Romance of the Damned

Romantic Comedy of the Damned (Gender-locked, romance, psychological) + 53K Words

Hello everyone, I’m leaving my short demo here… I hope you all enjoy it. This is my very first CS project, so I’m a complete newbie when it comes to this. And Tumblr, surprisingly.

If you are a fan of anime or visual novels that feature heavily cynical, sarcastic protagonists navigating the exhausting politics and drama of high school, then this game isn’t for you. Just kidding. That is the exact plot. It’s heavily inspired by romantic comedies—specifically Oregairu (My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected)—so when you encounter scenes that feel oddly familiar to that series, consider it a homage, so whether you like it or not is up to you.

Features:

Play as a fixed, highly cynical protagonist. (First-person POV). Name yourself, but your pragmatic, melancholic worldview is locked in.

Shape your defense mechanisms. Your choices don’t change who you are, but how you cope. Lean into Sarcasm, Morbidness, or something entirely Genuine.

Solve (or worsen) school dramas. Deal with a rotating cast of students bringing their messy, emotional problems to the last people on earth who want to hear them. (WIP)

Navigate messy relationships. Romances and friendships aren’t just about building “Affection.” Track your “Friction” stats as you decide whether to build a healthy bond or a deeply co-dependent disaster. (WIP)

Content Warning:

Cynical/edgy themes

Discussions of social isolation and mild social anxiety

I’m interested in reading feedback as I continue to write Chapter 1. It can be any, from grammar checks, to the consistency of the characters themselves.

Romantic Options:

—Kanashiro Kana (賀城 佳那)

The founding president of an unamed club. Kanashiro Kana is introduced as a girl whose solitude feels entirely deliberate. The protagonist notes her strikingly elegant features and describes her eyes as deep, frozen pools that seemingly dissect every cynical thought he harbors. He ultimately categorizes her as a beautiful fortress, built to be admired only from afar. Or, a breathtaking fortress that naturally commands distance. It depends on the protagonist you have built.

Romance with her is a slow-burn battle of wits where yielding an inch of rhetorical ground is a fatal mistake.

—Fukami Reika (怜華 深見)

The phantom of the eastern stairwell and a resident of the elite Class 2-F International Track. When she finally steps out of the shadows, the protagonist is immediately struck by her elegantly slender frame and her small and subtly upturned eyes. He notes that her hair possesses the sort of black you find on old lacquerware, moving exactly as much as it needs to and no more. Above all, she radiates a profound, atmospheric emptiness that immediately triggers the protagonist’s survival instincts.

She is a locked door in human form, carrying the unyielding authority of someone entirely accustomed to finding the people around her insignificant.

CoG Forum

UPDATE: Chapter 2 (Part Three) is Live! + The UI Overhaul

Hello everyone. The third and final part of Chapter 2 is officially up, ready to drag our protagonist kicking and screaming out of his comfortable isolation and into the broader school ecosystem.

With this update, the full WIP now sits at a rather intimidating 53,000 words with code, and roughly 49,000 words without. I somehow managed to write this segment in just over a week (roughly), which either means I have finally conquered my ChoiceScript demons, or I am currently running on a dangerous mixture of caffeine and sheer, unadulterated spite.

If Part Two was about dismantling the protagonist’s ego in the dark, Part Three is about exposing him to the blinding, terrifying reality of the daytime. In order to save the club from administrative execution (and to save himself from scrubbing algae out of the school pool), our resident cynic is forced to do the one thing he hates most: recruit a living, breathing human being.

Naturally, he fails spectacularly. But the universe has a terrible sense of humor, and the void in the clubroom inevitably gets filled anyway. Expect the arrival of someone whose terrifyingly cheerful, extroverted aura is practically a biological hazard to everyone involved. Putting her in a room with Kanashiro is, frankly, a recipe for a catastrophic climate disaster.

You will also get a glimpse of the athletic wing’s hierarchy. Let’s just say that while our cultural club elites prefer to execute people with weaponized etiquette and logical paradoxes, there are certain “daytime ghosts” wandering the campus who prefer a much more physical, blunt-force approach to establishing dominance. Stay out of the alleyways, folks.

On the technical side: as promised during my last Tumblr ramble, the game’s infrastructure has received a massive facelift.

The Stat Screen: I’ve revamped the whole page.

The Setup Menu: I finally added a “Skip to Chapter 2” function so returning players don’t have to manually click through the phantom knock mystery every single time I update.

