Hello, it's ura, head writer and artist for 333!

333 is my very first game, so I can't thank you enough for playing it or showing enough interest to check out the devlog! But there's going to be some minor spoilers here so come back later if you haven't gotten every ending yet.

This is the first jam I've ever participated in (technically jams), and it was a lot of a fun. I've got some wips and demos languishing away in my files, like everyone. Having a deadline really did help motivate me to finish.

Working with kirin really was a treat! The game would not look as amazing as it does without their amazing GUI! kirin also did the chibis on the game page and final screen! They're just the cutest.

I am borderline illiterate when it comes to coding, which is probably why I hadn't finished a game before now. Working with someone else who can cover your weaknesses is a really fun experience.

I hope that we're able to work together again!!!

I thought I should discuss the title first. Originally this game was called May This Forest be Your Tomb, just like the final ending. Though when it came time to do logo work and the title screen, kirin helped me realize the title might be a bit of a mouthful and hard to work with.

Even during such a short period of time I had gotten really attached to the title and was worried about finding something else that'd fit before the deadline. When it comes to a lot of my writing (mostly fanfic) I usually reference song lyrics or poetry, but I didn't want to do that for a fully original project.

So! What does 333 mean?

3 girls 3 endings 3 hours???

It's actually a reference to the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index!

The ATU is a way folklore and fairytales are categorized based on tropes and other details, and 333 is the grouping for Little Red Riding Hood.

Hansel & Gretel happens to be 327 as well. I considered using 660 as the title, but I felt that 333 just had a better flow to it. It's also something someone could potentially figure out by looking the number up or checking the wikipedia page for Little Red Riding Hood, while 660 would lead to a completely different story.

When it comes to the game itself, the first few things about it that really crystalized were the scenarios that would eventually become The Happy Couple ending! It was still a bad ending/alternative scenario when it came to me, so I set out to build a game that it would fit nicely into.

The Happy Couple is probably one of my favorite moments in the game. It's partially tribute to a bad ending in another game I love, Hatoful Boyfriend. That reference was really fun to put in, and now I understand the high that comes from putting in little refs and easter eggs in your works.

When it comes to the Wolf himself, he was another fun thing to handle. I took a lot of inspiration from male leads in josei media, specifically the men from works by UmeNegi Daimyojin. The male yandere is truly the gentleman's choice.

For the actual writing process, I'm the most confident in my skills when it comes to horror. Honestly writing horror feels natural and is practically like coming home. I love creating an oppressive atmosphere and overwhelming a reader.

This was my first time doing game dialogue, so I was really worried about how things would turn out. I've seen a lot of critiques of VNs for having stiff or unnatural dialogue between characters so I really hope everything came across well.

I locked myself in the writing mines for this one. Initially my idea for the script had eight total endings, but I had to cut most them back for time. Writing is a hobby of mine, and I think one of my best records is 11k words in one day. I had a busy work schedule during this jam period, so I'd actually say a majority of this script was written on my phone and at work. (Boss makes a dollar…)

I also bought a new notebook specifically for drafting ideas and doing the concept art. So much of 333 has traditional art and handwritten aspects. I plan on releasing an artbook with more of the concept art so I'll have to get that all scanned.

Circling back to The Happy Couple but still on topic for writing, I was so anxious when it came to the darker aspects of 333. I kept doubting myself when it came to the "necessity" of sexual assault and incest, but the game also didn't feel complete without those plotlines. I actually saw a quote from Roberta Williams re: the development of Phantasmagoria and it's controversial scenes that helped me feel safer putting them in.

At the time of writing this, I'm really happy with the response we've gotten. It's nice to know I handled everything with the right amount of delicacy where these details are still scary, but not exploitative.

One last thing I want to discuss is Red Riding Hood's name. As I conceptualized the story I was mostly just referring to her as "Red", but that didn't feel satisfying to use in the game proper. I knew I could just name her whatever, but using the name throughout the entire game just didn't feel right. I worried it would impact the believability of her role or cause a disconnect in players.

I think that's definitely a challenge that comes from using fairytales people are so familiar with is that there are expectations and personal associations you have to overcome. So I felt that if the game opened up and Red Riding Hood had a name, there might be people out there in the audience who would just be like "that doesn't fit", and then I would have immediately disconnected with a portion of my players. Thankfully I felt like just referring to her as "The Girl" still fit the fairytale vibes. A name reveal coming at the end felt like a confirmation of the trust and intimacy between the two girls. Something like a kiss wouldn't fit as I felt it wasn't exactly earned or might have been a little cliche. However, reading between the lines, I feel like it was more intimate than a kiss.

So I wanted a name reveal, but I agonized over the name itself! I actually have a different character for something wholly unrelated to 333 but still takes cues from Red Riding Hood. Her name is Flandre, and while reusing that was Tempting, I'd then have two characters with the same inspiration and same name. I also think too many people would immediately think of Touhou, and that would cause another disconnect. (Deepest apologies to any Flandres out in the audience).

