions. So just a handful of images that can convey every emotion being shown throughout the entire game. These guys were really good starting points. We ended up with many, many, MANY more sprites. But these were the perfect starting points. 

Rae: Awww. The beloved. There’s Y/N. Uh, that’s YOU guys. That’s what YOU guys look like. You guys are BALD as HELL. 

Everyone: *Laughs.

Rae: Moff created this absolutely iconic Y/N design, and when moff created this, they were trying to go for something that was a mix of stylish and individualistic, while making it something that the Player can project onto. At first, for example, Y/N had hair, in a set hairstyle, before eventually that was changed to have them be bald. This later came in handy, when we uploaded “Your Character Here” Challenges to Twitter, where people could draw their characters over Y/N. 

Rae: During the conceptualization phase, we were just going absolutely insane with ideas, all kinds of ideas. And some of them were a little bit limited by the scope of our engine. Since our game is a visual novel, there’s not exactly much need for things like loading screens. But, one of our artists named Sydney, had this absolutely amazing concept for a loading screen. So, during the conceptualization phase, we had some discussions about things, like maybe FAKE loading screens, or ANIMATED CUTSCENES, really “pie in the sky” ideas, that were like ‘Uh, we probably won’t be able to do this, but it would be super cool if we did.’” As the game progressed, and our scope grew and grew, we ended up being able to do some of these things, which is absolutely wonderful to experience. 

  Rae: OooooOOoooOooOh. Alpha - Beta - Moment! Let me introduce these phases. During these phases of development, we got more into the weeds of mapping out the progression of the demo, story-wise. It wasn’t just ideation like, ‘Yeah, Y/N is gonna go on a date with Bob and it’s gonna be fweakin’ awesome.’ We were more getting into what variables we would need, and things like platonic events versus romantic events, and ideas for what would happen after the demo, because we do really want to progress with development after the demo’s released. We also got some new writers onboarded around this time. I think Ivo was the one that conscripted those folks, and a lot of those writers ended up being our most valuable assets going forward with things like editing. So Ivo, do you want to give some insight into the scope of the game- Like in general, what we are going for, all that good-good stuff? The juicy details?

Ivo: Yes, I can. 🙂 So originally, in our early concept stage, prior to this image (the scope notes as seen below), we had only planned for the game to be 7 Days long. That was when we weren’t very ambitious, but through working with our writers more, we expanded to the point where ‘Hey, seven days isn’t enough to get the information we need. Seven days is not enough to romance Bob Velseb.’ So we added more, and it was wonderful. During this time, we learned a lot about the story building, the world building, and how everyone worked together cohesively to make the writing work. Originally, we had a team of four writers, two of which were editors, so it was primarily me, Rae, and one other person who was working on this. We now have a team of seven people on the Writing Department, which still doesn’t sound like a lot, but I guarantee you, IT IS. For delegation, we worked really hard on making sure the world building was really good, the character building was really good, and our proofreading was excellent. It took a long time to perfect it. The game could not have been completed sooner, writing-wise, if it weren’t for our team. I can definitely say the concept has changed a lot compared to what it is now. I am very glad for that. I know you guys are going to be very excited for what we have now. We did our best with that.

Rae: *Laughing, Oh here we go. 

Ivo: So, this is generally written in a, I believe a screenwriting kind of style. So we were taking advantage of a lot of script writing, not a whole lot of novel style writing. To keep things simple, but still efficient, to make sure we can get all the information that we need. A lot of this is very dialogue heavy. Formatting it was a huge learning hurdle for me and a few others, because a lot of the people starting out in Team Treats were entirely new to game development. So there was a huge chunk of us that were not familiar with this kind of formatting. We came a long way with getting familiar with it. I would definitely say that our current script is a lot more organized to what it once was. I’m very proud of us for that. When we delegated tasks, we would usually do specific scenes for specific people, or specific days. For example, let’s say we have scenes for Boys n’ Grills- Someone would handle that, or two people would handle that. Or we would have two people having a scene written with Y/N specifically. I can’t get into much detail. The great part about writing is that I cannot tell you guys anything. It’s my favorite part. Now, as far as ME writing, and our other friends in the Writing Department, I have a bit of wisdom to share, for my experience in writing for TLC, and in general. I do wanna say; when writing drafts, it can be very difficult to get your words on paper. You will see it in the next slide, but to give a general scope, TLC’s (Demo) script is about 22,000 Words. 

Rae: 22K FUCKIN WORDS?!