The Demo Ending: Reaching the current end of the WIP will now trigger a “Mid-Term Psychological Evaluation” where Shinohara-sensei personally grades your specific brand of social dysfunction based on your stat tallies.

Thank you all so much for reading, for putting up with my highly decompressed dialogue, and for watching this miserable idiot slowly realize that his “tactical retreats” are just leading him into bigger, far more dangerous bear traps.

Let me know what you think of the new club dynamic!

Tagging @interact-if for visibility.

(P.S. The protagonist is still at the absolute bottom of the food chain. Even below the cat.)

UPDATE: Chapter 2 (Part Two) is Live! + Happy 15th Anniversary to Oregairu!

Hello everyone. The second part of Chapter 2 is finally up and ready to completely destroy whatever remaining peace our protagonist thought he had.

With this update, the full WIP now sits at roughly 40K words with code, and 37K words without.

Picking up exactly where we left off, the agonizing, silent standoff in the clubroom is officially interrupted by our very first “client”—a delusional chuunibyou who managed to stumble into the absolute worst room on campus.

If Chapter 1 was about building the locked-room mystery, Chapter 2 Part Two is about completely dismantling the protagonist’s ego. I decided to lean heavily into the sheer exhaustion of high-society psychological warfare. You will get to experience a four-way Mexican standoff disguised as a debate over a fishing proverb, witness Kanashiro Kana mathematically weaponize her lack of empathy, and finally watch the protagonist realize that his “genius” deductions were actually just him walking blindly into a bear trap set by Fukami Reika.

As I mentioned recently over on Tumblr, you will also notice the shift in the mechanical design here. The story is adopting a much tighter Visual Novel structure. Your choices in this update—like deciding whether to “participate normally” or “be the pollution that ruins the air”—won’t magically save the protagonist from his fate. Instead, they dictate the exact flavor of his humiliation and determine whether Kana or Reika respects him for it.

On a much more sentimental note: I want to dedicate this update in celebration of Oregairu’s 15th Anniversary.

It is no secret that My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected is the foundational DNA of this project. Hachiman, Yukino, and the Service Club completely redefined the high school cynic genre, and this WIP started as a direct love letter to that dynamic.

However, with the conclusion of this update, the “homage” phase is officially over. The training wheels have been taken off, and the club’s true, overarching objective has finally cast its shadow. We are no longer just fixing minor high school drama; we are dealing with systemic, elite social sabotage. Romantic Comedy of the Damned is now walking its own twisted, deeply uncomfortable path. Let’s see where it goes in Part Three.

Thank you all for reading, for putting up with my overly decompressed dialogue, and for your phenomenal feedback.

Tagging @interact-if for visibility. Thank you.

(P.S. As always, I haven’t done nearly enough playtesting for the stat-checks in the new dialogue trees, so please let me know if you encounter any game-breaking bugs. Also, yes, the stray calico cat has more narrative agency than the protagonist at this point.)

Kurogane blinked. A second later, a sinister smirk crept across his face. He chuckled cryptically, turning his back to us so he could stare dramatically out the window.

"I see the shape of this equivalent exchange," he declared to the glass. "In return for resolving my dilemma, I shall resolve yours! I, Kurogane 'Masuda Shirō' Tokisada, shall lend my power to your cause! A rebellion it is! A holy pilgrimage we set!"

"Can we please just kick him out?"

"As always, your lack of basic human empathy is staggering. It is no wonder Shinohara-sensei deemed you a social outcast. If looking in a mirror is insufficient to reflect your thoroughly rotten personality, I highly suggest seeking a professional psychological diagnosis."

"That is an awfully specific, entirely uncalled-for escalation. I am not rotten in the slightest. In fact, seizing the absolute moral high ground just to casually diagnose a peer with a personality disorder is arguably infinitely more rotten."

"Every syllable you utter is a marvel of evolutionary regression. I only have myself to blame for expecting anything above the bare minimum of human cognition from you. Your sheer dedication to mediocrity is almost impressive. It is frankly exhausting to witness. Are you going to contribute anything of value, or are you simply here to convert oxygen into disappointment?"

The first chunk of Chapter 2 is officially up and ready to play. The word count has bumped up another few thousand words, and we are finally pulling the camera back from the suffocating gloom of the clubroom to look at the broader ecosystem of Minato High School. Mostly. Kind of. We’ll get there eventually I promise.

In this update, our deeply pathetic protagonist attempts to return to his baseline of absolute invisibility, only to discover that the universe (and Shinohara-sensei) has a terrible sense of humor. You will get to attend a historically accurate lecture on Heian-era literature that you absolutely will not pay attention to, have your lunch break violently interrupted by an educator who lacks basic boundaries, and meet the first official “client” of our unnamed club.

