Herotome:Where Villains Lurk, Heroes Must Rise
In this special podcast feature, we sit down with Wudge, the solo developer behind Herotome, an urban fantasy visual novel where superheroes not only save the day, but also pay rent, navigate emotional chaos, and deal with the gritty realities of everyday life.
From the inspirations behind the world and its characters to insights on game development, writing challenges, and even exclusive concept art details, this Q&A delivers an in-depth look into both the creative mind and the evolving project.
Listen to the full podcast here.
Herotome- Interview Highlights
Wudge: about me. Let’s see. Well, I guess I’m indie to the core. I taught myself a lot. ⁓ got into game development a little later in life. I’m in my 30s. ⁓And in that time, I’ve had a lot of time to practice drawing and writing on the side.
And when I decided I was interested in game design, I, of course, as most game developers, we take inspiration from playing video games first, and then we move on to, I want to do this, I want to do that in my own version. So I already knew how to write and draw, so I just picked up programming as well as some really basic rudimentary code. RenPy is not complicated.
And I’ve just kind of been learning more and more as I go. Every day is a learning experience, but the more I develop the game, the more confident I feel about adding this and that. So as the game has progressed, is getting increasingly…
It’s increasingly featuring more things as I’m sure we’ll get to by the end.
Wudge: I think writing because I’m unfortunately a very ambitious writer and I like having a lot of different dialogue choices that feel personalized and represent what the player might be thinking at each given moment. like I had to cap myself at five choices at a time, but I try to do like a minimum of three.
So I have to write a lot because of that prerequisite. And I write a lot by myself.
Wudge: It’s my first game concept. I did actually make a different practice game for a game jam. And ⁓ I’ve since taken some freelance work for other people’s games. I’ve completed a few projects that way. But Herotome is my, you know, it’s my thing, my baby.
Wudge: Sure. ⁓ The main protagonist is unemployed, goes to a job fair where things go very wrong. There is an attempted kidnapping and a terrorist attack.
The protagonist shows some heroism in that moment and thus is recruited to a superhero agency.
Wudge: A bit of inspiration from life, so to speak. ⁓ I was never quite broke, but I struggled a lot with feeling overwhelmed, and there was a period of time where I was unemployed, and I couldn’t really get a call back despite sending out a million job applications. And that’s something that a lot of people do resonate with.
So in designing the main character, I felt pretty okay about having it be like ⁓ her situation to sort of reflect modern life struggles ⁓ and in a sort of easy way to get the player to empathize with her.
Wudge: They’re all based on me. That’s the plot twist. They’re all different parts of my personality. I just divide them evenly. Yeah, all of them.
I do exaggerate each of my traits in order to make it form into a more fully-fledged character. So I’m not exactly like them, but they’re all a little bit like me in some way.
Wudge: Let’s see, what can I say that’s not just telling you his actual backstory that’s gonna be revealed in the game?
Okay, how about this? He, at one point, did want and compete for the position of leadership, and he lost. Now, he received the position unexpectedly in a way that he feels he doesn’t entirely deserve. And a lot of his internal conflict comes from that.
From the moment that he first saw the protagonist and she was either saving a dog, or fixing a creepy woman’s arm, one of those two, those are rather heroic. He sees this and he has intense admiration and maybe even a crush on the protagonist at the very first sight. So much so that he wants to offer her a job, but then once…
He doesn’t quite think ahead. He offers her the job. Now there’s a power imbalance and it’s awkward, but I don’t want to take away this job that I’m giving her to help her that I also do think she deserves. And also I feel unworthy of her. So that just comes out in extreme awkwardness and rejecting all of the protagonist’s flirting. But ⁓ in the upcoming scenes that I’m writing for him right now, actually, I am trying to help him forget some of his awkwardness so you can see a little bit more of him when he’s decently in a good mood.
Wudge: She’s definitely intended to be a sort of mean girl rival type character. It’s how she’s trying to be. It’s what she aims to be. But deep down, she’s not really that person at all.
And you can either help her drop that facade to be more her true self, or you can encourage her to hate your guts. But in her own route, there’s only so much that she can act out.