This was another moment where kirin came to the rescue, but it wasn't a direct name suggestion. While we discussed the themes of the work, kirin suggested I look into the play "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen. While it was definitely a tight squeeze, I managed to read it during some downtime during development. If you happened to look the play up right I after mentioned it, you would have noticed that the woman in the play is also named Nora! Anyone who is familiar with the play would know that my Nora and this Nora aren't very similar, but the fact that they're in the hands of someone trying to control them definitely fit. Like the Hatoful Boyfriend ref I thought it'd be a fun little detail that hopefully wasn't too obtrusive.

When it comes to the themes, I originally started with focusing on guilt and control, but the details related to misogyny came through very naturally. Or rather, it was impossible to discuss those themes with two women as the leads without touching on misogyny and how women are treated.

I've learned a lot from this experience, and I feel like I'll be riding the high from getting my first game out for a long time. My mind is already buzzing with ideas, so I'm looking forward to my next project! Again, I can't thank you enough for checking out 333! 

kirin section — GUI and Programming + Art Support

Hi, it’s me again! Some of you reading this are probably more familiar with my other work, 妄想発想 Paranoia Hyponoia. Ever since releasing that game, the itch to create more hasn’t died down, and as a result, I teamed up with ura for the EroHorror VN Jam 2025 and the SCREAM Jam 2025.

I decided to take a break from doing the art and the writing, and wanted to focus more on honing my programming and GUI abilities. I think in particular my programming ability is quite lacking, even though I can do it. Having an opportunity to focus on that rather than writing the script or drawing up assets was extremely refreshing.

I ran into a bunch of problems, though, and I also realised I could have fixed stuff up easier only after the Jam(s) was finished. There has been a final bug fix version at the time of me writing this.

The GUI was heavily inspired by Joseimuke/Otoge style games, where the protagonist is shown in the corner of the textbox, as it is heavily implied everything is seen through this character’s point of view, even if things switch to a narrator mode. I like this unique style of GUI to set the tone of the game, as while working with uraalice we discussed a bunch about how much we liked Joseimuke/Otoge. 333 reflects this heavily, as one of the bad endings of the game is pretty much male yandere josei stuff that we enjoy.

However, with that in mind, there definitely were some issues. With the unusual textbox position, whenever Nora wasn’t there, it made it obvious it was slightly skewed to the right, making it a bit awkward for the ending CGs. Also, during the narrator (nvl mode) scenes, I had a hard time bug fixing because I would forget if and where Nora appeared in the textbox dialogue sections before or after. During bug testing, ura would message me about all the issues on this end, and I would crawl back through the code to fix it.

An unexpected result of the graphic design was how often the red flower ended up appearing. I threw it in as a placeholder, but it fit so well that we just left it in from start to end. The click to continue icon is the flower, the accessories around most boxes is the flower, and the windows icon, game .ico, and itch.io favicon are all the flower. It ended up popping up everywhere, despite the fact there are no actual flowers in the game. A funny detail for sure.

I was also dreading on making the imagebuttons (i.e. the buttons at the bottom of the textbox) because I hadn’t messed with Ren’Py GUI beyond very basic stuff like moving the textbuttons and changing the images in the GUI folder. Luckily, though, changing the main textbox’s buttons was very easy to do. It just involved changing a few lines of code from textbutton to imagebutton, and to also give those buttons different colours—like if it were to be idle, or insensitive. Due to crunch and also hating Photoshop, I only really did the idle and hover button options, though I had thoughts about making more variations if there was time. Another button I forgot to add in the quick menu was the “hide” textbox button… I had written it in the dms with ura, but it got completely shafted by the end of it.

Speaking of both GUI and programming issues, by the end of development, we were both considering what to do with the amount of CGs we had. I did not expect the amount of CGs to be made to be… that much. “A CG gallery shouldn’t be that difficult to make, right?” I thought to myself. And then I found out Ren’Py required you to make rooms for it. Staring at the code, the day before we were going to release the first version of the game… We decided, um, nevermind! I’m fine with basic coding and fixing some things that aren’t all that difficult, but… I’m a beginner hobbyist, pretty much. I can’t do anything too complex (yet) and this was not something I was confident in doing with such a short scope time.

The next Ren’Py game we make, I’ll probably figure it out by then. I also noticed that after release, there were a bunch of ways I could’ve implemented stuff more efficiently. Realising my mistakes, I will consider this a lesson for the future… I’d like to get better at programming in particular, since it’s something I think will be useful for me even outside of game dev (I’d like to make some crappy software in the future, for fun, who knows?).

Oh yeah, I also did a very little amount of art for 333. The banner chibis are drawn by me, as well as the true ending chibis. I also did a very quick chibi sketch of Nora for the ending credits as well, as ura mentioned above. The click-to-continue icons (basket, flower) were also done by me. I also made the GUI imagebuttons’ icons by hand… next time, I’ll probably grab some free vectors or SVGs. Coming up with icons is surprisingly hard.

In general, working on 333 was a total blast! Crunch time was crazy, since we did this in a very short time period, but by the end of it, I found the experience to be quite fun and fulfilling. Especially working with ura, who is an amazing artist and writer, so I knew we wouldn’t be compromising quality at all.

See you for the next game!