Q&A - What tools do you use? Why make adult games? (And more!)
As Hushberry Games is currently a one-person operation (and likely to remain so unless/until one of the games takes off), I'm always looking for ways to multiply my productivity. In fact, Hushberry Games wouldn't be possible without the recent explosion of generative AI tools.
What engine and/or language do you use?
Beneath this youthful, fae-like, pixelated avatar lies a nerdy child of the 80s and 90s. I learned to program when I was in elementary school, long before engines like Unity or Godot even existed.
Many years later, when the XBox first came out, Microsoft knew they had to compete hard with Nintendo and Sony. In part, that meant getting a huge library of games on their console as quickly as possible; to that end, Microsoft created a game development framework that would be as easy and painless to use as possible: XNA, designed for C# (an easier and safer language to use than C or C++).
XNA was wildly successful. It created an indie game explosion, and when Microsoft later stopped developing XNA, the open-source community took over, re-implementing it as MonoGame. The open-source community even went so far as to re-implement C# itself, then create a cross-platform application framework called Xamarin which became so successful that Microsoft was like "oh shoot - there's money in cross-platform C#?!" and promptly acquired Xamarin, committing themselves to an open-source and cross-platform C#! (Which they now monetize through Azure.)
Getting back on track: I didn't happen pick up C# and MonoGame until much later, but once I did, I loved it, and have been using it to make games ever since.
But if you happen to like Hushberry's games (thanks!) and you're thinking "maybe I should give MonoGame a try", I don't know that I'd actually recommend it. As a point of comparison, I followed a few YouTube tutorials to learn Unity, and in a couple days had created a 3D multiplayer capture-the-flag game where everyone played as cats. I could not have done that in MonoGame, even with all the time in the world. For most people looking to make games, I'd recommend learning & using Unity, Godot, or even a more-speciazlied engine if one exists for the kind of game you want to make, like Ren'py for visual novels, or RPG Maker for JRPGs. Even those specialized tools have larger and more-active communities than MonoGame.
So why do I still use MonoGame? I don't know that I actually have a very good reason. I think I just like the act of programming. I also happen to like 2D, lo-res games, and it's not that hard to do basic 2D stuff by hand (whereas making a realtime multiplayer engine by hand is a nightmare).
That said, the engine I've probably used the most, after MonoGame, is RPG Maker. It's easy and quick to use, even with no prior programming experience, and surprisingly-flexible if you're handy with JavaScript.
What's your stance on AI?
In my mind, I compare AI to humanity's advances in agriculture. It used to be that ~90% of the world's population was engaged in agriculture; being able to reduce that to 5% thanks to various inventions has allowed the world's people to devote their time to other, cooler things: curing diseases, exploring space, inventing the internet... We've had some turmoil along the way (the fall of monarchies, the industrial revolution, global warming, and more), but the world has, despite recent events, become a better, safer, freer place than it was in the past.
Is AI in that same category? We won't know for a while. But the early effects look similar: a lot of work is being moved from humans to new tools.
I think my biggest personal worry at the moment is that because everyone is doubling-down on AI, if AI doesn't do everything people are hoping, the bubble might burst with dramatic economic consequences.
All that said, I don't get to decide what the world does; I can only decide what I'm doing in the world I happen to live in, and I've decided to embrace this new technology to make games I never could have made before.
What other tools do you use?
| Tool | Use |
|---|---|
| Rider | Code editor |
| GitHub Copilot | AI code completion |
| Adobe Fireworks | Art |
| ComfyUI | AI art |
| Udio | AI music |
| freesound.org | Sound effects |
| sfxr | Sound effects |
| Audacity | Sound editing |
| claude.ai | AI chat |
I've also started using Cursor, and it might start to replace Rider for me - time will tell.
