Hello, everyone! After working so hard on Barachoda Bloom, which you can download right now, I decided to unwind a little and write a response to the Artistic Creativity survey. I also asked Oliver to create a response to the NSFW survey, so look forward to that.

Before that, since a lot of you are very patiently waiting for the next build, here's a little preview of what Gryph is working on:

Our team is in a bit of a tight spot right now, so can't exactly work on new content at this moment. Please understand.

Also, the Queer Games Bundle is about to close in just under 24 hours! Please buy it if you haven't already. You can buy it here and the pay-what-you-want version here.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at what feedback we sent us.

We got a whopping 78 responses as of this time of writing. Apparently, when you write a long ass essay about drawing hot dwarves, people are more inclined to take the survey. For this survey, all multiple-choice questions are required whereas all of the free-response questions are optional. I want to make all questions required, but fewer people would have taken the survey if that was the case, and some of them would have given vague answers to the free-response questions. It's better to have some data from those people than no data at all. Part of me also wanted to add a question on what art style I should have gone with, but the proposed alternative art styles are so similar to the current one, that it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Onto the actual responses. First the character proportions. 62.8% said they liked slighter bigger than realistic proportions. This is good because this is the closest to my current art style and also the types of proportions the artists I greatly admire use (Okay Glensaru's proportions are more than slightly bigger than usual, but I could reasonably see his men existing in real life.) Oliver said he expected the exaggerated proportions option to be the most popular, but thankfully only 17.9% picked that. Now I won't have to draw penises that give you a concussion when they jump out from a dwarf's underwear. Surprisingly, 19.2% of people said they wanted realistic proportions. I don't get it since it's a fantasy game but to each their own. In any case, I think I'll stick to my current art style of proportions that are big in the right places but not so big that they'd rip their clothes if they so much as sneeze.

Next are the redesigns, probably the part most of you are the most curious about. All three redesigns have a majority of positive responses, but the ones that have less positive responses to them are wildly different. One thing I wish I could go back on was to make the redesigns look like the current art style. I think I was concerned about making it obvious that it was just a sketch but I think it would have been fairer when gathering responses.

Lurik's redesign is the least "popular" of the three with 62.8% saying they greatly prefer the redesign, 10.3% saying they greatly prefer the current design, and 26.9% saying they want elements of both. The redesign changes Lurik's appearance by quite a bit, so I was half expecting a response like that. I don't want to undermine our readers who prefer leaner guys, and I don't want to tell people what a dwarf should or shouldn't look like, but I also have to be frank when I say that I just don't find Lurik's current design attractive. It's just going to be a lot harder for me to draw him if I don't find him attractive.

As for exactly why some people preferred the original design or what they want to keep from it, there are a variety of answers. Some say that the thinner body makes more sense considering he's a thief and all. That's fine and I could make Lurik's body less exaggerated than the redesign currently gives him. At the same time, there do exist agile bulky people, think footballers, and while someone of a large mass being able to sneak around could be considered questionable, it's certainly not impossible. Oliver said there would also be story reasons for why he's beefy despite being poor. A couple of responses said that they wanted the current design's outfit on the new design, which I can do but I don't know how many people would want that. One response said they liked the facial hair in the current design better and another said that they wanted the shirt for the redesign to show more of his skin, which how and why? One response says that the new redesign looks like Oghram a little too much and as someone who admittedly has a same face habit, I don't agree with this. I will admit, I did make the nose similar to Oghram's, but the eyes, eyebrows, and head shape are different enough that I wouldn't be too worried about him looking too similar to Oghram.

Next is Kellan's redesign. People were more kind to this design than Lurik's redesign with 75.6% of people saying they greatly preferred this design, only 3.8% of responses saying they preferred the current design (that's only three people!), and 20.5% saying they wanted elements from both designs. I'm glad people like the chonk on him, and also glad I'm giving the old man the GILF look he deserves. 

As for the free answer responses, most people enjoyed the new design, saying he looks sexier. Some said that the redesign should have a longer beard and keep the braids, which I agree with. Some said they wanted the current hairstyle, which I'm not exactly a fan of long straight hair on men. It can look nice but I prefer other hairstyles. One person said that he lost too much hair on the side of his head, which I don't understand what they're saying. And another person said that the staff should be longer and that he should have gems in his beard, which is interesting.

Finally, we have Arondal's redesign, and it has gotten the most positive feedback, with 87.2% saying they greatly prefer the redesign, 2.6% of responses saying they prefer the current design, and 10.3% saying they wanted elements of both. I think the reason why this redesign is so popular compared to the other two is that it uses the ideas that make Arondal's current design appealing and pushes it to new levels while also making him sexier. But that's just what I think.