Ivo: To make that possible, we did a lot of throwing stuff at the wall until it stuck. It was a lot of drafting, and getting rid of drafts, and making concepts that eventually shaped the continuation of the game. The best part about writing is that we honestly did not give up. That is my favorite thing about writing. So if you guys intend on writing anything, and you’re nervous about drafting, just know the draft can start as bad as possible. It does NOT need to be perfection. As long as it is something you can always build upon. Something will ALWAYS be better than nothing. Additionally though, for editing, because I dunno about you but I love me some editing- A lot of your growth will stem from editing. Editing, proofreading, is how we see the areas we need to grow in our writing. So, being very mindful of that is something I also have had a lot of experience in my time, working at Team Treats. I’ve had a lot of experiences where I’ve had to acknowledge technical mistakes, or simply realizing a plotline doesn’t make sense. It just has to be rewritten. Have the ability to take other’s opinions into consideration is something that is AMAZING in a writer- So I preach to that.

Ivo: Hooray! Writing Features for TLC! I did mention the word count just a second ago, but it (TLC Demo) is 22,000 words. And we have a total of 63 Dialogue/Action Choices- A LOT of branching for the demo. It took us about a year. When the Beta (Demo Build) was dropped, that was when the script was officially finished for the demo. We started the script in December of 2022. December 2022, to January of 2024, that is how long it took for us to come up with our 22,000 word script, and 63 choices of branching. It was hard. It took a lot. Honestly, there are some things I want to look back to, ‘I could change a few things,’ but instead, I’m going to keep looking forward, and think about what we can do for Chapter One. 

Rae: And Ivo, really good thing about that is, after we release the demo, then we can release patch notes of the demo after its release. The demo leads into the rest of it (Chapter One), so we can technically revamp parts of the demo! 

  Ivo: That is wonderful. That is so joyous. I will be tinkering with that. M o r e. But after I do my work. *Laughs. For the branching, we took advantage of how we have multiple endings in mind. In our original concept, I believe we had one or two endings in mind. We have the want for multiple endings, but we did not have a gauge for what we exactly wanted (during early concept). We have now gotten to a point where we can say, “This is how many endings we want, this is how we want to get there.” Starting with the demo, we started trickling our way into making those endings possible. The demo is pretty linear, because there’s multiple routes but all meeting at the same endpoint. I can definitely say you will see much more branching post-demo. In the demo, you will see different conversations and different actions which adds to the replayability. There will be different achievements and different things you can interact with depending on what you say or do. That’s why it’s super important for the demo and post-demo that I suggest you replay! 🙂

Rae: So, for the art! The art was a huge, HUGE undertaking. You already know the source material, Spooky Month, was an animated series. When it came to the art, we wanted to really capture that animated episode vibe, with the style, with the CGs, with every gosh darn thing. Thumbnails and sketches for various visual game assets were produced by the Art Department from Q2-Q3 of 2023. Storyboarding for animations were created for several cutscenes and special features were produced. Various game assets for the demo were completed by Q4 2023. Some sprites and BGs were planned for polish in 2024. Numerous still CGs were designed and completed by the Art Department, but CG creation is currently ongoing. So, TLDR; lots of assets. With the game engine we have decided on, when you download a game, unless we completely encrypt the files, which we might not do, depends on what we end up deciding on. If we don’t encrypt the files, you’ll be able to go in and look at all of the assets we have made, and you will see dozens of sprites, dozens of CGs, animations that are fully voiced, so much juicy juicy content.

Rae: Our Main Menu was one of the first things we wanted to start for making it polished. Back in December 2022, we began concepting how the menu would look. At first, the menu was going to be a flat image. But because we wanted to break out of the stigma that visual novels are fucking boring and shitty, we decided eventually to have our Main Menu to be animated instead.

Rae: One of our insanely talented animators, Kris, drafted this version of the animated menu based on a series of thumbnails done by another artist, named Dirty Jack- Also absolutely nuts, crazy crazy talented. With our Main Menu, I kind of struggled to program in the buttons, so I got help from one of our coders, Bloody Rose, who absolutely killed it.

Rae: After a lot of iterations, we eventually got the animation colored in. We now have this background made by one of our artists, Candigutz. If you stay on the Main Menu long enough, you can see Bob wink at you. That’s one of my favorite little easter eggs visually that I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing.

Rae: So the next thing we really wanted to polish, was our UI. Ren’py, our engine, has a very barebones UI. Things like choice buttons or character name tags appear essentially as like a black gradient. During the placeholder phase, one of our programmers made a version of the UI where everything was red, and the boxes were a lot more clean and concise looking. At the start of the beta, we brought on an artist named Pogo NR, to make our fully finished assets, and now it looks like this- Looks fuckin’ clean as hell!