As for why I use Claude instead of any of the other chat AIs: for a while I was switching between Claude and ChatGPT based on whichever was topping the charts in coding benchmarks, but the actual differences were so small, and which was "best" always switching, that I was like "is it really worth it to be switching back and forth like this?" I happened to be using Claude at the time, so that's the one I've stuck with. Coincidentally DeepSeek + Claude seems to have become THE wombo-combo choice for AI coding agents, so I may have, completely accidentally, stopped on the right chat bot for my purposes.
Where do you get your ideas?
I seem to alternate between two phases:
- Coding up the start of a bunch of different games, but never getting very far with any of them.
- These are usually experiments inspired by some game or idea I've seen in the wild, blended up with my own ideas.
- For whatever reason getting hooked on one of them, and so actually finishing that one.
For example, For One Year was inspired by the 80s game The Oregon Trail, "but instead of visiting boring historical landmarks, you'll hook up with a bunch of people!"
Another idea I had started coding was a traditional dungeon-crawling roguelike, "but instead of killing monsters, you get them off!"
For whatever reason, For One Year seemed to just keep creating new ideas "on its own" - fishing in addition to hunting, more season-related systems, etc - so I went with that game, instead.
Once a game starts to take off in this way, I find chat AIs to be really helpful for generating more ideas and breaking through writer's block.
For example, For One Year has the problem that the player is a traveler, so meeting the same person over and over again requires some explanation. I came up with some plausible stories in the beginning - a mermaid that magically can teleport between rivers ("plausible"?), traveling entertainers, a hiking couple - but when I started to run out of ideas, I turned to a chat AI, explaining the problem, what I'd done so far (much as I just explained to you! no further details needed!), and if it had any ideas. Among its suggestions were "a thief on the run", and "a treasure hunter". Even those three-to-five word suggestions were enough to spark my own imagination.
Why make adult/NSFW games?
It's strange to me that, in our culture, depictions of violence are more acceptable than depictions of sex. No one questions a game where every conflict is a fight to the death, and where you can be openly paid to kill a man. But replace murder with sex, and suddenly everyone's confused or upset with how "unrealistic" things are.
Why aren't we bothered by the "unrealisticness" of leveling up your agility to increase your crit hit rate, which you decided you want to do because your armor has a passive ability that makes crits also heal you?
Thoughts like these have had me interested in exploring sex in games, systemizing and gamifying it in the same way that Dungeons & Dragons has for combat.
One of the things stopping me from making these kinds of games in the past has been the art requirements. I have some artistic skills - I can make icons, and UIs, and maybe some plants or other small objects - but I can't draw a person or environment to save my life.
When generative AI got to the point that it could generate good images even on a home PC, I realized "I might be able to finally make an NSFW game - let's try!" That was the beginning of For One Year, and Hushberry Games.
When will For One Year be done, and out of Early Access?
I'm planning on one final release to tidy up any lingering bugs, typos, and other issues. At that point, I'll remove the "Early Access" label, delcare the game "done", and focus my efforts on making more games.
What's next for Hushberry Games?
As mentioned, I still need to wrap up For One Year. That said, I have started exploring ideas for a new game, though I'm still in that "try a bunch of things and see what sticks" phase, so it's hard for me to know much right now.
Things that feel certain:
- It will be NSFW.
- It will almost-certainly be a desktop game, with lo-res/pixelated graphics - that's just my skillset, and the big mobile app stores don't allow NSFW games.
- I'll continue to explore ways to add systems around sex in interesting ways, and that will surely show in all of Hushberry Games' games.
- I've already built a pretty-reusable visual novel engine, so it's likely I'll continue to leverage that. Whether the next game has bits of visual novel mixed in with other things - as in For One Year - or it's a major component - as in One Possible Future - I don't know.
Thanks for reading!
I hope this gave you a little more insight into Hushberry Games, and what I'm up to!
I don't know how often I'll do these blog posts, but if you liked this one, maybe bookmark the site (press ⌘+D or Ctrl+D), and/or follow Hushberry Games on Steam or YouTube.