The responses I got for Arondal were interesting. One person said that the current sprite has a better pose and they do have a point. A few people said that he looked muscular and not very chubby which was strange to me because I did draw him as musclechub. It's just that his suit hides the silhouette of his belly. Either that or I don't know what musclechub is. I could emphasize his belly more, but I think Horgath is the one who would have the bigger belly, so I think I'll pass. One person said they liked the current design's outfit and wanted it on the redesign. Another person said they wanted a bigger beard.

The next question asked what we should do to improve the designs of Panya, Horgath, and Oghram. We didn't ask what people thought of them considering that they are the three most popular characters in the game (according to our survey) so most people already like them and their designs. Most responses boiled down to either, "they're alright", "they should be fatter, hairier, more muscular", or "they should be made more interesting after the previous three got more complex redesigns." Specifically, several said they wanted Horgath to be more muscular because he's a blacksmith, which is fair. How muscular I'll make him, I'm not sure just yet. Someone said Panya's eyes look too big and I can see why, but I think I'm keeping them. One person said that Horgath should keep a tool kit with him and that could look neat on him. A lot of people say that Panya doesn't look chubby enough considering he's a baker which feels rough because I did draw him as on the heavier side. I think when we eventually see the dwarves without clothes, Panya's thickness will become a lot more noticeable. But I'll fatten his sprites up eventually.

Next is the protagonist's design and this one's really surprising. 55.1% of respondents wanted a defined character design, 10.3% wanted no character design/a translucent figure, and 32.1% wanted the option between both (For the record, one respondent was okay with either but didn't want a option to switch feeling that artistic intent was more important, and another said they didn't play the game so they couldn't have gave a good answer). This is surprising considering that many popular gay Visual Novels either have generic faceless protagonists (Adastra, Shelter, Nekojishi, etc.) or no design for the MC at all (Minotaur Hotel, Lustful Desires). I mean one of the games that were mentioned a good amount by survey respondents (for the game not this survey) was So it's surprising that over half of our audience wants a character design, and only around 10% don't want one. At the same time, it's weirder that Visual Novels even have faceless protagonists at all. Video Games and Visual Novels are pretty much the only visual mediums where the main character is allowed to not have a character design. MCs with no character designs in Visual Novels came about for several specific reasons.

• Visual Novels during the 80s and 90s weren't able to feature two characters talking at the same time smoothly.
• Dating-Sims like Tokimeki Memorial were focused more on the simulation aspect than the story, so a character design wasn't necessary.
• Visual Novels didn't know how to show the player character in a way that looked good because no one at the time ever tried.
• Erotic Games were more focused on fulfilling the player's fantasy than coming up with a serious story, so it was more important that the protagonist allowed the player to fill themselves in the action than anything else.

But now we have graphic novels illustrated by AI, there's no reason why story-focused Visual Novels should get away with featureless protagonists. But it still happens because we're used to it, and there's not much we can do about it. But yes, a lot of people do want to know what the protagonist looks like. All in all, I personally think implementing the option to do have both is the best thing to do, since I enjoy protagonists with defined character designs but I will admit that sex scenes where the protagonist is just a translucent penis with translucent hands is pretty hot. It's one of those, you have to see it to understand why, but I will include it. Maybe I should include it in Barachoda Bloom, maybe I should make a survey about that. Anyways.

For the next question, we asked how people thought about the character design I gave. We got 2 1s, 4 2s, 15 3s, 33 4s, and 24 5s. For those who care about Math, that's a mean of 3.935897, a median of 4, and a mode of 4. Overall an aight response for the guy. I mentioned this before, but I tried to make the protagonist as relatable as possible. I gave him an ethnically ambiguous appearance and made his clothes make his body type less defined. Honestly, I should have tried to make his actual character design more interesting, but his character is vanilla and not much is known about him right now, so a character design for him is bound to be rather simple at this point. As for how he should appear in the game, 59% said they wanted him to appear beside the textbox, 32.1% wants them to be a full on character sprite, while 7.7% said they wanted no portrait at all, (1 person said they wanted him to appear as a full sprite but have side portraits for whoever is speaking). Unfortunately, in order for us to have the option to have all three ways to display the game, we'd basically have to code the game twice as well as some complex Ren'py configuration, and that's just too much for a project with basically no budget. So we have to choose between side portrait and full portrait, and since Oliver is very icky about the idea of a full sprite for the MC, we're most likely going for the side portrait style. For those who don't want to see the MC at all, I'll probably provide an image set for the MC where everything is blank. So when you mod them into the game, you won't see the protagonist in the game.

