Welcome to more Yaoi and Boys Love focused interviews, my name is Emily and today I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Man-Eater Games. This is a great discussion with the creative minds behind Man-Eater Games, a team known for their passion for Boys Love visual novels. Today, we’ll be delving into what inspired their focus on this niche genre and what sets their games apart from others in the field.

We’re also thrilled to interact with other Boys Love Visual Novel creators, with the launch of “I Married a Monster on a Hill” along with the WEBTOON from All Ages of Geek’s sister founders.

Get ready to learn about their journey from fans to creators and their unique approach to “bite-sized BL” visual novels!

What inspired Man-Eater Games to focus on creating Boys Love visual novels, and what sets your games apart from others in the genre?

First and foremost, it was our love for BL! We’ve been fans since the early 00’s and we fell in love with visual novels ever since we played the first BL titles that JAST USA localized.

We consider our works to be “bite-sized BL”. All of our visual novels borrow heavily from genre fiction and are relatively short and cheap, so we like to think of them as the equivalent of one of the one shot manga we used to pick and read in an afternoon.

Can you share any upcoming Boys Love visual novel projects that you have in the works?

Right now we’re working on “The Frozen Kingdom”, which is a story inspired by 80’s sword and sorcery films. Unlike our previous works, this one is being made from start to finish as 18+ instead of having it added via patch, so we’re excited to see what people think of it!

How do you approach creating romantic relationships in your Boys Love visual novels, and what kind of feedback have you received from fans?

Feedback from fans has definitely affected the way we approach the relationship angle! For example, since we got praise for not making the games overly centered in the relationships at the expense of a plot, but we also had people who wanted the relationships to be more prominent, that was a decisive factor in us deciding to include adult content.

As a visual novel developer, how do you balance the storytelling aspects of your games with the interactive gameplay elements?

Since we take the “big choices that offer noticeable branches” approach for our games, we start out by doing an outline and thinking about what would be the most interest points for the story to diverge. In that sense, our balancing has more to do with deciding exactly how many of those things we can do with our budget and how the money should be allocated, and making sure that all the branches we’re left with make sense.

Can you tell us about the process of creating character designs for your Boys Love visual novels?

Our work is very trope-y by design, so we start by narrowing down all our different inspirations to a set of characteristics and a role in the story, and we work with the artists to put a spin on the ideas and make an attractive guy out of them.

For some characters we have a very strong visual direction in mind from the beginning — for example, Isaac from Monstrous Lovers is inspired by Maria from Metropolis, and so he was a metallic robot from inception. The protagonist of The Frozen Kingdom, on the other hand, was a case of a character that went through several iterations before his design was nailed down, as the most iconic barbarian designs of the era are so simple that there’s a very fine line between feeling like a homage and a rip-off.

Have you ever faced any challenges related to creating visual novels, and if so, how did you handle it?

Many of challenges we’ve faced have been setbacks that completely blindsided us. With Monstrous Lovers, our first choice of sprite artist abandoned the work midway and what can you really do about that? Eventually, we were able to repurpose what they’d delivered, but we ended up having to find another artist and getting a bunch of work re-done.

More generally speaking, two big challenges for us have been homophobia and misogyny. Visual novels tend to be considered “lesser” when it comes to game development, and combined with the fact that we make BL, and it can be rather hard to be taken seriously by people not already familiar with the niche.

How do you approach writing characters and storylines in your visual novels?

As with character designs, we start with a rough idea of what roles we want to fill based on the story we want to go with and what would be an interesting angle to approach it from. Say we have a concept like “retrofuturistic spy fiction” for Blind Men — our spin was to have a villain be the protagonist and we knew from the start that we wanted to have a love interest who was very abrasive, straightforward in his flirting, so the logical next step was to have someone more serious and no-nonsense.

Generally speaking, we like to have a variety of personalities represented, so we also approach characters as a cast rather than individually.

For the technical aspect, we make both an outline and a diagram that shows the choices and then we keep that around to make sure that the story elements remain coherent even if we do end up making changes somewhere else.

Can you share any advice for aspiring visual novel developers who are interested in creating Boys Love content? 

First would be to not be afraid of creating something because they think it might not have an audience. Different ideas might need different approaches, but the BL space is very diverse, and you never know who else shares your taste and will love it until they get a chance to experience it.

Second thing would be to familiarize yourself with the different distribution platforms so you’re not caught by surprise by certain restrictions (how is adult content, in particular when it comes to BL, treated, if there’s some sort of vetting process, regional restrictions, and son) and you can take them into account from the start.

Was it easy running Kickstarters for your projects? How did you go about running successful funded projects? 

Not at all! Running a crowdfunding campaign takes up a whole month for the campaign itself + even more time of preparation and fulfillment. Part of the reason we’re focusing on digital rewards this time is to smooth the process.

For any aspiring Boys Love visual novel creators, what are some tips on how to engage with your audience during the crowdfunding process?

Communication is key. People like Kickstarter for the feeling of getting to participate in the creation of something and for the opportunity to get something exclusive, and so a crowdfunding campaign needs to be able to get that across. Why should people give your their money and not spend it somewhere else? Once they’ve given it to you, are you showing that it’s being used as you said it would?

As for the sense of participation, we like to give people the chance to make some decisions that affect the game. For Monstrous Lovers, backers got to vote for the VAs, and for The Frozen Kingdom, they will get to vote for characters featured in some of the rewards.

