Postmortem


Hello! Vanny here!

First of all, thank you everyone who purchased and played Risk of Infection!

Here are some random thoughts in less than coherent order about the development of Risk of Infection. (Warning! This text contains spoilers for the game!)

PROJECT'S LIFESPAN

The idea of making a game using RPG Maker came to me in May 2019 while I was visiting a friend. Up until then I had only drawn comics, but a video game would be a completely different way to present suiting content. I ended up choosing RPGM because it's easy to use and cheap. I could focus on writing the story and drawing art instead of getting stuck with coding. MV was already out back then, but I ended up buying VXA which was on sale only a week later or so. It was a bit of a shame since MV uses javascript (which I can write) and VXA uses Ruby (which I cannot). I developed the game on and off in 2019-2022. This iteration of the game did not have combat or enemies, so it was kind of a walking simulator. The setting stayed the same through the development without major rewrites; the Agency, Wargs, the characters and towns have stayed about the same since 2019. Around mid-2022 I basically stopped developing the game altogether. At this point the game had some rudimentary art (both lewd and normal) and the main story was pretty much written, but it wasn't a playable product in any sense. In late 2023 I decided that I would probably never put out a legit video game, and Risk of Infection was my best bet to release a finished one. I polished the bits that would eventually become version 1.0. I redrew all the art in early 2024, I downloaded plugins to make the game more accessible, and I added combat because I wanted the game to be a legit RPG. By May 2024 I had version 1.0 out. I decided that if it got lots of attention I'd continue it, and it did. By the end of the project my Steam has clocked in about 1250h for RPGM VXA.

STORY AND SETTING

First of all, is this some kind of a covid allegory? No. The game's setting was already set in stone in spring of 2019 before all the pandemic craziness. The idea was to make a living fursuit zombie outbreak style of a story, though in the end the world did not turn out quite as apocalyptic as in most zombie movies. The signs of dilapidation are there, but society has not fallen to complete anarchy just yet. I have some hand-drawn comics stashed in my closet with the same setting that go back to 2011.

The game was way more “open” or “free” back in its development cycle of 2019-2022. The player could choose to play as either male or female, and Chelia was included as a character who could accompany you in the Agency assignments. It was possible to pick any of the 4 girls (Quinn, Rose, Lily, Chelia) for the first 3 quests (Laurie disappearance, Countess investigation and Bandit kidnapping). Noel joined only much later than now. The quest to fetch Lily and Rose from the forest did not exist back then, so you could only pick a partner that you had actually bothered to go speak with on the 2nd floor of the Agency building (floor 3 back then, the Agency building got shrunk down a lot in v1.0). When I started drawing the art for all the sex scenes I realized what kind of a mess it would become to draw different sex scenes for all permutations of the players' sex and the chosen partner, so I had to streamline the whole story to the point where the player is male and he rotates the assignments with all the partners. I added the Rose & Lily rescue quest because that conveniently introduces them and unlocks them in combat. Chelia was dropped as a partner altogether, but to compensate she made a comeback as something you could wear. Or rather her suit did...

The story that was ready in mid-2022 encompassed version 1 to 3 up until the Elizabeth rescue mission. Companion quests did not exist back then, so those were written basically as they came out in v2-4. Version 4's story is completely new material that I wrote in 2025. The original ending had you ally with either Elizabeth or Catherine right after the Rehling Warg attack, and based on how you chose to sleep with other characters you could get a character specific ending or one of the default ones if you didn't commit to one character enough. The final version turned out rather linear with little player choise and no alternative endings, but then again it keeps the story more contained. Even without player choise there's plenty of furries to bang.

And how did the story turn out? I think adequately considering this is a furry porn game. I usually write my stories to have a comedic/upbeat tone (you're probably aware if you've ever read my comics) and Risk of Infection mostly follows that path. Heck, most of it is jokes and meme references. The setting is of course a tragic one with many people suffering due to the Warg outbreak, but it's not like we haven't seen comedy zombie movies. Tabitha's backstory is probably the darkest part of the game, and I think I it turned out exceptionally well.

After I decided to add combat to the game, the game needed a bunch of bosses. Most of the characters that would become boss enemies were already in the game from the very start, like Tabitha and Jaun. Bruno and his happy worker basement was added later in 2024 and the exhibitor quest did not feature Erwald at all before that. Usually in JRPGs (FF7 is my favorite) you either beat a god or a local politician. While a god figure kind of exists in the game in the form of the All-Maker, there was a local politician who fit the end game boss mold way better. And thus you throw Catherine out of the window.