Wudge: As we did allude to previously, he does sincerely think Warden recruits people from the street. He really feels that he earned his place in the agency and it wasn’t just handed to him. ⁓ And he also has some… reasons related to his backstory that makes him very suspicious of people that he doesn’t know.
He’s a cat. This is a revelation that I had sometime last year or so. He’s a cat. He doesn’t trust easily.
He secretly loves a lot of the people there with all his heart. He’s a total sweetheart, but you don’t get to see that.
Wudge: I think she feels an affinity for the protagonist character that maybe you’re coming from a similar place. Like you had a similar, you’re currently having a similar beginning to what she had. And this may or may not be true. She might be projecting onto the protagonist character.
Whether or not this is true will be worth exploring and ⁓ she may have interesting things to reveal as you reveal more about yourself.
Honestly, while writing Jade, I was really worried. I thought people would find her boring, but people have really taken to her, so it’s been a big relief for me.
Wudge:You can expect…I was gonna say good communication, but that’s not quite true. Griffin does a lot of lying by omission. Griffin does leave out information rather conveniently sometimes, but Griffin usually has a good reason and is trying to manage expectations much like I do.
Griffin has some secrets that she is very eager to share with the protagonist character, but it’s still pretty early on in their relationship. it doesn’t seem that smart to just tell the protagonist everything, even though he is interested in doing so. So I think the players can expect someone who is very interested in moving the relationship forward in order to reach a better realm of communication because you have to get to know someone a little better before you get to the point of open communication.
Wudge: Realistically next on my roadmap is the next episode. There’s some interest in like very late stage roadmap stuff and I am flattered by the interest in that stuff, but also like I don’t have time to make a mobile port right now.
But if slash when the game is done, and I may be very interested. And if I win the lottery and I have a million dollars, I might pay somebody else to do it. But the thing is I would want them to do it well. I don’t want to just send the game off and then close my eyes. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I would have to do actual research to make sure that it’s done properly and represents the full game well.
Wudge: Thank you for being here, for sharing your time with me. ⁓ I am truly infinitely grateful that you would take the time to see what I have to offer and hopefully you can take a lot away from it as well, as much or as little as you like, because the reason I’m doing what I’m doing is in part to fill what I feel is a void in in otome gaming and in gaming in general.
I’m not sure there’s quite a lot of games like mine, I hope that when you play it, if you have any inclination to be a game developer in your own right, maybe my game could inspire you a little bit in the same way that a lot of games have inspired me.
Herotome Exclusive Content
Early Concepts of Herotome
- Original Jade sketches showed her in pumpkin shorts before her now-iconic hero outfit took shape. Early designs included a helmet concept inspired by Mystique, later discarded.
- Early Warden concept featured him as a disguised security guard in the first draft — dropped because it didn’t make sense. His hero outfit design, however, remained largely unchanged from its first doodle.
- Griffin’s early art had yellow eyes, later changed to green. Wudge admits many early hand sketches gave characters similar faces, with facial variety evolving later.
- UI and ChoiceBox concepts of Herotome were sketched on paper before implementation, including hover effects and irregular box shapes.
- Some early sprites were hand-drawn on tracing paper, with expressions tested before moving fully digital.
Exclusive CG’s of Herotome
- Griffin confrontation scene: In a missable upcoming scene, Griffin stands up to your landlord about unfair policies, potentially scoring you a better deal. Only appears if you heal the landlord in the super demo.
- Chat room system: Fully functional in-game, with unique texting styles for each hero. Warden avoids periods, Mia uses ALL CAPS randomly, and Griffin adds sparkles to their name. Players can choose responses, including awkward “word vomit” moments.
- Villain reveal CG: Attractive but married antagonist, intentionally designed to be appealing.
- New backgrounds in Herotome: Vibrant new art by Vui Huynh, including a gym, training tunnel, and character pajama scenes.
- Driving CGs: Each major character will have scenes where they drive the MC to missions, starting with Griffin.
- Phone mechanic: Allows in-game texting and watching video clips. Ads even appear mid-scene for realism.
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