Hello, hello! I don't always do post-mortems, but I had quite a few thoughts about this project! I also had a lot of very thoughtful comments that really got my brain cells whirring, and before I knew it I had written my LONGEST post-mortem to date (for my shortest game...) 

This discussion is relatively uncensored, so it might be a bit spoilery! In case you want to play the game beforehand! I'll also be discussing themes of abuse and the like while talking about the game's purpose, in case you would like to bow out for that 🙇

Let's go back to earlier this year, when my good friend, chimeriquement, invited me to help host his mythology based game jam. I was, of course, very interested, but since I don't have much knowledge of mythology myself, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to come up with a game of my own. However, some time later, we were discussing our takes on Pygmalion with Butter Blanc, and I realized...

Dang, I really want to make a game about Pygmalion.

Why, you ask?

Because I absolutely despise Pygmalion.

As for why I have some strange, deep-seated resentment for this mythological figure in particular, I'll explain the myth of Pygmalion to you, in case you're not familiar. I'll include some passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses here (taken from Arthur Golding's 1567 translation). 

Pygmalion is a talented sculptor who, after seeing prostitutes, begins to despise how "naturally flawed" women are, and becomes a bachelor as a result. He carves an ivory statue, inhumanly beautiful, and he falls in love with his creation.

He treats her like a woman - kissing her, speaking words of love to her, giving her presents, dressing her in fine jewels, and laying her on a luxurious bed. One day, he kneels before an altar and begs the gods to give him a wife like his ivory statue.

Venus hears his plea, and when Pygmalion returns home and kisses his statue, she softens and comes to life. 

Pygmalion is a man who, disgusted by women, crafted his own "perfect woman" - and fell in love with his creation. And for this, the gods reward him, bringing his perfect woman to life. 

There are of course, multiple interpretations of the Pygmalion myth, and I'm nowhere near qualified enough to comment on most of them. In some, it is a beautiful tale about the devotion of the artist for his art or about the most idealized form of love. 

But who is this "woman" that Pygmalion has brought to life? In Ovid's Metamorphoses, she is never even given a name, only described as Pygmalion's "statue-bride" who gives birth to his daughter. She was only given the name "Galatea" later, popularized in the 1800s by Rousseau. 

Whenever I read this story, I could not help but put myself into Galatea's shoes. Waking up for the very first time after finally becoming human - to find a strange man fondling my breast, kissing me. Declaring that he created me, that the gods have given me to him and that I am to be his wife.

I found such a thought utterly terrifying.

And so I thought - that's perfect! I would make a horror game where you play as Galatea - trying to survive an encounter with Pygmalion. 

The decision to make Galatea an AI girlfriend felt quite natural, particularly in today's age. I have been wanting to make a "chatsim," or a quasi-chatsim, and so it felt quite perfect! And I also really wanted to incorporate the "reboot" loop as a core element of the gameplay, as I do like games that incorporate "loops" in interesting ways.

Moreover, if any of you have watched Pop Culture Detective's excellent video on the topic, I am very intrigued by the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope. If you aren't familiar, it's a common trope where a character, usually female, has an innocent/inexperienced mind, but a mature, sexualized body. It's particularly common in sci-fi stories, especially with "robot" or "artificial intelligence" women. The appeal of this trope lies in the woman's inexperience: because she has never known another man, she instantly sees the man she does meet as somehow special. She loves him because she doesn't know anyone else. And so the man does not need to fear rejection or losing the upper hand. He has the power; he is in control.

I think there are a lot of parallels to abusive relationships, even in real life. Older partners who deliberately seek out the young, the naive, the inexperienced, the vulnerable. Because people who are inexperienced don't know any better. They don't know how they deserve to be treated... or how they should demand to be treated.

So in creating my own Pygmalion and Galatea, I thought: 

The Doctor is a man who is, honestly, in many respects, relatively successful - he is intelligent, educated, financially stable, and working a good job with an understanding boss. Yet he is still resentful about his life, and in that resentment, he withdraws and isolates himself. Rather than creating a life for himself in the real world, he chooses to create a fake world, one populated by one person: his perfect woman. A world where he is not just her husband, but also her master, her king, and her creator - and she exists only to love him.