For the comments, several mentioned how they liked how the skinny and tall human MC contrasted nicely with the short and chubby dwarves, which was somewhat intentional. One person mentioned they liked having a character design for the MC because it means it allows them to appear in CGs alongside the dwarves, which is a good point. People are mixed about the beard, with some liking it and others saying it looks weird. We got a lot of comments about adding customization like being able to change hairstyles and body types. We're not doing that. I understand the appeal of customization, being able to express yourself in video games is a wonderful thing! But please understand that it is very expensive to implement. Think about the last game you played that included character customization. Skyrim, Elden Ring (It's probably Elden Ring), Sims 4, Miitopia, even Dream Daddy. These are all games with very large budgets for their genres and it's not something a small indie team can add lightly. Let me put in perspective how big of a task this would be. Let's say we let you choose from three body types to pick from. I would not only have to draw the MC three times, and draw every expression for each body type, but I'd also have to draw each CG featuring him three times. And since he appears in one sex scene per dwarf, that would mean I would have to draw six CGs three times. That means I have to draw eighteen CGs. I also want the MC to have sex with each dwarf at least twice, so that number doubles to thirty-six CGs. And that's just body types. I haven't even considered other factors like hairstyle, eye shape, nose, mouth, facial hair, and body hair. It's a lot of work. So, unfortunately, customization will be limited to skin, hair, and eye color, since those things are a lot easier to change and I believe players should be able to express their ethnicity through games. The only non-color-related customization I would consider is the option to have a beard or no beard if only because Coming Out On Top lets you customize that will all of the guys, but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, I would love to implement a heftier protagonist in the game, but I think we already have chubbiness represented with four out of the six dwarves, and I want the protagonist to stick out from the dwarves. I hope you guys understand.

The last question is about CGs. This one's interesting because we got 9 unique responses. As expected, the most popular option was Lewd CGs, with 43.6% picking that option. 30.8% of people said they wanted Domestic CGs first, while 14.1% said they wanted Work-related CGs first. I don't have much to say about these results other than that I'm glad I have an excuse to draw more naked beefy guys. Our team also talked about the possibility of combining these types of CGs, with the dwarves working while casually nude, or the dwarves fondling themselves in the house. Now for the unique responses, one says it depends on the context of the scenes, which is understandable because we wouldn't want to force ourselves to write a scene of the dwarves jacking off in front of the MC even though they haven't told us their last name yet (I think I've had sex with guys before I knew their last names but that's beside the point).  Rest assured we're not forcing sex to happen. At least two people said they wanted all three to happen, which is greedy but the heart wants what the heart wants. One guy said they wanted lewd scenes to be essentially a bonus, instead of just something that happens. They want it to mean something which, I respect that. Someone wanted CGs that were almost but not quite lewd, essentially "teasing" the viewer. One said that it depended on how many CGs would be in the game, with larger amounts starting wholesome CGs while smaller amounts would start with more lewd (but not sex/completely naked) stuff. The final amount of CGs per route is probably going to be small, think 4 or 5 per route. One person said something fascinating, which was that we should start with lewd CGs to get people's imaginations running before leading into the sex scenes and the heartwarming stuff. We could do that. Interesting responses overall.

We also had a place where people were allowed to say whatever they wanted to us. Someone could have said they wanted nudes of us, but no one did. In terms of spicy responses we got, however, we got a couple. For starters, someone said that the dwarves… don't look like dwarves. At least not the dwarves that appear in Lord of the Rings or DnD. Here's the thing. If we made a dating sim where all of the dwarves looked like a "traditional" dwarf, we wouldn't get a lot of variety of character designs. A lot of the appeal of dating sims is that the cast has varied character designs, and not having that just kind of blows. Also, keep in mind that dwarves don't exist in the real world, therefore there are no set rules on how a dwarf is supposed to look. I understand that you expected our characters to look a certain way, but we enjoy these character designs and agree that they are dwarves, even if their proportions are "wrong". I will admit that I should have given these dwarves more "dwarf-y" proportions, but that's on me and not because of some obituary guidelines that I'm supposed to follow for some reason.

For other responses, one person said that they wanted more exaggeration for the characters, and while I agree, I can't help but feel that people are just trying to tell me to give Horgath and Oghram fatter tits. Oh wait, that's exactly the response I got from several people, alongside making every dwarf hairier. Someone said they wanted a less cartoony artstyle, which is understandable because many gay VNs have a semi-realistic artstyle, (Only one I can think of right off the bat is Adastra). This one's kind of funny, it's basically just telling me to include sex in the game as quickly as I can because sex sells. I mean alright, I'll take your advice random person on the internet. It's not like I built my entire career on drawing old men getting their asses fucked silly. The last one I'll mention is one that says that all of the characters have square head shapes, and I'm like… what other head shapes would they have? Circle? I'd say Panya's head is a pretty circle shape. Oval? What, you want Megamind dwarves now? Triangle? Is that even a thing?

Oh.

I swear I'm not trying to brush off criticism on my art, I'm just really confused about what exactly they want from me.

Anyways that's it from me. That was a lot to cover but I managed to discuss everything. I hope I didn't come across as an asshole who thinks they can ignore criticism just because he's the only one in the room who draws short men who top, because believe or not, I actually love feedback and critique of my work. I hope you guys have a good day, make sure you support the Queer Games Bundle before it closes if you haven't already, and I'll see you the next time I write a long-ass itch.io DevLog.