Church often plays the role of a villain in RPGs, but the Church in Risk of Infection is a waning institution that is going through a slow reform. Elizabeth could have been a villain, but she evolved into a different, naiive direction as the story went on. The world has more or less gone through an industrial revolution, it's just that the Frontier is lagging behind so it appears as more medieval. On a side note the verses of the holy book are from the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, either direct quotes or just written in the same style.

I tried having the game keep focus on the suiting theme, and most of what you do revolves around the living fursuits in some way or another. Granted that NPCs do have other issues to solve, but I left most of that in the side quests. I tried keeping small talk between characters to a minimum, and characters often get straight to the point when things happen. I play a lot of Hoyo games and there's so much yapping about unnecessary stuff in those games. I feel that older RPGs appreciated your time more.

I assume many people would have liked to know where the wargs came from, but I felt I couldn't write a satisfying answer to that question. Are they aliens? A relic from the past? A failed science experiment? Who knows... The wargs mainly serve as a setting and an obstacle to overcome rather than a mystery to solve.

I hope the ending was satisfying and not super predictable for most people. I didn't want to end it in some grand execution, and the player “winning” a trophy wife felt way better of a way to do things. It's kind of a win-win for everyone involved. Well, maybe not Catherine, but she's alive and healthy. Maybe her backstab came a bit out of nowhere, but there were clues along the story that she's not exactly a good person. All in all the ending wraps up most story threads and stops at a good position where everything is open and possible.

Would I have done some story points differently when I look back at it 2 years later? Not much. Not in large scale at least. The story is maybe a bit too reactive, and the MC often just gets yoinked into action without much personal agency. The early game is very Lamina-focused and the late game is very Leyte-focused, not that I'm against hub-areas in RPG's, but I don't want the player to think “uggh, here again”. Catherine could have been a bit more antagonistic way earlier, and maybe the MC should have done something more drastic to piss her off than just demand to know about Erika's whereabouts. Then there's some minor plot points, like Abigail could have utilized repulsion pellets to give the queen warg to MC. The fact that it can be voluntarily passed on can be a bit of a stretch for some players.

GAME ENGINE AND TECHNICAL ASPECTS

This is the section where I rant about the game engine. If you're not interested in the technical aspects of the game, feel free to skip. If you are planning to make a game with RPGM, definitely read on. Note that many of my criticisms can be bypassed with plugins.

Oh boy. I have a lot of things to say about RPG Maker, and not many of them positive. The game engine works well for writing a story where you just go from map to map and talk to people. The switches are easy to manage, the UI is clear, assets are easy to add and edit and so on. The engine does its barebones job. The problems start if you want any kind of dynamism or depth in your game. For example the player switches suits during the game, and a correct face needs to pop up on the dialogue box when the player speaks. This is mostly an issue in side quests which can be completed at any time. The side quest dialogue has to be done with if-statements and the same dialog repeats 4 times at worst in the event log(depends which point in the game you are) with the only thing different being the face prtraits. I'd love to pick an option for the dialogue box to just use the face graphic that has been assigned to X actor, but no, not possible.

Some people have asked if the game could have equippable fursuits that the player can change whenever, but there's simply no way to track that kind of chang in vanilla RPGM. I would at the very least expect an armor to be able to trigger a common event when equipped or taken off, but NO.

Considering that the engine is 'ROLE playing game maker', the engine has surprisingly little aspects related to playing a role. You can switch characters' classes, equipment and appearance, but other systems that are staples in RPGs are nowhere to be found.
Things that are missing include but are not limited to:
-gathering professions do not exist
-No crafting system. Just why...? Surely an RPG game made in 2020's should have one. Crafting is a cornertone of the whole genre with many RPGs even built around the concept.
-No alignment system for good/evil characters
-No weapon/armor upgrade, module, or enchanting system.
-No “out of combat” skills like lockpicking, cooking, persuation, deception, perception etc.
-No stealth system
-Most bafflingly: NO QUEST LOG

All of the skill related points can of course be added as variables that track the XP which accumulates as the player activates events to the related skills, but showing the variables in UI requires coding or plugins. The event edit page could use renovation too. It's weird how little the event conditions allow you to actually check the statuses of your... anything. You can check if two switches are on simultaneously. What if I want to check 3? Well, fuck you then. The conditional branching is not much better. If I want to check if Switch 1, 2 and 3 are all on, I have to make 3 nested conditional branch checks instead of having them on one line. The event window becomes very messy very fast.