Spoiler alert: He believes in quantum magecraft, and the protagonist would rather be reduced to a puddle of mana than speak to him.

We also return to the clubroom, where Kanashiro and Reika are currently locked in a polite, high-society cold war. You will be asked to participate in a “democratic vote” regarding the future of the investigation. Please enjoy the illusion of choice, because as Kanashiro will happily remind you, your refusal has been noted and promptly discarded.

Special Feature:

Culinary Metaphors of Despair: Depending on your choices, the protagonist will compare his miserable existence to either the bitter scum of boiling bamboo shoots or a gutted mackerel. Please let me know which flavor of existential dread you prefer.

Part 2 will follow soon, where we will finally see what happens when you lock two apex predators, a cynic, and a delusional mage in a single room. I can guarantee it won’t be productive.

The stats are currently being reworked, and will be finalized once Chapter 2 is finished.

Tagging @interact-if for visibility. Thank you.

Take the Friction and Affection stats, for example. I consciously decided to separate them—a brilliant idea, until I realized it forces me to write three whole distinct routes with their own flavor and set of problems.

High Affection/Low Friction, Low Affection/High Friction, High Affection/High Friction, and presumably a fourth where everyone just stares at each other in mutual apathy. Throw the Transaction and Vulnerability stats into that unholy mix, and the entire system collapses into a contradictory mess.

To save my own sanity, I'm pivoting to a more traditional Visual Novel structure. Instead of running a background math simulation, choices will act as flags that trigger specific scenes. The Coping Mechanism stats will stick around to dictate the narrative flavor, which means I now have to write compelling character development to justify the shift to a more linear story. Tragic, I know.

The major choices currently in the demo—the Investigation vs. Retreat paths, and how you choose to end things—are the new blueprint. You can expect a similar structure for future chapters. The relationship stats are staying, but they’ll be operating largely behind the curtain. So yes, your choices will still alter interactions and scenes; you just won't need a spreadsheet to track them anymore.

Hello, I believe I already answered the question in the forum, so I'll just copy and paste my answer.

The second half of Chapter 1 is finally up and ready to play. Picking up exactly where the last update left off, the agonizing silence of the clubroom is officially shattered by that heavy, hollow knock. With this update, the full WIP is now 22K words with code and 20K words without.

If Part 1 was a contained, slice-of-life bottle episode designed to establish the baseline toxicity between the protagonist and Kanashiro Kana, Part 2 is where the narrative actively attempts to break them. I believe I succeeded mostly. I decided to lean heavily into the eerie, liminal atmosphere of an empty Japanese high school at twilight. Depending on whether you choose to bravely investigate the hallway or stubbornly retreat to the clubroom, you will experience either a locked-corridor deductive mystery or a suffocating, high-society standoff.

Regardless, here is the official Romance Option list, as many have requested me to do so:

Kanashiro Kana ( 哉城 可那 )

—The founding president of an unamed club. Kanashiro Kana is introduced as a girl whose solitude feels entirely deliberate. The protagonist notes her strikingly elegant features and describes her eyes as deep, frozen pools that seemingly dissect every cynical thought he harbors. He ultimately categorizes her as a beautiful fortress, built to be admired only from afar. Or, a breathtaking fortress that naturally commands distance. It depends on the protagonist you have built.

Romance with her is a slow-burn battle of wits where yielding an inch of rhetorical ground is a fatal mistake.

Fukami Reika (怜華 深見)

—The phantom of the eastern stairwell and a resident of the elite Class 2-F International Track. When she finally steps out of the shadows, the protagonist is immediately struck by her elegantly slender frame and her small and subtly upturned eyes. He notes that her hair possesses the sort of black you find on old lacquerware, moving exactly as much as it needs to and no more. Above all, she radiates a profound, atmospheric emptiness that immediately triggers the protagonist’s survival instincts.

She is a locked door in human form, carrying the unyielding authority of someone entirely accustomed to finding the people around her insignificant.

I highly recommend doing at least two playthroughsof this update to see how the “Investigate” and “Retreat” paths diverge.

Thank you all for reading.

(P.S. I haven’t done as much play testing, so there might be bugs here and there. I apologize in advance for that. I will fix them as soon as I have the time.)

Tagging @interact-if for visibility.

I'd say this short sums up their dynamic really well, imo. :D https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WJ4YdiW9m-k