Why did Circe get a female love interest and Dante didn't? I know it doesn't have to be that way, but it's weird that the number of Circe's male counterparts is reduced by adding a woman, but Dante didn't have that option. It's like you're appealing to fujoshis and prioritizing them and not people who like playing otomes. I don't want to accuse you of anything.
Weāve answered this question multiple times before, like here, but weāll answer it one more time as Iāve let a lot of these asks go unanswered for some time now. If we donāt answer this question again anytime soon, itās not because weāre upset or anything, but we receive way too many asks about this topic and we donāt really want our game blog to just be us repetitively answering why we did or didnāt do XYZ. š
To summarize a few of our reasons:
1) That's just the story we wanted to do this time. Dante's a gay man. He could have not been a gay man, sure, but he wouldn't be the same character. Circe's bi, partially because her writer (that's me!) is also bi, and I like writing bi protagonists that have both male and female romance options. We very briefly, early on, considered only doing male routes for BTMO but I stubbornly wanted at least one woman. Now, could I have given Circe two women and one man instead? Sure, and thatād probably happen eventually in another game if we did this exact set up again. (However, I do understand that a lot of amare games tend to prioritize male LIs over female LIs. So I get that this may be more of a frustration built up over time rather than specifically just being irritated with our game.)
2) BTMO was originally a much, much shorter side project. Our main project, at the time, would only have had a single BL route so we made Dante have BL-only to switch things up.
3) Melli and I like trying different things with each game. BTMO is only our second one. Our first had an entirely bisexual cast. And I can also confirm that currently, our next 2 game ideas would be: 1) multiple gender pairings, dual mcs and 2) female-only MC with 3 women, 3 male romance options. Basically, as long as we get to keep making games, we'll probably get around to doing a little bit of everything! Games with romance, games without. Gender-select MCs, GL games, BL games, otome games, etc etc. And it's okay if every game we release won't be for everyone, that's why we love to see so many different indie VN devs doing their thing, so we've all got more options! I don't think because we previously did a "you can romance anyone" game, we should be required to make every game that way, or to always offer evenly gendered LIs. We'll write what we think fits the story best. :)
We know this style of doing the routes isnāt going to be everyoneās cup of tea, but itās what we enjoy doing and we think itās fun when indie devs (in general) try different things. We certainly don't design our games with the intention of "pandering" to a specific group and honestly find it a little bit demoralizing when people assume so. We love every route we write, and weāre giving each route the best we can.
With that said, I think the mixed reactions to the LI design for BTMO has been a learning experience for Melli and I. We're never going to force ourselves to exclusively write for others, but the opinions of our players are very important to us and we're going to be extra mindful in the future about how we design our romance set ups so there's no (or at least, less) room for misunderstandings. We're still relatively new devs, and we learn a lot about what works (or doesn't work) with each game we make.
I hope this response offers some more clarity into our thought process for now!