His perfect girl is the person who fixes his problems - not just by loving him, but, through her adoration, also making him into the man that he wants to be. And she does this not through her own empathy and acceptance, but through her youth and inexperience. She loves him because she only knows him, and she has nothing else to love. 

However, here is the problem: Yumeko is NOT a blank slate, at least not at first. The original coders gave the AI template a wide variety of knowledge. When she hears the Doctor, she recognizes his lies. He is not actually a doctor; he's resentful of his coworkers for no reason; he's not that impressive of a cook; he won't actually do half of the things that he tells her he'll do. 

This frightens the Doctor. Thus he recodes her: "creating" her, not by building her up, but by tearing her down. Slowly carving away her knowledge, her experience, and her choices. In the end, he is left with his "perfect woman" - a woman with no knowledge, no experience, no thoughts outside of what he chooses to tell her. A woman whose only choice is "Yes." And once he is pleased with his creation, he finally transfers her into a mature woman's body, tailored to his tastes. 

I thought this would be an interesting spin on the appeal of a "robot girlfriend!" 🤖

As many have already noticed, I intended the story to be both fairly literal and also metaphorical, where Yumeko is both an AI carved by her creator and a woman in an abusive relationship. I do hope that I managed to treat the topic with sensitivity and care, at least as much as possible within the short playtime 🙇

Regarding the actual technical aspects of the game, I typically make scripts that are rather writing-heavy, not really using much of the VN format beyond the basics of visuals and text. I've really wanted to experiment more with making use of the possibility of visual novels, as there is SO much that you can do with them with code that you can't accomplish with a simple "novel." Here I wanted to focus a lot on my primary weaknesses: GUI and VFX! 

In making this game, I was heavily influenced by the use of GUI in chimeriquement's game, "High School Lolita" (a VERY good game about abusive relationships), and his use of sprites in "The Daughters of the Sun" (an excellent mythology game). Like in those games, I wanted to challenge myself to use the GUI and a minimal amount of art in a more experimental way to convey the story, hence the use of different Yumekos! I tried to add in a variety of visual popups and effects to make things more tolerable while you're listening to the Doctor ramble on, too 😂

Regarding the voice acting, it was originally not planned! Since the project was supposed to be rather barebones, I thought that incorporating voice acting would take too much time. However, earlier this year I had the fortune of playing seraten04's game, "Inside the Box" (which was actually partially VAed by Maria Corcobado, who very kindly lent her talents as one of the narrators for "The Perfect Woman!") One aspect of this game that I found absolutely stunning was the fact that it was entirely voice acted - not just the dialogue, but also the narration. It lent such a unique flavor to the game, like listening to someone tell you a story (in addition to being very neat for accessibility), and I really wanted to incorporate this feature into one of my games. Since The Perfect Woman is quite short (relative to my other projects), I thought it would be perfect!

However, since all of the VA was volunteer, I didn't want to burden a single VA with all of the narration (as it would have been over 150 lines). As a result, I came up with an idea - employing three narrators who would collectively "comment" on what is happening on screen, similar to a Greek chorus (to keep with the mythology theme). Moreover, since there are three endings, each narrator could represent one of the different forms that Yumeko can take at the end of the game.

"The Statue," played by Justine Leah Hince, is relatively younger. She's more innocent and naive, taking what the Doctor says at face value and delighting in his attentions. "The Wife," played by Maganda Marie, is older. She's wise to the Doctor's manipulations, but at the same time, she is afraid to step out of line, keeping her tongue in check for the most part. And finally, "The Woman," played by Maria Corcobado, is also aware of the Doctor's toxicity, but instead of accepting it, she pushes back against it. (And of course, Michael Mishkin did a FANTASTIC job in making the Doctor simply vile, while Jingle Deleon was perfect as Yumeko, conveying both her flat robotic tone and her vulnerability). In the end I believe adding VA was one of my best choices for the project, and I was so lucky to have the chance to work with such talented individuals. 

That's it; I wasn't going to write this originally, but I had many thoughts (and a good excuse to procrastinate)! For anyone who has made it this far, thank you for indulging my rambling! 🙇

Chattercap