Greetings, and a thousand praises to you, Your Majesty,
My Lovely Empress has now been released and all of our developer logs with GameChanger and Neon Doctrine have been published. These developer logs actually changed part way through being written, turning from a feature of different elements in My Lovely Empress, into a spotlight on the developers themselves and the work that they do.
These developers are our pride and joy, and we thought we should compile their stories together into one big post: My Lovely Empress’ Development Journey!
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Over the last 8 years, GameChanger studio has been working on the My Lovely series, games that explore the darker side of traditionally positive relationships. We started with My Lovely Daughter — a game that dissected the relationship between a father and his dying daughter which was largely inspired by Germanic fairy tales and historical obsession with alchemy. For My Lovely Wife, we delved into the interconnection between love, lust, intimacy, and marriage in a gothic Victorian setting with fashionable salons and secretive houses of ill repute. While these games differed in terms of settings, both had a very Westernized setting and as an Indonesian studio, we wanted to try something that would be very different for our fans and a little more familiar to us.
The Crimson Empire is both a love letter to Asian history and culture, but also a searing gaze at the dangers when all-encompassing grief consumes the person at the very top of society. What happens to a kingdom when the king breaks bad? That will be up to you, and your management of the Crimson Empire.
We used Three Kingdoms and Jin dynasty styles from ancient China coupled with our own flair to create a fantasy empire that is at once familiar and unique. Fans of Chinese history will immediately see similarities between the Emperor’s Palace and the Forbidden City, though we doubt the Forbidden City has a demonic summoning chamber of its own! We also emulated a Chinese watercolor style for the game’s art, to establish a more authentic East Asian feeling.
The Crimson Empire is loosely based on the Jin Dynasty in the aftermath of a civil war that weakened and almost destroyed the nation. Our protagonist, Emperor Hong, inherits an empire reforged by the steely will of his mother the Empress Dowager Wang. Her sudden and unexpected death leaves her son and his betrothed Empress Xiang to inherit the complexities of a newly forged kingdom.
My Lovely Empress’ lead Game Director Roderick explains “The start of My Lovely Empress is like having a trusted coworker leave in the middle of a project that you were building together. Suddenly you must be responsible for all of the unfinished work they left behind and manage your own tasks.”
This is because a newly peaceful empire is not a truly peaceful empire. There’s plenty of bad blood between its factions you will need to manage, and keeping everyone happy all the time is simply not possible. Balancing the needs of the factions will be a must for creating a strong empire, but they will often want different things. Balancing rewards and disappointment, carrot and stick, will be essential to maintaining a healthy nation.
There there’s also the universal problem of having to deal with your neighbors, and the Crimson Empire has plenty of those. At the beginning of the game the Crimson Empire sees its borders with its neighboring countries closed. They have grown tired of the endless strife within the empire and decided to leave them be. Flanked by all manner of governments including the regal Mizujima and the fearsome Aurag, it’s up to a wise emperor to navigate the intricacies of diplomatic relations and make allies out of former enemies.
So, what do you think, are you ready to step into the shoes of Emperor Hong?
Our next dev log will be introducing you to our hapless protagonist Emperor Hong, as well as the darker side of the Crimson Empire. After all, it wouldn’t be a My Lovely game without some blood and dark magic.
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When last we met, we looked at the creation of My Lovely Empress’ setting and your seat of power, the Crimson Empire. Today however, we will go into the character you play the game as: the most powerful man in Ashuwa,
Emperor Hong.
Son of the Great Emperor Khan and the Empress Dowager Wang, Hong is hardly the warmonger his father was, nor the cunning ruler that was his mother. He is a lover first and foremost — a devoted husband to his wife, Empress Xiang, and a dutiful son to Wang.
However, love tends to inflict pain equal to the happiness it has previously gifted, a lesson Hong learns when disease first takes his mother, and then his beloved empress.
Now a man with an entire empire at his command but with nothing left in his heart to lose, you must guide Hong through the treacherous grounds of both politics and dark magic, whatever it takes to bring Xiang back from the dead.
But how did we create Hong?
Our despairing protagonist actually went through a few changes over the course of My Lovely Empress’ development! His imperial regalia was Initially inspired by the designs of ancient Chinese emperors as portrayed in stories like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Raswan’s early designs for Hong’s face were sleek and clean, with a slightly villainous glint in his eyes. Check it out!
Quite the looker, isn’t he?
The next design however, looked far more feminine, softening his features while allowing for various possible designs for his hair.
And finally, the last few additions came: a goatee for his face, and fantasy dragon regalia for his clothes to look like armor, inspired by his warlord father.
Now that’s our Emperor Hong!
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On our last two logs, we went into the creation of the Crimson Empire and the man who rules it, Emperor Hong. However, an emperor’s power is only as strong as the relationships he shares with his servants, supporters, and his empress, and today we would like to share the inspirations that went into the creation of these relationships, as explained by GameChanger’s narrative designer, Isaac.
First and foremost is Emperor Hong’s relationships with his wife, Empress Xiang, and his mother, the Empress Dowager Wang, the two great pillars of his life, both cruelly snatched away by the hands of fate.
Hong and Xiang’s relationship was primarily inspired by a beloved pastime of Southeast Asia, the Asian drama such as Indonesian soap operas, Chinese period dramas, and even the occasional war epic like 2008’s Red Cliff, whose Zhou Yu and Xiao Qiao led to the creation of Hong and Xiang as characters. These stories adore their cheesy nicknames as much as the leads adore each other, heavily weaving them into their tales of star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. Thus, Hong and Xiang constantly refer to each other as “My Golden Sun” and “My White Moon’ respectively with extra servings of cheese; a homage to the dramas that continue to inspire GameChanger to this day.
For Hong and his relationship with his mother Wang however, it was history itself that provided the blueprint, with pre-colonial Indonesia’s Majapahit empire having Queen Tribhuwana creating a stable, peaceful rule while preparing her son the future King Hayam Wuruk for his own reign. In that same vein, Wang in My Lovely Empress raises the Crimson Empire from the ashes of the war waged by her husband, Khan, establishing a prosperous nation and ruling for decades in order for her son, Hong, to start with the biggest advantage he could ever ask for. That being said, Hong’s own behavior as a mama’s boy might have been inspired by something a little more modern and closer to home!
But outside of Hong’s immediate family (that he’s about to lose!) are even more relationships that give him strength—those with his subjects, both human and not.
When it came to creating the Crimson Empire’s various internal factions and their leaders, the Three Kingdoms period as well as the Ming dynasty and their contemporaries in Asia served as examples for the Crimson Empire to be based off. In these societies, the Nobles, the Soldiers, the Traders, and the Commoners served as the pillars of their governments, and so they act as the primary four factions of the Crimson Empire as well, each with a leader to put a face to them — Chao, the empire’s greatest warrior for the Soldiers, Kung, Hong’s childhood friend for the Traders, Chen, Xiang’s uncle and the patriarch of the oldest noble house for the Nobles, and Han, a humble but respected priest, as the voice of the Commoners.
For Hong’s more monstrous servants however, GameChanger searched across various Asian myths and legends to create the roster that would become My Lovely Empress’ Yaoguai. Many monsters were chosen due to their fame among modern audiences and pop culture, such as Gumiho being a fox spirit, but others still were chosen for their unique qualities that allowed us to play around with their designs.
One such legend and a favorite of ours was the Kuntilanak, the main inspiration for Kunti and the infamous Indonesian vengeful spirit. Creating Kunti took both Isaac and a second writer, Bintang, to nail Kunti’s insatiable thirst for bloody vengeance, and including the Kuntilanak’s iconic traits within her dialogue, such as her piercing laugh that goes “Hihihihihi!”, without losing focus on humanizing the poor, aggrieved woman hiding underneath the monster.
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For this fourth entry, we wanted to go even bigger than before: a two-parter where we have answers from both GameChanger and its codeveloper partner, Neon Doctrine. As My Lovely Empress shifted from 2D to 3D, both developers ended up taking part in bringing its cast of humans and the Yaoguai to life. So today, we will go over the process of 2D animation as explained by GameChanger’s Matthew!
Now, when it came to animating My Lovely Empress, the foundation obviously started with emulating My Lovely Wife so as to evoke something familiar to returning fans. However, Matthew had quite a taste for exaggeration, and so the inhabitants of the Ashuwa continent found themselves with an expressiveness and flair that surpassed GameChanger’s previous titles.
As GameChanger’s new animator, Matthew’s greatest hurdle involved striking the right balance between his personal interpretations of how the game’s characters would act, without straying from Empress’ moody tone. Plenty of tweaks were needed to toe that line right, which even shifted between characters as the humans tended to be more grounded and restrained while the Yaoguai were allowed greater freedom to run wild with.