Rae: There’s our animated menu. There were a lot of points in development where we were thinking about having our menu be completely static, just click on the buttons and go. But we brought another programmer- You’re going to be hearing a lot of “Oh, another person joined the team!”, because it takes a village. Our programmer named Marionette, added these animations as a whole visual flourish for us, and it really did a lot to make our menus less boring. We went with a diner theme. There were a couple versions of the menu concept where we were going to have it based on the Eyes of the Universe. But when the UI dropped, and the colors began to come together more cohesively, we decided the diner theme would be the best choice.

Rae: One of the biggest, most exciting deliverables in this game has to be the animations. The animated cutscenes, of which there are two! During the midpoint of production on the beta, we fully cemented that we wanted and could achieve an animated cutscene. One of our artists, Ghost Unknown, took a look at our script and separated it into parts. He created wonderful thumbnail sketches for each part, really good explorations for Bob and Y/N. Really good body language studies, stuff like that. This specific thumbnail was one of them- That thumbnail ended up making it into the final cutscene, also animated by Kris!

Rae: Fairly recently, we ended up implementing all of the background for that cutscene. Let me tell you they are fucking GORGEOUS, you wanna know why they’re so gorgeous? One of the official BG Artists from Spooky Month, Mau, actually agreed very graciously to accept a commission from me to do the backgrounds for this cutscene. They are the bonafide, genuine article. Both Kris and Mau did the backgrounds, and quite a handful of concept art by Mau on the neighborhood that the Player lives in, the house the Player lives in, and what it looks like on the outside. We’ll be releasing those assets that you can take a look at on our Ko-fi page!

Rae: We have SO many art features. We have 10 Characters for the demo that appear in the demo, but we have quite a few more planned for Chapter 1 that immediately follow after. But you do meet 10, you get to HEAR 10, depending on what you do and how you play your cards. Those branching dialogue options really come in handy. 🙂We have over 15 fully rendered backgrounds and over 20 CGs. Some of which are part of sequences that are closer to animatics than individual computer graphics. There it is, and a fully animated ending cutscene. One thing we DIDN’T put on this (slide) though, is that we also have a fully animated intro cutscene as well! It may or may not feature a certain big haired fellow, y’know, a certain animator you guys might be familiar with, I dunno. He might appear on it for a little bit, but I’m not entirely sure. I think his name starts with P, uh, Pelo or something?

Ivo: Sr Peelo? 

  Rae: Yes, Sr Peelo. Erm. I dunno if I like that. That cutscene was actually animated by someone who’s in the audience right now, Julie. Fucking insanely talented, wonderful animator, who is currently working on one of our CGs, which look totally, totally gorgeous.

Ivo: So for the original soundtrack, we have ten tracks that were produced for the demo. A few were done by different people. I know Rae has made a couple, Lavandula has made the Main Menu Theme. Our wonderful Metamaniacs, also a VA for post-demo, has made music for our outro, and it is currently out on Spotify. That is the ONLY public drop, minus the one on Twitter for right now. Going into voice acting, we brought everyone on by casting call. That was really interesting, except we started with Corey LeVier. We started with Corey in the original concept. It was great. We eventually built up past Corey to other voice actors by the casting call, and as we started getting ourselves more into the Spooky Month community, we started reaching out to more people like Elusive, and as I mentioned earlier, Metamaniacs. Those faces will either be in the demo or post-demo, and we’re very thankful to have them. And our new original people from the casting call. [TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, LOST IVO]

Rae: To pick up where Ivo left off, the casting call process was insanely smooth and super wonderful. So many talented voice actors submitted their auditions to be in the game. If any of you guys are voice actors, are people wanting to become voice actors, we will be opening up casting calls for later characters in later chapters as well! Corey, Bob’s voice actor, helped us go through- –IVO RETURNS–

Rae, Polly: Ivo, you’re back! 

Ivo: Now onto our VA Cast Announcement! I wonder who it could be?

Rae: Who the FUCK is this guy?

Ivo: I dunno WHO this guy is. Ivo: So, this was actually made by Rae, this photo shown. Rae made cards for everyone in the demo. You’ll see a list of names after this, but this one was made exclusively for Corey, to show both sides of Bob Velseb. The man. The myth. The legend. Going on to look at the rest of our cast. We have Corey LeVier as Bob Velseb/The Red Devil and Roy. Braden Worton as Captain. Josh Edwards as Shotgun Man. IggyKid as Becky Beckett, AKA our Cashier 1. Adoxographist as Vevina, which is Waitress 1. Dontae Majors as Gary. JackieGalaxy as Kelsey. Tommy Estrada… I don’t know who he is. We’ll have to find out, huh? Jacob Mira, who actually was in here earlier, as Entity. And ElusiveVA as Ross. I dunno who the name at the bottom is (SrPelo.)

