Fedorable Love: The Dating Simulator That Nearly Ruined Everything

Before developing Fedorable Life, I spent years building a visual novel that never saw the light of day. Come learn about the dangers of scope creep, why I ultimately canceled the project, and how those lessons helped me ship a game on Steam.

7/5/20263 min read

Introduction

If you're interested in playing the best neckbeard simulator Fedorable Life, first off: thank you! Means a lot to me and I love you platonically. Secondly, you’ll come to see a few jokes about a failed visual novel.

That was real.

After finishing the original web version of Fedorable Life around 2017, I decided the logical next step was a dating simulator.

…because everyone has a dating simulator. Even KFC has a pretty spicy dating simulator.

The Idea

It was called Fedorable Love.

Instead of playing as Nick (though he is a dateable neckbeard here), you play as a girl whose friend gives her terrible dating advice:

"You should date a nice guy."

Naturally, this leads her to OkNarcissus and to getting messages from a bunch of neckbeards. Each bachelor represented a different neckbeard archetype. You have:

Nick (the vanilla, true neutral neckbeard)
The Otaku
The E-Sports Gamer
The Pick-Up Artist
The White Knight who’s an actual white knight (Because I really loved this joke)
The Edgelord
The Incel

From the below image, can you guess who's who?

On paper, it sounded hilarious. And honestly I still think it is.

The Plan

Just like Fedorable Life, I wanted the comedy to hide something with a little more depth.

The first two dates would mostly be jokes. By the third date, something would go wrong.

The comedy would slowly give way to drama as you learned why each character became the way they were. It wasn't supposed to just be "laugh at the weird guy."

It was supposed to be:

"Okay... now I actually understand him."

The Problem

I had the beginnings and endings written.

90% of the artwork was done with backgrounds and UI.

I had...

...almost everything.

Except the actual game.

Turns out, the middle is the most important.

The Five-Year Trap

This project lived from roughly 2018 to 2023.

Though it was on-and-off, it was five years. A longer dev cycle than LA Noire.

Whenever I got stuck writing the next scene, I'd think:

"I'll just work on something else."

So I’d work on an alternate universe route (which was pretty hilarious).

Or I would make a “Road to Fedorable Life” path which was a prequel to the Steam game.

I wasn't avoiding work.

I was avoiding the hard work.

By working on these side paths, I was hoping that I was still making progress and that would inspire me to finish the middle of the game. But that inspiration never came. Eventually I looked back and realized I had spent years building everything around the story instead of actually finishing the story. To make matters worse, some of the jokes had already started dating themselves.

There was a Soulcalibur VI reference in the game.

By the time I admitted defeat, that reference was older than some indie studios.

Nothing Was Wasted

Luckily the project wasn't a total loss. Visual novels use large, high-quality character artwork while the original browser version of Fedorable Life used tiny web graphics.

So when I rebuilt Fedorable Life in Godot, I suddenly had years of artwork ready to go.

Some backgrounds returned.

Character art returned.

Assets returned.

Even a few jokes about the failed visual novel made their way into the Steam version.

The dating simulator may have failed but it accidentally became the art department for another game.

Lessons Learned

Looking back, I don't regret making Fedorable Love. I regret letting it become bigger than it needed to be.

Scope creep has a funny way of disguising itself as productivity. You think you're making progress because you're always working on something. Another ending. Another character. Another side route. Another cool feature. Meanwhile, the actual game quietly sits there waiting for you to finish it.

That project taught me one of the biggest lessons I've learned as a solo developer:

Finish the main game before making the game around the game.

Ironically, that lesson is one of the reasons Fedorable Life made it to Steam.

So if you've noticed a few jokes in Fedorable Life about a failed visual novel...

That's this one.