In order to animate each character right, Matthew first needed to get into their heads. By collaborating closely with Empress’ art director Raswan, each character’s most important characteristics could be shown not just in how they looked or spoke, but in how they moved as well. One such example is Piscis’ constant trembling, where stepping into her shoes involved imagining being a frightened, traumatized girl that tries to make herself small and thus shivers in fear when confronted.
However, any artist will always have their favorites, and for Matthew’s that would be Jade, the undead underling. Thanks to her bratty personality and rebellious spirit, this zombie girl was allowed to break free of Matthew’s self-imposed rules that tried to keep everyone grounded in Empress’ moody drama, becoming an energetic and playful pest in Emperor Hong’s life.
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As My Lovely Empress shifted from 2D to 3D, both developers ended up taking part in bringing its cast of humans and the Yaoguai to life. Today, we will go over the process of 3D animation as explained by Neon Doctrine’s Eilir!
Upon beginning work on the 3D animation, the original 2D animation had to serve as a reference, though preserving the original’s style with 3D models took a lot of work. Much talk was had about the transitions between different expressions on a character, the movements of their clothes, their facial expressions, and how to achieve all of this efficiently. In the end, an animation style was developed involving fast transitions between different expressions, floating movement on clothes, and giving each expression only two key poses to perform.
Now, given that players would be seeing these animations be repeated often throughout their playthrough, they could not be made to go on for too long without feeling repetitive. In order to address this issue while still maintaining the expressiveness of each character, a transition between two poses was tightened to only being one-third of a given loop time, while the rest was filled by idle movements, allowing for a more natural feeling to the looping animation.
In truth, the animation process for the cast of My Lovely Empress was fairly straightforward. Blocking animations first, then transitions, then once all the timings and overall feeling was right, then spline animation. The main body of a character was always animated first, as the movement of clothes and hair would have to follow the movement of the body.
The main challenge in the 3D animation process was time. Animating clothes and hair with the movement of a character takes time to get right, and Empress’ large cast made for a hefty workload. In order to tackle this workload within a decent amount of time, each movement would only have a basic follow through and overlapping actions, after which physical animation would then be applied within the game engine to make these movements more lifelike. Having concept art of each character’s expressions also worked towards cutting down on animation time, as transition poses could easily be determined by the character’s personalities.
Unlike with GameChanger’s Matthew however, Eilir can’t pick a favorite from the cast, after all, each one was unique! However, Eilir did note that it was most fun to work on the Yaoguai with their diverse array of personalities and powers, each one a new challenge to tackle.
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We’ve talked to concept artists, writers, animators, and even the director, but now it’s time to shine a light on the programmers! Here to give us our peek into creating the backbone of My Lovely Empress are GameChanger’s programmers, Alvin and Anas!
As a far larger game than My Lovely Wife, My Lovely Empress came with new and significant challenges. For Alvin, the most headaches would come in the form of Empress using 3D models instead of the 2D sprites from previous games, which resulted in numerous problems GameChanger had previously never encountered before—an unenviable position to be in when every programmer knows discovering and fixing one bug means ten more are hiding underneath.
Anas even estimates that the change from 2D to 3D even resulted in the greatest technical challenge to the programming team, as everything from dialogue windows to the Yaoguai chamber to the very script needed to be refactored to support the new 3D models. Programming and art even crossed over as disciplines here, as how the 3D models were rendered to match the game’s ink brush art style needed collaboration with Neon Doctrine’s own animators to get right as well.
There was even more work to be done besides coding game mechanics and new features. The huge increase in Empress’ scale meant that everyone from game designers to artists and narrative designers had to be able to add or modify assets to the game themselves without breaking anything, which needed the programmers to create that system themselves.
To top it off, a bigger game also meant that optimization became more important, as GameChanger prioritized allowing Empress to run on older devices that could previously play Wife and Daughter. In the end, Anas estimates that the overall workload for Empress was a staggering three to five times larger than Wife thanks to all these factors!
It’s not all difficulties and overcoming challenges however, as both our programmers had their favorite features they had a great time implementing into the game. Alvin’s favorite would be implementing character expressions and voices, as it meant breathing digital life into Raswan, Audi, and Yozhman’s beautiful character designs. Meanwhile, Anas’ favorite feature was the dynamic environment of the map of Ashuwa. Being able to change the face of a continent through disasters and diplomacy alike felt great to implement, as Matthew’s animations and Rizki’s environment art were just so fantastic to watch!
As possibly the least understood discipline of game development, Alvin and Anas also wanted to leave a few words for laymen about video game programming. For Alvin, programmers are the wizards of gamedev, the ones who turn designs from words on paper into reality through a tiring, difficult, but immensely satisfying process. Anas on the other hand, wanted to offer advice to anyone looking into trying their hand at coding themselves: bugs and errors are inevitable, so prepare for them already. Additionally, don’t forget to create a custom script editor to help other developers in adding to or editing assets in a game engine, and remember to take a sip of coffee and listen to a song you love while coding.
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We’ve now talked to just about everyone in GameChanger about the work they’ve done for My Lovely Empress, from how they’ve developed the art and characters, to overcoming the technical challenges of working on a game far larger than My Lovely Wife. Now, here to talk about the experience of finally launching the game after years of work, are the senior members who have been with the team since My Lovely Daughter: Roderick, Dodick, and Riris!
Finally getting My Lovely Empress to the finish line after years of work was no simple feat — the demo version had received a lot of great feedback Roderick and the team wished to implement but had little time to work with before launch, and on the marketing side of things Empress actually saw slower wishlist growth than My Lovely Daughter and My Lovely Wife in spite of an intense marketing effort from both GameChanger and Neon Doctrine, which was a great worry for Riris on top of all her other responsibilities in running the studio.
Fortunately, setting a reasonable scope along with a good plan worked for crossing that final, bumpy stretch. By making a list of limited, small, but impactful changes that GameChanger could make from the demo feedback, the team could make meaningful last-minute improvements to the game without sacrificing all the testing and QA checks needed to ensure a smooth launch.
And a smooth launch it was! To the pleasant surprise of both GameChanger and Neon Doctrine, My Lovely Empress lightly surpassed its projected sales on release day, and with a great reception to boot. Roderick and Dodick alike were delighted by the user reviews and community feedback during the game’s launch. Though it was not and will never be possible to please everyone, so much of the positive feedback revolving around improvements made from the demo version only solidified in their minds the importance of listening to the fans and making the right improvements. It made all that extra effort worth it.
As for Riris? More of a sigh of relief. Running a studio isn’t easy, but finally releasing a game after years of blood, sweat, and tears is like letting go after a long-held breath. The scary, sobering reality of indie game development is that one failure can be enough to sink your studio and all your dreams with it, and so a good launch means the dream lives on.
But what now? What could be next for GameChanger after unveiling the Ashuwa continent to the world? For Dodick, GameChanger’s next moves are two parallel ones: keep improving My Lovely Empress based on feedback to make it the best game it could be, and to start seeking new horizons as well with a prototype for a brand-new game unrelated to the My Lovely trilogy. With the My Lovely trilogy having gone from a father creating daughters out of alchemy to a mad emperor wiping out his own people in pursuit of love, the series can rest for a bit in the Crimson Empire (or what’s left of it after Hong is done), and it is time to explore new horizons.
Riris agrees. GameChanger cannot and will not rest on their laurels, not while there are stories still inside the team just waiting to be told. A long weekend break for everyone to recharge after the launch was certainly helpful though!
Finally, the three have some words for the fans of My Lovely Empress, and of the My Lovely trilogy in general. Here they are in their full, uncut statements.
Dodick:
We are immensely grateful for the incredible support from our fans. From our journey with My Lovely Daughter in 2018, which explored abusive parenting, to My Lovely Wife in 2022, which delved into toxic relationships, we've always aimed to create thought-provoking game series that challenge and engage you. Now, with My Lovely Empress, we're thrilled to see how much you've embraced this world and its exploration of the corrupting power of love. Your passion and feedback drive us to keep improving. Thank you for being part of this journey with us!
Riris:
Ahh. I know somewhere far away from Indonesia, someone gets happy, disappointed, angry and maybe even cries when they play My Lovely Empress. I want to give a big thank you to everyone who has bought, played and reviewed the game. You, our players, are the main reason we enjoy what we do. We are always grateful to you for raising the bar and proud to have the best job in the world as a game developer. I love you all!
Roderick:
Thank you for supporting us all the way from the early stages of development, especially those who have followed us since My Lovely Daughter in 2018. Your love and support kept us in high spirits throughout the development of the My Lovely Series 💖.
We hope you enjoyed all these peeks into My Lovely Empress’ development journey. Thank you all for reading our words, and we are truly blessed to have such wonderful fans. We here at GameChanger and Neon Doctrine would not be here without your support!
My Lovely Empress is out now on Switch, Xbox, and Steam.
Check it out here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2052990/My_Lovely_Empress/