Rae: I think he’s just some kinda niche guy. I think he is Sir Pelo? Senor Pelo? He, uh, yeah, he graciously agreed to voice some character for us. After the demo, you might be recognizing some possibly familiar, very square, square men, showing up soon. Very, very square. Might have some white Vans, I dunno. It’s all conceptual really.

Rae: Here’s the boring bit, UGH. /s During the ideation phase, we worked really hard to make sure that our ideas were actually achievable within the limitations of the engine. But, there are some really special cases where we were able to break out of those limitations and make the game more interactive. One of the ways we were able to do that is through the Map & Travel Mechanic. During certain points of the game, Y/N can actually choose where to go and when. For example, you can choose to go to Boys n’ Grills, you can choose to go to the Candy Club. You can choose to go to other places which I won’t spoil. Actually, I’ll just spoil one. You can go to the Police Station. And even more locations will be revealed in Chapter 1, because we have some very, very fun ones, very, very familiar ones. Another thing we came up with was the Phone & Texting Mechanic. Y/N is able to participate in group chats with the characters and choose what they text in response. In the demo, this feature is only alluded to, but we do plan to expand on it in later parts of Chapter 1 and chapters following, if you guys choose to stick around. Another wonderful mechanic we really wanted was the Shopkeeper Mechanic. So, various shopkeepers can be interacted with at different points of the game, different locations. For example you can get candy from the Candy Club to gift to Bob or other characters. You can buy food from Boys n’ Grills to gift to other characters, or to Bob. Different characters will be interacted with during the shopkeeper segments. There may be points where you’re buying something from Kevin or Bob, but the other characters we have will also be manning the shops as well. We did a lot of playtesting and bug fixing. A lot of these features came a lot with their own hosts of problems that we needed to sort out. But since we’re at the tail-end of development, 99% of these issues were sorted out. 

Rae: Another feature of the game you might have already guessed we would need since there’s shops, is Inventory. When the inventory was first being made, our UI Artist Pogo, came up with ways to fully realize the diner concept. We settled on a concept where items shown would be presented as restaurant order tickets. On the screen there’s a button that shows the order ticket dispenser, you click on it, then a whole string of order tickets drops down from the top where all the items are displayed. You click on the ticket of the item you’re trying to interact with, and you drag it to the characters that are on screen. That doesn’t mean the characters will enjoy or accept what you give them. And often times they’ll say, “Why the fuck are you trying to give me some random shit, we’re in a middle of a conversation?!” But, there’s certain times and certain people in certain places, where when you reach them, you can give them items that will endear them to you. It will increase their Trust Variable or their Romance Variable, and it’ll make them like you more. We took inspiration from the Papa’s games, Cooking Mama, all those good-good titles.

Rae: In January of 2024, we decided to finalize the Phone assets. We published this poll to Twitter so you guys could choose what color Y/N’s phone would be. We wanted Y/N to have a little charm at the bottom of their phone, we may have cut that in the final asset, but fun to consider. Still on the table are some possibilities for customization, such as stickers- It comes down to what assets we can feasibly create.

Rae: This was the first concept for the Shopkeeper Mechanic. At around this time, I brought on a programmer named Limnological, who is a total fuckin’ wizard with Python. He basically breaks the entire engine to add things like this, like the shopkeeper mechanic, like mini-games, which we’re also working on for Chapter 1. This was one of the bits of concept art I provided to him. On the right side of the screen you’ll see the character and the sprites displayed, on the left side you’ll see the inventory of the character, what you can buy from them, you can also sell items to many characters. Every shopkeeper has a house rule. Every shopkeeper will accept only certain items from you. If you go to the Candy Club, you can’t sell Kevin a burger. You can buy candy and other sweet items, and you can sell candy and other sweet items at the Candy Club. Other shopkeepers, like this guy, uh fuck, he’s a cashier, his name starts with R…it might’ve been something like…Rick? I think that guy shows up later. When I say ‘can’, I mean we do have his voice actor on standby ready to sell you things in the most unenthusiastic voice imaginable. Not demo content, but we have a lot of things in-store for you. So many old men. So many old men.

Rae: Yes. We have achievements. You can one hundred percent platinum speedrun Tender Lovin’ Cannibal. The demo has 20 Achievements, most of which are reliant on various choices you can make. There are bits of the demo where you can make small talk with Bob. Depending on what choices you make, you get different achievements depending on what you tell him, or what you buy from Boys n’ Grills, or what you make the characters do or say. There’s one achievement where you can earn it only if you successfully fluster Bob, and to be honest, the section that achievement appears in is one of my favorites. It’s kinda peak.

