Danganronpa Wiki:Interview with Milkpunches

Interview with Milkpunches, creator of fangame 'Hyper! