A lot went into Kaiju Noir:

40,561 words of dialogue & narration

9,605 words of game code
47 background images
166 character sprites
17 action frames & additional art
55 character animations
8 music tracks
18 months

It still feels pretty unreal to see it finished & running mostly issue free.

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Hey folks, Kaiju here, and I wanted to put down my post release thoughts now my head is more or less clear of that just-released panic. If you wanted to know more about Kaiju Noir this is the time. 

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How did it begin?

Kaiju Noir was one of those ideas that got thought up when I was looking for distractions from my day job, as the good ones usually do. I love giant monsters (obviously, I'm named after an entire genre of them), and I've been passionate about film noir since I was a teen, so what if I wrote up a little scene about a giant monster detective agency? Could be a bit of fun. 

This was my first Ren'Py game too, my first attempt at something longer than the 10 minute slice of life made in Bitsy (see They Live Here Now), so I figured what better way to learn how to make a visual novel than to take some weird idea, start a script, chuck in some kaiju toys as character sprites and slap them onto the office backdrop from the Maltese Falcon. 

And from here Kaiju Noir began to grow.

A few months later I was chatting to Lluis Abadias, who I'd commissioned some art from, and half-joked that he and I should do a game together one day. Totally unexpectedly he agreed, and I sat him down with every one of my favourite films noir & monster movies, bashing out ideas & themes, until we had enough characters together to build a demo of the couple of chapters I'd written. Only about half the total characters we'd finally end up with,  a couple of sprites each, no music, and a very bare-bones interaction system, but it was enough.

On October 24 2020 we released the Kaiju Noir demo, and folks seemed to really like it, so I decided this would be the big thing I'd make that I'd never done before. A year later I managed to fulfil that promise to myself when we released this strange beast onto the world.

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Making a plan

What I wanted Kaiju Noir to become I really don't know. It had to be queer, I'd been doing so much with the Digital Diversity project I knew my first game had to be true to who I was, and I didn't want it to just be end-to-end film noir references. So I just kept writing, bouncing ideas off Lluis during our movie nights, scoping way out of my experience at times and trimming back ideas at others.

It was going to be pulp fiction, that I knew, in its original meaning. A queer, monstrous, weird and wonderful pulp novel that would unapologetically be whatever it evolved into.

Pretty early on I set the goal of 13 chapters, plus prologue & epilogue, doable by one writer in a year. Spending enough time around other wonderful devs had taught me the benefit of keeping things at a doable level, and not letting the ideas run amuck. So that's the deadline I set myself.

I could barely call what I had in mind a plan, but it was enough to get the monster rolling.

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The Team

Kaiju Noir was a heck of a team effort. Without Lluis designing these magnificent monsters and Keytar_Bard, who came onto the project near the end, making fantastic atmospheric music we wouldn't have a game. At least not one I'd think of as complete.

We also had a bunch of other amazing artists involved for various elements of the game. Another thing I felt important was to include as many folks from the kaiju/tokusatsu community as I could. Next game I'd definitely love to involve more.

Throughout the year @VisceraBot was there to bounce ideas off, and helped me stay on course, @timepatches helped me with a lot of UI design, and we had some wonderful testers in timepatches, @Drazillion & @TangledVirus, all of whose own visual novel work I greatly admire.

My role in the whole adventure was a hybrid of everything left over. Producer, writer, developer, background artist, sprite creator...so many hats, and I enjoyed each and every one.

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Budget? What budget?

Game dev isn't free, and it's rarely cheap, and for a newbie game dev without any job or resources it was going to be a tricky one.

Thankfully about half way through development, which was mostly just myself doing all the writing & programming and Lluis being the monster making machine he is (seriously, I am in awe of his skills), the Queer Games Bundle launched. I tossed in the game demo & They Live Here Now, and the revenue split was enough for me to commission the artists I needed to fill in those missing pieces of the puzzle! Showing just how important community support is. 

All that was left was the music, thankfully I'd just gotten my first job in 8 months, so luckily that could come out of my pocket, an anxious near-deadline arrangement that was quite stressful up to that point, but I think folks will agree it was well worth it for those stompy beats.

I don't think Kaiju Noir will ever be a commercial success, but it's proven near enough to breaking even for those that joined me on this mission I don't think we did too bad. 