Ivo: ‘Aw shucks.’

Rae: HE DOESN’T SAY AW SHUCKS. YOU SAY AW SHUCKS. HE DOES NOT SAY AW SHIT. We consulted Corey about it. He does not say shit.  

  Polly: Hello! I’m Polly, the CM for Team Treats! I’ve been brought on to help organize and facilitate community events for the Official TLC Discord Server, and support all social media efforts for Team Treats! I’ll be sharing some of the fun initiatives that Team Treats has run for the TLC community and fundraising campaigns that support the game’s development!

Polly: One of the fundraising initiatives that Team Treats organized was a merch drop! This drop included two different keychain designs, created by Team Treats developers! The chosen manufacturer for this merch drop was Vograce, and US and International orders for this drop were sent out this summer!

Polly: Here is the first keychain design, designed by an Artist on the Team Treats. It features a double-sided design of Bob! The keychain measures about 2.5 inches, or 6 centimeters in length.

Polly: The second keychain design features Bob in the Boys n’ Grills uniform, holding a bouquet of flowers. This was designed by none other than our very own Producer, Rae!  Polly: A unique community event that Team Treats facilitated was an Art Contest for a Poster Design! The selected Poster would be featured in-game for a background and CG asset! The other prizes included cash prizes, an original character background cameo feature, and Discord Nitro! This contest was hosted earlier this year!

Polly: The winner of the Poster Design was @PaperPin__ on Twitter! Here we have their awesome illustration featured in the background of Boys n’ Grills! We hope to include even more opportunities for UGC featured content in the future! Please look forward to them!

Polly: Part of my role as a Community Manager for Team Treats is to organize and facilitate events for the official Discord Server! We host events such as weekly Art Prompts, Game Nights, and Movie Nights. I designed these unique banners to highlight the Events being hosted there! When an event is planned or ongoing, you may be able to spot these banners on the Discord! 

Polly: As of currently (day of the event, August 16 2024), Team Treats has received a total of 812 generous donations from our Kofi backers. Thanks to our community, Team Treats is able to support our hardworking development team in all their efforts for bringing Tender Lovin Cannibal to life!  

Polly: Now, let’s go into what’s left. We’ve talked about the incredible journey that Team Treats has taken so far- What’s left on our plate? We’re currently wrapping up on deliverables for art in the demo, namely background and CG assets. Then, Team Treats will be implementing those final assets, and running the last of quality assurance for the demo build.  And of course, what you have all been waiting for, we are officially releasing the Tender Lovin’ Cannibal Demo in Quarter 4 of 2024! Then, Team Treats will begin development on the First Chapter of TLC!

LIVE Q&A START:

Rae: For this segment, we’re gonna go over the various questions that you guys submitted. We can’t answer all of them, but we’re gonna answer the most important ones or ones of the most fun!

‘What inspired the making of Tender Lovin’ Cannibal?’ (asked by Ari/Oddsoulari1)

Rae: Um. Um. Guys. I really like Bob Velseb. I-, Uhuh…

Ivo: I think Bob Velseb might be kinda cool.

Rae: Yeah, that’s what inspired the making of TLC. We’re mentally ill and we really, really like Bob. One of the funniest aspects of development on this game, is that, it’s harder for the development team’s demographic… It’s just a shocking number of lesbians. Not all.. Not all of us are in it for the same reasons that I’m in it, but we all have a shared love for creating things, making music, making art, making stories. So, we’re taking that desire, and we’re just DUMPING it into TLC. And it shows. It really fuckin’ shows. *Laughs

‘Will the finished game be free-to-play or for purchase?’ (asked by ak)

Rae: Yes, the game will be free-to-play. The demo will be absolutely free-to-play. Free.99. Zero buckaroos. No doubloons. However, you can optionally pay for it, you don’t have to, it’s more of a donation kind of thing- It’s an option on itch.io when you try to install free games.

‘Will there be the option to romantically pursue other characters in the game?’ (asked by Anonymous)

Ivo: Hooooo nelly. That is my favorite question. Hehehe. We have been exploring it, however, while Bob is the main focus, we have been thinking about making other characters romanceable. I would like to make it possible. I am determined.

Rae: Dude it’s definitely possible.

Ivo: I don’t see why we can’t. If we want to have a route where we kiss the cops, so be it.

Rae: What do you mean, ‘so be it?!’ You want them so, so bad. You literally, that’s your—

Ivo: I dunno who’s sayin’ that. No one said that.

