Hello again!

With the Toxic Yuri Jam ending, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the process that went into making The Lonely Dog Yearns For Love, and discuss some of the things that didn't make the cut.

For starters, how did the idea come to be?

Well, prior to the Toxic Yuri Jam being announced, I had been bouncing around an idea that I had held on to in case of a future 'Menhera Jam'.  The game was going to be a love-child between Kitakawa and Destroy it All and Love Me in Hell, with the protagonist and the love interest both being suicidal women that drag each other down further. When I realized a future Menhera Jam probably wasn't in the cards, I ended up putting that project away and working on a NaNoRenO 2025 submission instead(Love at First Latte!).

Around the time I began wrapping up my work on Love at First Latte, the announcement for Toxic Yuri VN Jam dropped, and everyone on my feed was clamoring to join. 

...Surprisingly, I was not! I had just done a 1 month jam, and felt like doing the toxic yuri jam would lead to burnout, so I didn't initially plan on participating. Eventually, I had decided that if I was going to join, I'd join a pre-existing team as an artist, as writing has never been my strong suit and I didn't have confidence to make two solo projects back-to-back.

Unfortunately, around that same time I latched on to the Saw franchise, and my mind started conjuring up a plot that takes the dynamic and depressing tone of my scrapped Menhera Jam game and combines it with pet-play torture basement activities. I felt like I had to do this solo, that this was a game so intimately tied to my own experience that I needed to work on it with my own two hands. I started writing down plot beats that I wanted to include(including the dog food scene) and ended up compiling a mood board the night before the jam began.

Visuals

From the start, I wanted the game to have a black and white, sketch-like appearance. 

One thing about my games is that despite being the artist for all of them, they all look entirely different from each other. This is because one of my first priorities when making a game is creating an aesthetic and atmosphere that I want present throughout the whole game.  For this game, since the tone of the game was so bleak and depressing, I wanted the visuals to feel crunchy and hand drawn, almost like a homemade zine. 

This is a very different visual style from my other games, but I wanted to approach the style with the utmost sincerity. I'm really proud of how it turned out, and I think I was able to capture the visual style I was inspired by really well.

The first concept art for The Lonely Dog Yearns For Love, as well as the style test for what the game would look like.

An interesting thing that I had decided at the last minute is that the blood would stay red. Much like the movie Sin City, I felt like the pop of red would accentuate the disturbing and violent nature of the bite, vomit, and fingering scene. It would draw the reader's attention towards the pop of color, and would come as a surprise to those who had been reading that far. 

With the visual aesthetic figured out,  my next goal was to lay out a proper outline for the story of the game. 

Narrative

The game has a large focus on homophobia, suicidal depression, and falling in love with a girl you probably shouldn't. I chose this style of story because unfortunately, I have very intimate experience with all three of them. The suicidal opening scene came directly from my own experiences with depression, and while I won't get super into it I will say that most of Rachel's thoughts in that moment were pulled directly from past attempts of mine. Her self-harm scars as well, while never addressed in the narrative, were parallel to my own. If you were wondering why they were included, that's why.

Eden as well, is inspired by the part of my brain that says to just 'do it'. She's the abusive, berating voice that pushes you further and further into a depressive hole that you can't get out of. Some people said that her motives and reason for putting Rachel through this were confusing, and I can understand why. I had hoped to flesh out her character more, but from the POV of Rachel, I felt like Eden wouldn't give her much of that information. In the future, I might want to delve deeper into why Eden is the way that she is, and how she became the demented person she is today. For now I'll just say that she wasn't always such a sadistic character.

Initially, this was going to be a game with two main endings: one where Rachel fully gives in to being a dog and doesn't leave the house, and a second ending where she does escape but her mom finds out about her 'secret'. 

In the 'stay' ending, Eden finds herself bored with Rachel and frustrated at how easily she 'broke', so once the 24 hours has ended she leaves her in the basement to slowly starve to death. This plot point was going to further delve into Eden's motives, and imply that Rachel was not the first victim of this 'game'. This ending was probably the most inspired by the movie 'SAW', specifically the infamous 'Game Over' door slam. I ended up scrapping this ending for time, and also to uphold a stronger overarching narrative with the 'outing' ending.

In the 'outing' ending, Rachel flees the house, returning to find her mom in the living room, horrified at the realization of what Rachel had done. This ending also had a lot of content cut for time, which would have shed more light on Eden premeditating this entire 'deal', hence why she had Rachel's mother's phone number, and why she was at the bridge that day. The ending was also going to lead to Eden 'comforting' Rachel after her mom threw her out, with the broken Rachel choosing to stay Eden's dog permanently. This was changed as well, mostly because as I wrote Rachel I decided that she would realize that Eden had sent her mom the video and would feel too betrayed by her to find solace in her comfort.

The rest of the game ended up following my initial outline pretty well, in particular the kibble-to-vomit-to-sex scene, which was the part of the story that I knew I needed to nail in order for the toxicity to really hit. A fun fact about that scene is I wanted the description of the dog food to be as realistic and visceral as possible, so I actually ended up eating real dog food and writing down the flavor profile of it. It ended up not tasting as vomit-inducing as I thought it would, so I had to make the scene even more twisted to compensate.

This was also my first time writing anything 'explicit', as most of my other games had been pg-13 or below style games. I have never written a sex scene before, and I was worried that my lack of experience would affect my writing. I ended up leaning into it being less 'sexy' and more 'traumatic', and I think that helped bridge the gap and create a serviceable sex scene.

Final Thoughts

When I released this game, I was really worried about the general reception. Like I said previously, I hadn't released anything 18+ before, and this game was so different from my other works that I was worried people who had liked my other work would despise this one, and people who enjoy toxic works would find it 'too tame'. I spent the final week working on it thinking 'man, I don't think this game is toxic enough for the jam', so by the time I released it, my imposter syndrome was at an all time high.

...Luckily, that wasn't the case. Everyone was very nice about the game, and they seemed to really appreciate the visuals of the game. Several people have mentioned that they ended devastated them, and some have even told me they cried reading it. I'm really grateful to all the people who played my game, and I've actually saved everyone's reviews of the game from the discord, itchio, and even social media. Your support means the world to me, and I can't thank you all enough.

Overall, I'm really happy with how the game turned out, and I'm really glad I participated in the Toxic Yuri Jam. Being in the discord, talking with all the other devs has been such a blast, and there's a buzzing passion for making games amidst everyone that I find myself addicted to. This community is incredible, and I hope to continue making games and connecting with as many people as possible.

Thank you to the hosts, thank you to the Toxic Yuri Jam discord, and thank you to you, the reader.

-Porksbun