This also gives me a great idea what to plan for if crowdfunding a sequel becomes an option. 

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So did it all work? 

Personally I think Kaiju Noir came out damn well, and I say this just as the one who hatched it but as someone who has spent years studying visual novels. Which I home cuts through some of that personal bias, haha. 

First of, the art. Heck. Lluis not only blew my mind but the rest of the solar system too with his designs. Each one a unique being, both strange and beautiful, monsters I fell in love with. 

The other contributing artists made the city of New Monstropolis feel more real in their own personal styles. From kaijuhime's amazing drink can designs, Mars_Atax's title page that hearkened back to the early days of pulp, to Tanner's visceral action scenes, and even a couple of great pieces from Lisa Naffziger & RochasaurusRex. The kaiju/tokusatsu community is full of incredible artists and I always want to work with more of them. 

The music? keytar_bard made something real special with the deadline I'd set. A bit jazzy, a dash of horror, and a lot of Stomp, the soundtrack works damn hard to be emotionally appropriate without stealing the show. Something not easy to do given the time and budget constraints. 

Game design wise it's easy to make something decent with Ren'py, and it's easy to mess it up and/or go overboard. It's a damn good engine I'd recommend for anyone wanting to write something narrative heavy. By sticking to a pretty minimalist approach for game mechanics it helps to make game decisions matter to an extent that keeps folks engaged to the end. Still sad I couldn't work in that fishing mini-game, but there's always the sequel. 

Then I guess there's the writing that started it all. You need something to connect all the art & music together right? As someone who has been writing pretty consistently for the last decade Kaiju Noir is the largest completed story I've ever written, and definitely the most cohesive in terms of narrative & development. Did it work though? Guess I'll leave that up to you. 

The story changed hugely over the course of a year; I cut out massive branching arcs in favour of one that felt real, the politics got deeper ingrained into the plot (you can see some of that change between the opening chapters in the demo vs the full game), and I twisted the tropes as hard as I could without breaking them too bad. It got bigger, and queerer, and nastier, but also more hopeful & meaningful to me. It's a far bigger story than I ever expected to tell.

As I said earlier I didn't just want Kaiju Noir to be one long string of references to other media. There's definitely heavy inspiration from the genre as a whole, and plenty of in-jokes if you can spot them, but it was important that the story stand on its own legs. However many it grew. 

Put all that together and you've a monster mash of a story that works pretty darn well. 

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What didn't work? 

There were plenty of stumbling blocks along the way making Kaiju Noir, but looking back there's nothing that failed to meet what I'd set out to do. 

If anything didn't meet up to my expectations it would probably be my first time as a producer with a team. Not going in to this with defined goals & checkpoints to reach along the way for both myself and the team definitely added a lot of stress near the end & resulted in some less than ideal situations along the way. 

The first time doing anything is usually hard and you fuck up along the way, but it's from these experiences we grow into better monsters. 

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Lessons learned along the way

The biggest lessons I learned making Kaiju Noir seem simple enough, be definite about what you want, and clearly communicate those wants. Let everyone know what they need to do, set parameters, and keep everyone involved communicating freely. 

These, for someone new to something like this, can be hard learned lessons.

Learning how to put a team together was also a huge lesson. Starting out I expected to make the whole game alone. But the end we had about 10 people work on the game in some capacity, and that was kind of overwhelming to think that their contributions being seen/heard were dependant on me finishing the damn thing. 

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Will there be more?

I truly hope so. I honestly fell in love with this world we created together over the last 18 months. I want to know more about these monsters and the city they inhabit, their stories, dreams, and find out their bigger roles they are destined to play.

At the moment I'm compiling a core book of Kaiju Noir lore, enough to turn into a small core book for a TTRPG perhaps. If not it will give plenty of material to build into sequels, or prequels, or both. I've some huge plans for where I want to take these characters, and so many obstacles & mysteries for them to overcome.

And I hope you will join me in these grand plans.

Knowing people are playing, enjoying, and relating to these games is the greatest thing I could hope to achieve. And I feel blessed that you're on this journey with me.

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Anyway, that's about enough for this rather long ramble. If you have any questions please leave them down below, I'm always keen to chat to folks about games and especially would love to hear how you thought the game turned out.

Stay safe, everyone. You are not alone.

-Kaiju