Rae: Guys, listen. In the game’s files, literally right now, every single adult character has a Romance Variable. We’re setting it up just in case we end up making DLC. You can flirt with characters that are not Bob. You can fluster characters that are not Bob. There aren’t super large, in-depth-

Ivo: The possibility is real. They will flirt back.

Rae: Yes. They will flirt back. There’s not super in-depth romantic scenes with other characters yet because we want to focus on Bob first, to make sure the game is all solid. But the option to romantically pursue other characters is, like, literally being implemented as we go. It will happen eventually.

Ivo: We make sure to add really good scenes for the characters. Every single one gets a little bit of extra love.

‘How exactly did the team approach characterizing Bob given his limited screen time in the show?’ (asked by Anonymous)

Rae: This was a huge, insane process. So first, obviously, we all had to watch the episode. It’s kind of a mandatory thing, where when a writer is onboarded, or when an artist is onboarded, when anybody joins the team, we have to watch the episode with them. We have to. There’s been some times where we watched it together as a group. Sometime I would just shoot people a link like ‘Hey you literally have to watch this or you’re not gonna know what the fuck is happening.’ After we all watched the episode, the next step in that, was to, honestly, come up with a fuck ton of headcanons. Just an insane number of headcanons. At the start of development there was a channel in the team’s discord that was just called ‘Fun Facts with Bob’ I believe, and people would just put in like, macabre, like dark fun facts thingies that we could have him say.

Ivo: Specifically, Bloodyrose submitted a lot.

Rae: Yeah, Bloodyrose. Our programmer Bloody Rose has so, so, so many facts about cannibalism. It is, frankly, concerning. But also very helpful. Not only that, our writers contributed a lot with their own headcanons, and my favorite part of characterizing Bob- I actually approached Corey, Bob’s VA, I asked him some questions about Bob. Like, ‘Would Bob swear?’ There were some others that followed.

Ivo: ‘What kind of accent does he have?’

Rae: Yeah, what kind of accent does he have, where the fuck is this guy from, where in Texas is he from. ‘How would Bob express things like care, or love towards somebody?’ Corey gave us some absolutely monumentally helpful tips, great bits of source material, all that good-good stuff. I think there were also some points where we had to like, just all have a group huddle, and decide ‘Is this thing in character? Is this thing outta character? FUCK. What do we do?!’ Ivo, I think you had a lot of important input about characterizing Bob as well.

Ivo: We paid attention to definitely his solid upbringing, which sounds really silly, but a lot of the scriptwriting was heavily moderated, in the sense where we wanted to make sure that he was being written Southern correctly. We didn’t just wanna make him ‘hill-billy’ and stupidly. We wanted to be well-thought about that. Specifically, Bloody Rose, our programmer, made an entire document dedicated to Southern diction so that we could refer to it when writing. That is just a sliver into the madness, of how far we want to make sure Bob was good, was great. I have written so much on Bob, and read so much on Bob to make sure it as canon as possible. I had also talked with Corey about Bob. I’ve scoured playlists for hours to decide which ones are in character and which ones are not. I’ve discussed with other people. I have read countless amounts of fan content, and content that Pelo has released. I have done my research that Bob is in character as possible. I do not-Failure is not an option.

Rae: There was a point where Ivo and I were both in a position, a very lucky position, to be able to talk to Pelo directly in some calls. A couple times we asked Pelo some questions about him.

Ivo: Dude, when Pelo approved my IBS headcanon, I won that day. Sorry.

Rae: That was bad. That was really, really bad. Yeah he canonically has IBS. Sorry guys. Good grief. The funniest part of the entire development process by far, was when we had every Southern person that we could possibly fucking scrape up from our server, go through the entire 22K word script, and give feedback on every Southern-ism that Bob says for maximum accuracy. Like, we were sent articles about the history of Southern sayings; ‘Like um actually, Bob would not say this, because this blah blah blah, that’s not what this word means, blah blah blah.’ Holy fucking shit. It was awesome. It was really good and our script is so much better for it.

Ivo: Another thing when writing Bob to make him as in character as possible, Pelo actually mentioned this, I don’t remember where he mentioned this, so do not @ me, but Bob Velseb is inspired off of Michael Myers. And doing a deep dive into Michael Myers as a character has definitely helped me see how we could portray Bob. Something, this is the ONE thing that I will tell you guys that Corey told me, he imagines Bob like Dexter.

Rae: YEEEEEAH.

Ivo: If you know Dexter, you would know. We have a very good guy, as someone who poses as someone who is ‘normal’, but is in almost a Jekyll-Hyde situation, hiding this little guy. So that’s all you’re gonna get from me though, because I’d get shot in the head by Rae.

