Playing the demo of Fearbonding during the Hungry Ghost Festival Games Festival was quite the unhinged experience. But chat and I enjoyed it thoroughly, with many feeling on edge with the game’s thrilling twists and engaging graphics. We had the opportunity to interview Night Asobu, the solo developer behind Fearbonding and Parasite in Love. Reader discretion is advised.
1. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this interview! Could we get an introduction to you?
Hi, I’m Nia! I’ve been making visual novels since the 2019 Otome jam. I love romance, horror and historic stuff. Some of my favourite visual novels are PARANORMASIGHT and Hakuoki. I also have a bachelor’s degree in Game Design.
2. What inspires you to create games?
Horror is a fascinating genre to me, because it’s so subjective what can scare a person. I have a morbid curiosity so I tend to try out more unconventional ideas, like in one of my previous games, Parasite in Love, I turned a brain-eating amoeba into a Yandere, because parasites scare and fascinate me. In my upcoming game, Skin Tailor, I’m exploring what a horror dressup game would look like.
Besides horror, I think anything can become an inspiration. Sometimes I don’t even know which specific thing caused me to get a new idea for a game. There are lots of ideas I write down and put away, because I don’t have the time or skills to realize them yet.
3. What games and media do you enjoy in your free time? And did any have an influence on Fearbonding?
A big influence was the Manga The Summer Hikaru died. The panels and art amazed me with how they told the story and showed the characters emotions. Studying it helped me understand how to create depth, mood, lighting and texture in a manga style. I also enjoy lots of toxic BL, so making Fearbonding felt pretty natural to me, haha.
Among other things I enjoy is Sultan’s Game, which became one of my favorite games. It’s disturbing, horny, and gives you multiple interesting choices to overcome its obstacles. I also read all kinds of mangas/manhwas, like villainess isekai, regressor stories, tower/dungeon stuff.
4. As a solo developer, what does your day to day life look like?
It depends on the phase of development. Currently I’m in preproduction for Skin Tailor, my upcoming horror dressup game. Which means loads of research, making notes, making multiple google docs on aspects of it, like historic research or writing character profiles and their background. As a solodev I also switch often between tasks, like coding the prototype, making sketches for art assets, writing explorative prose, and checking my outline with my editor. The list goes on.
During production, when I really defined how many assets I need, I go through the list and try to finish them one by one. Once I put them in the engine, I replay the game very often. Especially when you want a polished game, it’s important to check if the scenes in the visual novel really come across like you imagined them. Sometimes I add an image to enhance a scene or look for a fitting sound effect.
There are marketing and social media tasks too, like making sure the game page communicates what the game is and in a way that makes people want to play it. There’s press outreach too and making social media posts.
5. Fearbonding is a unique story that made me feel invested in the fate of the characters quickly. Were there characters that inspired Hinata and Kosuke?
I’m happy to hear that! It was actually a parasite for this story as well, haha. Parasites can have all kinds of relationships with their hosts, which serves me well for writing character dynamics.
The reason why I chose that parasite was because I wanted to write a yandere story with a more balanced character dynamic. Lots of yandere stories are about a comparatively good and/or naive person who gets dragged around by the yandere. Which can be very engaging as well. For this story I wanted manipulation from both characters. Therefore I created a character that would benefit from getting involved with a deranged person like Kosuke.
6. What game engine is Fearbonding designed on and why?
It was made in Renpy! Renpy is an engine that covers most visual novel needs, like saving, loading, a dialogue system with skip functions, and so on. It’s free and I don’t run into many bugs while making games.
7. Were there any new skills or perspectives you gained from the development of Fearbonding?
Fearbonding is my first commercial game. Through that I learned more about the steam backend and what they need from me as a developer. I also learned lots about the manga style and refined my drawing skills, specifically for a monochrome artstyle. There’s so much I learned, it’s hard to remember it all and list them here.
8. What kind of experience do you hope players of Fearbonding will have?
I hope you enjoy the dark mood and the character dynamic between Kosuke and Hinata! They’re definitely freaky in their own ways.
9. Do you have any upcoming projects?
Yes! I’m working on Skin Tailor, a medieval horror dressup game and visual novel hybrid. You skin your supernatural enemies, create disguises and infiltrate vampire owned blood farms to rescue your comrades. You can wishlist it here.
10. Where can we subscribe to the progress and news about your games?
You can follow my steam developers page.
I also have Itch.io, Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, Youtube and Tiktok
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I am really looking forward to doing a proper playthrough of Fearbonding one day. Please support Night Asobu by wishlisting or getting their games! And staying tuned to their socials for future updates on Skin Tailor! I am so excited to see what a horror dressup VN will look like!