Let’s get one thing cleared up before we even start. Billy the Hero developer JOJOJOJOsoft is in no sense suggesting that his wife, sleeping or otherwise, looks like a terrifying monster. In a recent Reddit post (thanks so much to Automaton), the indie developer meticulously detailed how he created a somewhat frightening creature from such innocent origins for his upcoming turn-based RPG, but assures Kotaku that it’s all part of a constant battle of trolling between the very loving couple. If anything, it seems, it’s righteous revenge.
Billy the Hero is a role-playing game about Billy, “the world’s worst criminal” who embodies all seven deadly sins, awakening to find himself trapped on Hell Island in the body of a cute little teddy bear. Billy is apparently unfazed by this turn of events, and sees this as an opportunity to turn this isle of torment into a “personal paradise” over which he can eventually rule.
It sounds intriguing, with a unique combat system based around math and greed, all delivered with a rather novel art style that looks halfway between pixel art and cartoon. And so, in order to deliver this, JOJOJOJOsoft (which is the best name, although he tells me to call him JOJO) needs to create a lot of bosses for you to battle, and that requires drawing inspiration from many sources. One such source, it appears, is the developer’s wife, while she’s asleep, which is hella creepy.
“The monster that took me the longest to create,” writes JOJO on Reddit of the multi-faced, multi-handed, meat-textured creation. Why? “Mainly because the relationship took over 20 years to incubate!” The Thai creator then goes on to detail the process behind this, and it’s not about to get less weird.
1. The Stealth Mission: She stayed up late baking for the kids, which meant she was in a very deep sleep by morning. Perfect lighting, perfect timing.
I sneaked in and took reference photos from multiple angles. Crucial rule: Do NOT wake her up. Deep sleep gives that raw, natural look. If she were awake, her natural instinct would be to pose and try to look pretty. We need monster material here!2. Photo-bashing: I cut out the faces and arranged the core form. because I planned to use morning sunlight. It will be easier when I combine the images.
3. Grayscale & Textures: Reduce the saturation of all colors to a grayscale, then layer with colors to adjust lighting and shadows, and overlay with raw textures. (I pixelated the raw meat references in the image so I don’t gross you guys out too much).
4. The Gore: A horror monster needs blood. Added some red in the crevices, painted in some veins, tendons, and fleshy connections.
In case you glossed over that little detail in there, the textures used were made of raw meat, including what looks like it might be roadkill. Perhaps they have an anniversary coming up?
If you’re (very reasonably) worried that this could be a much more unpleasant story, then let me put your mind at rest. I was relieved to learn that JOJO’s wife is fully aware of the situation, and in fact an active participant. I got in touch with the developer and he explained that it was all done in good humor, and as part of a long-running faux-feud. “We are very close and tease each other constantly,” JOJO tells me. In fact, he’s usually on the receiving end. “She is way worse than I am!” he exclaims. “She regularly pranks me on her Facebook, and sometimes she’ll sneak photos of me sleeping in pathetic poses and post them on her private profile.” So this is revenge, really? “Turning her into a monster is just me playing catch-up.” Thankfully he adds, “Our relationship is fantastic—we’re built on mutual trolling and a lot of love.”
Another monster in the game, as detailed on the game’s Steam store page, is a skeletal monstrosity that turns out to be almost directly traced from a half-eaten chicken carcass with some sort of pastry-looking thing and fries. Yum! I asked JOJO if there were any other peculiarly sourced creatures. “Oh, tons of them!” he says. “Before starting a game company, I actually worked professional as a movie matte painter. That’s why I’m so proficient with photobashing—it’s just naturally ingrained in my workflow, and frankly, it saves a lot of my brainpower.” The dev describes this process as “practically like human AI: I love to mash random photos together, mash them up, and then paint over them to polish the details. But despite all that, my favorite part of the process is still starting everything with pencil and paper.” (It’s worth noting that an AI declaration on Billy the Hero‘s store page is somewhat erroneous—it in fact only refers to the in-built scaling options in Photoshop. JOJO adds, “I have absolutely no need to utilize generative AI for image creation at all.”)
Calling himself a “nostalgic, old-school gamer,” JOJO describes his development process as being driven by “missing a certain feeling from my childhood.” Of Billy the Hero he says, “The dialogue isn’t some poetic masterpiece—it just sounds like friends talking to each other.” It’s a game about wanting to “feel like you’ve jumped into a specific period of your life, hanging out with your rebellious teenage friends, loud, selfish and weird. You aren’t on some grand quest to save a town or uphold justice. It’s just Billy. And I think that raw, honest dynamic is going to make it great.”