‘Will there ever be more merch drops in the future?’ (asked by Toxi Gin)

Rae: Yes! There will be!

Ivo: Absolutely!

Rae: I’m currently trying to finish shipping the international orders, the reason why that’s taking so long is because shipping internationally is very, muy expensivo, hugely fuckin- Them bitches take like $50 each to ship sometimes. I’m like, really trying. But, after that international drop is done, we have planned a tarot card set! We have plans to release a tarot card set, featuring either Spooky Month characters, canon Spooky Month characters. I have an entire excel spreadsheet about which character would be which cards. I’ve done a lot of studying about the meaning of various tarot cards, how they apply to the characters in Spooky Month. We do have a few people on the team who are very experienced in tarot card readings, and so on and so forth. I think Lav, actually, the musician we mentioned earlier, is one of those people who gave us some really valuable insight. They’ve done some tarot readings for other team members. We’re very excited since it kinda fits in with the whole cult theme. Super snazzy. Vograce manufactures some very high quality cards. We might even make them a sort of Collector’s Item sort of situation.

‘What are the dev’s favorite music tracks for the game so far?’ (asked by A Mysterious Black Cat)

Ivo: OOOOOOOOOH.

Rae: I love this one.

Ivo: Well, I can’t just pick one favorite. That would be wrong. I can’t. I really love the Main Menu. I do not have a file of it. I literally just have to sit with the game open. My least favorite track is probably the track that plays in Boys n’ Grills. It’s no hate to Lavandula at all. It’s simply because, when I was programming for Bob’s sprites, I had to listen to that for eight hours, because I forgot I could mute the audio.

Rae: ….Ivo. *Laughs. Ivo.

Ivo: I got sick of it.

Ivo: Did YOU make that? I said Lavandula-

Rae: I’M the one that made that. You HATE me? Ivo. *Weeps.

Ivo: Yeah, I hate you. I hate you. And, you know what? This is-

Rae: My music is CRINGE?!

Ivo: It’s not cringe! It’s not cringe! I just spent eight hours, and I got insane! I went insane. It would not shut up.

Rae: Guys, would you want an eight hour Boys n’ Grills Ambience Video, ASMR: You Fall Asleep In Boys n’ Grills, so you just have to listen to the same fucking theme song for eight hours?!

Ivo: But like it transitions to the meat locker. Ok. Uh…. *Laughs. My actual favorite is the Police Station. I think it’s really groovy. The Police Station, the Main Menu, and the End Credits. Those are my top three.

Rae: The End Credits are fucking glorious. That’s probably, that has to be one of my favorites too. However, it’s a tie, kind of. There is a track in the game that plays in the scene where you meet Eyes of the Universe- Oh wait. Shit. Did I…

Ivo: WAIT! DON’T SAY THAT.

Rae: Did I say that? 🙂

Ivo: I was gonna bring up something post-demo. The track that you made. The Panic one. That one isn’t released but I really like that one.

Rae: That one is so peak.

Ivo: The world is not ready for it.

Rae: That spoiler is just for you guys.

Ivo: No one heard anything.

Rae: Totally intentional spoiler, don’t you guys worry. One of my other favorites, this is just to be on the same page as Ivo, I really, really like the Boys n’ Grills Theme. Not because I’m super proud of it, I’m not. It’s probably one of the first songs I ever made. But I’m proud of it because Pelo saw it and made fanart of it. So it’s like canon now, in my heart.

Ivo: That was so amazing and ethereal.

Rae: I ascended. I was in a VC. I was in a call I think with some other people-

Ivo: With several developers, yeah.

Rae: When I saw the notification like ‘Oh, Pelo liked this tweet? Oh, that’s cool.’ And then I saw the image and I genuinely started screaming. Like I started yelling. I was like OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH— [AUDIO CLIPS]

Ivo: Me, Rae, and several other developers happened to be in a Discord voice call. A Twitter post was made. One of us just goes, ‘Rae! LOOK!’ The link is posted, and everyone is freaking out.

Rae: I exploded.

Ivo: It was such a good day for us.

Rae: Huge motivation boost.

Ivo: Yes. That is what pushed us to continue with the demo, among many other things.

‘How does Bob feel about Y/N?’ (asked by Katie_3561)

Rae: The best part about this question is—

Ivo: He hates them.

Rae: PHHHBBBBT. Shhh… NO.

Ivo: *Laughs. Sorry.

Rae: I mean, well. It depends.

Ivo: He could…

Rae: You can influence how Bob feels about you. That’s part of the fun of it being a dating sim.

