I'm making a horror game called Mermaids are Seafood
TW: horror, cannibalism
I'm the solo dev and artist of "Mermaids are Seafood", a story-focused psychological horror game. Gamble your blood, upgrade your luck with insider deals, and sew fish tails onto human torsos.
You play as Miya, a worker in a dystopian corporation that sells mermaid meat. Is it okay to eat mermaids? Are they more like fish, or people? You can try to save the mermaids, or maximise shareholder value by finding worse ways to hunt mermaids. There are branching routes and multiple endings, so you can do a full evil playthrough if you want. There's some management gameplay (like Papers Please or Needy Streamer Overload). Some commenters really didn't like the cannibalism themes and questionable morality, so make sure you're ok with that.
My inspirations are Lobotomy Corporation, Path to Nowhere (particularly Cabernet's event), Slay the Princess, Tender is the Flesh (novel), SCP and Severance (Tv).
The game's still in development, so what you see in the Steam page isn't final. The font/UI will be changed, the story is still being edited and gameplay depends on playtest results. Your feedback would be really appreciated <3
About the game dev side of things, this is my 2nd game. My first game was "Your Crown is Mine", which will release in a few months. That one has finished most of its development, and actually is on Kickstarter right now, over 350% funded with a week left. Unlike 'Mermaids', it's a more wholesome game with fantasy romance and a villainess manhwa story. I started making games as a side project ~1 year ago, balancing it with my school studies, which was tiring but really fun :) I think the key is to keep the scope small, so that I can make sure I can ship the game. I started developing 'Mermaids' around September (not full-time though), and it will be done in less than 1 year. If I want to add too much stuff, I'll save it for DLC or other content.
I don't want to spoil the story too much here, so I'll talk about the gameplay a little. I wanted to add more interactions and maybe a stat-raising system, so there's some choices you can make in the fake computer UI. They will affect your stats (and the story) too. It's been difficult to balance the management gameplay and story aspects, not sure if the audiences are different. LobCorp did it well, since I didn't think the visual novel scenes were jarring between the gameplay. I'll have to think and playtest a bit more.
More screenshots/info on the Steam store page. If you're interested, feel free to wishlist the game there. There will be more updates, art and devlogs here soon!!