What role has crowdfunding played in allowing Man-Eater Games to create more, and how many future Kickstarter projects will you be running?

Kickstarter was what allowed us to get our foot in the order, not only in a money sense, but it also helped us validate our entrance into the market.

Right now we’ve got the Kickstarter for The Frozen Kingdom coming up and depending on how that goes, we’d definitely like to keep using Kickstarter to offer adult-only VNs and more experimental projects.

How do you balance creative vision with audience feedback during the development process of your visual novels, and what kind of community engagement do you prioritize?

Like I said before, we have ended up changing our approach to certain things thanks to audience feedback, so for us, the very first thing is thinking about where the feedback is coming from, and then the second one is how much change to our vision that would imply. Taste is subjective, so unless we get an overwhelming amount of feedback (or data to support it), feedback in the vein of “I don’t like this character type” or “I don’t like this plot beat” is of lower priority than something like, say, implementing the adult patches.

Something important to consider during decision making is that not everyone who plays will give feedback, and ideally, one will compare feedback received with data such as sales numbers. In our case, we realized that in-game achievements could be used to track player behavior, so we implemented them in a way that allows us to track which characters and which routes get completed more.

Personally, we find social media to be more convenient due to its immediacy and because they’re generally easier to monitor, but because of all the algorithms, reviews on steam (when the game was bought there) and itchio end up being the most useful…

What kind of marketing strategies have you found to be most effective in promoting your Boys Love visual novels, and how do you engage with your fan base outside of the games themselves?

Overall, we’ve found that methods that target BL fans in specific tend to work the best — for example, getting covered by a medium youtuber or blogger that often covers BL gets more engagement than getting coverage from a larger site where the extra eyes you get on your product aren’t necessarily interested in it. There’s also the ease of getting covered in the first place, and people who are already in the community are more likely to be excited to share a new game.

Another really effective method, given that you’re selling on Steam, are Steam festivals and things that put your game in front of Steam players. Most marketing methods require players to look up the product afterwards and they can lose interest/get distracted, but as much of a headache as Steam can be, since it’s a storefront, once they’re there, they barrier to purchase is minimal.

As for engaging with fans, it used to be conventions (we’re lucky enough to have a couple of LGBT+ focused cons here in Mexico), but that has been shifting to social media as of late.

Can you share any memorable experiences or interactions with fans of your visual novels, and how has their support impacted the development of your games?

Like I mentioned before, we used to do quite a bit of conventions and gamedev events pre-pandemic, and other than the people telling us how much their enjoy our work, our favorite interaction was girls and young women saying that we’ve helped them realize that making the jump from hobbyist to professional BL creator is not something limited to people from other countries, and that Mexico also has a budding BL scene that includes visual novels.

Can you tell us about any partnerships or collaborations that Man-Eater Games has had with other creators or companies in the Boys Love genre?

Most of our notable collaborations so far have been with people outside the BL space (we got musician Aurelio Voltaire to do music for Monstrous Lovers, for example), but for The Frozen Kingdom, we’re working with artists Vanreito and Laancer for the sprites and artbook, respectively.

How do you ensure that your projects are accessible to players? 

Since we’re based out of Mexico, we’re committed to offering our VNs in Spanish in order to bring them to as many people as possible. Likewise, we like to offer them through as many storefronts possible in order to give people more options.

We also feel very strongly about readability of text in video games in general, so starting from our upcoming project, we hope to include font options for accessibility, too.

Can you share any upcoming updates or patches for your existing visual novels?

Barring bug fixes, we’re pretty much done with updates to our older VNs and are focusing on future projects, but you can look forward to experiencing Monstrous Lovers on console later this year thanks to our publisher, Ratalaika Games.

Can you share any details on the creative process behind the music and sound design in your visual novels, and how do you ensure that they complement the overall experience?

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but music is one of the last things we get done because we’re rather tone deaf, ha ha. Fortunately, the musicians we’ve worked with are all very understanding, and generally what we do is send some of the art assets and a description of the scenes the music is to be used for, and we work together to get a feeling of what we want the music to sound like.

How do you see the role of Boys Love media evolving in the larger gaming industry, and what kind of impact do you hope to have?

We think we’re still some time away from regularly seeing m/m relationships at the center of AAA titles, but that it will be more and more common to offer male romance options for gender-selectable protagonists.

Ultimately, passionate fans will probably end up being the driving force between indie and AA titles that considers themselves BL, so we hope that rather than being a single company that serves as an example of commercial viability, we end up being part of a subset of the industry that encourages people to join and experiment.

Finally, where can fans go to stay updated on all the latest news and releases from Man-Eater Games, and what kind of community events or initiatives do you have planned for the future?

Our most active social media is twitter at https://twitter.com/Man_EaterGames, but given  the instability of the platform, you can also head to http://www.maneatergames.com/contact.html to sign up to our newsletter receive news straight into your email! 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this interview with the team at Man-Eater Games, exploring their inspiration and vision for creating Boys Love visual novels. Their dedication to providing fans with short, affordable, and captivating experiences truly sets them apart in the genre. Make sure to keep an eye on their latest releases and support their passion for bringing BL stories to life. Thank you for joining us, and stay tuned for more engaging discussions with your favorite Yaoi and Boys Love creators!