Ivo: It depends on what you say and do. If you wanna get on his shit list, go ahead, but like… y’know. If you wanna make him-

Rae: Why do that when he’s so fine?!

Ivo:... No. No.

Rae: …No?! YOU DISAGREE?

Ivo: Yeah, so I didn’t write the flustered Bob. Just made it up.

Rae: Yeah, flustering Bob. That was a mirage.

Ivo: Yeah, yeah, that wasn’t canon.

Rae: So in short, ‘how does Bob feel about Y/N’, however you wanna make him feel. If you wanna get on his fucking nerves you can. If you want to romance him, and hold the hands with him and kiss him…… Uh…. uh…. I’m sorry, where was I?

Ivo: Depends on how much rizz you got— WOAH. WOOOOAH.

Rae: My bad.

‘Were there any assets or mechanics that didn’t make the final cut for the demo?’ (asked by Chococat5.10.1996)

Ivo: Absolutely.

Rae: YES.

Ivo: We have, I’m speaking for the writing document, we have an entire document that we called the ‘Scrapyard,’ for unused scenes or choices that we may recycle, or are just forever doomed to rot.

Rae: We also have a folder in our shared Google Drive called ‘Face The Wall.’

Ivo: I REMEMBER.

Rae: That folder is for all of the cut assets. I don’t… I think the fake loading screens were technically a cut thing but they’re not exactly a mechanic. Let me see if I can find something from the Face The Wall folder for you guys. We have a lot of stock images we used as placeholders in there.

Ivo: Yes. The stock images were really good. I think post-demo, once the demo drops, I think posting some things from Face The Wall would be kinda great. We do have some gems in there. The development process for TLC has been so fun. We have put so many goofy stock images in the game. You guys do not know.

Rae: The best one though, Burger Bob was a thing in the server for a minute.

Ivo: I KILLED HIM. I KILLED HIM WITH MY BARE HANDS.

Rae: It was in front of a live audience. It was like, fucking French execution.

‘Where in the timeline of Spooky Month does this take place? Or is it just an alternate universe?’ (asked by Anonymous)

Rae: A little bit of both. Obviously Y/N isn’t canon to Spooky Month, right? By default, it’s kinda an alternate universe sort of situation. But, we did also have to sort of, figure out how to have a place in the timeline for the game to take place. 

Ivo: Is it public info?

Rae: It is now. It takes before Tender Treats. I’ll say that. It takes a while before Tender Treats. I guess you’ll have to figure out exactly when it takes place. How long before- Depending on what characters you meet.

Ivo: Pay attention to things. 🙂I know this game can seem very silly sometimes. But we have been pouring so much effort into making every little thing stick.

Rae: Lots of secrets.

Ivo: Use your eyeballs. Use your mind. And you will find things.

Rae: I have been consulting Pelo about some ARG stuff, y’know. Kinda give em’ some, little bit of input, little bit of tips and tricks and whatnot.

Ivo: You just summoned the dogs.

Rae: You summoned the HORDE. Definitely going to be adding some more wonderful stuff like that into hints when it takes place.

‘Hypothetically, way down the line, can we hope for a mobile version?’ (asked by iceeclaw)

Rae: You could hope for damn sure, I dunno if we’ll do it. The problem with mobile ports is that they take a shocking amount of time and effort. Our engine does have a button that you can just sort of press, that says ‘Oh! Create mobile port!’ And then it just renders as a mobile port. But because we have so many extraneous mechanics, things like the map, things like the phone, and the inventory, that aren’t just in the engine natively, it might take a long, long time before hoping for a mobile version. The closest equivalent that I think we’d be able to do, maybe, soon, would be a browser version. You can play browser versions of games on mobile, like on itch.io. TLDR; Maybe? Probably if we can figure it out. But a browser version is the next most possible thing.

Rae: OOOOOOOOOOOUGH.

Ivo: And that’s the end!

Everyone: YAY!

Ivo: Thank you everyone for watching, for sticking with us!

Rae: Hell yeah. Thank you guys for sticking with us, thank you for loving our idea, thank you for supporting the game, even just by being here.

Ivo: And believing in our cause!

Rae: YES, thank you for believing in our cause!

Ivo: It’s been a WHILE. We started development in December 2022. For those of you who have stuck around that long, thank you SO much.

Rae: Especially the devs too, you guys are the people making this possible.

Ivo: DUDE, you’ve literally been here since Day One, shut up!

Rae: *Laughs.

Ivo: YOUUUU. YOUUUU! It’s been a long ride. I’m very, very excited for everyone to see the demo. It is worth the wait. Rae: I think that’s that! I’m glad you guys enjoyed! See you guys around!

EVENT END