The later RPGM version (MV and MZ) have some nice quality of life features, like multiple layers for map graphics, better handling over certain game concepts (for example in MZ I can add equipment types like “skinsuit” which is not possible in VXA), function to build on non-windows machines etc. Unfortunately the combat aspects have remained lackluster over the RPGM iterations.

Short list of what I'd expect to be in the combat system but are missing or are way too basic:
-Limit breaks: aside from the TP system, there's no limit break system or any way to change how TP is accumulated
-Break system is non-existent -Barriers that stack on top of health instead of working purely as damage negation do not exist
-DoT is always [-X% health regen per turn] and can't be made to scale with the applier's stats. This makes DoT builds, skills, and characters very basic and rigid.
-A parameter that increases X-type damage dealt (e.g. fire, ice) is completely missing. A parameter that makes a character take less damage from a damage type does exist though.
-Follow up attacks: only %-based counter attack exists
-Dual wielding is very basic; off hand weapon just gives stat boost and the dual-wielding character loses the ability to use a shield for some weird reason
-Luck seems to affect status application chances but is otherwise useless as a combat status unless it's included in the skill damage formulas. I'd at least expect luck to increase crit chance. Agility is also pretty lackluster when the combat system is locked to be turn-based (later RPGM versions allow it to be set to active battle which makes agility a bit more worth it in my opinion).
-Character basic attack cannot be changed in any way making basic attack combat builds unimplementable (fixed in MZ)
-Skills are always MP or TP dependent. No cooldown or skill point system exists.
-No way to make anything happen on crit, on evasion, on miss etc. (e.g. evading attack restores HP)

Of course plugins exist, but I expect the base program to have at least some variety. I had to throw so many cool combat ideas to the trash bin because implementing them would have been a hassle.

SUMMARY

Maybe this helps everyone understand why Risk of Infection turned out how it did. It was a nice project all in all, and I'm glad I finished it. An RPG is such a different way to tell a story and present a setting compared to comics. The player has freedom to explore and experiment in a game in a way that is impossible with plain images, and that's why Risk of Infection might just be the most in-depth story setting I have ever created.

I'd love to see more suiting themed games, and there really aren't that many. I have played Changed, but even that is heavily narrative and puzzle focused. In some ways Risk of Infection is the definitive fursuit RPG because it's the ONLY fursuit RPG in existence (if you know of others, share in the comments. It's probably some obscure asian stuff).

I hope to see more similar games in the future.

Got any favorite characters, story moments etc? What would you have liked to see more or less in the game? Let me and others know in the comments.

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Comments

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(+1)

Spoilers alert!


Which characters do I like? The main character, Tabitha, Lily, Natasha, and Noel (I like them the way I wrote them).

 In the plot? Hmm, maybe almost all of them (except for one moment in the mine. I don't like mines).

 I was surprised that you play HoYoverse games (even though I play HSR and ZZZ. I stopped playing Genshin after he strangled me in Sumeru and drowned me in Fontaine).

  What would I like to see more of in the game? Your simply amazing art style, of course (I really liked it. In fact, I started following you purely because of it when I first discovered Fur Affinity and Deviant art).

What would I like to see less of? Nothing, I guess.

 (I'm looking forward to the continuation of the story about not summoning a succubus, and (my furry suit and I) too.) 

Finally, I'll tell you about the team and how much time I spent on the game. The team consisted of the main character, Noel Queen, and Rose. Sometimes I swapped Rose for Tabitha (for example, in the final battle, I won with Tabitha (even though Catherine simply one-shot Noel and I had to reassemble the team a bit)).

 I spent 13 hours and 25 minutes on a full 100% completion of the game.

And finally, I wish everyone who reads my comment happiness and good luck.

 Thanks to Vanny for such a beautiful game that will now stick in my head for a long time.

No problem. Thanks for sharing~

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Yeah, pure RPGM is such a lame thing. That's why most rpgmaker games looking similar, almost as clones. Still, your job is done, and done in a very good way, there's not many RPGM games as good as RoI.

P.S.: hidden characters may sound like a good idea, but in game they're simply not worth try because your team is already strong and well-built and because they have no significance for story

(+1)

Hmm, maybe. Hidden characters may be a bit of an obsolete game design choice, but I like them being there to offer a bit of variety. Unlocking them can also be a cool "oh yes!" moment for the player since achievements do not exist.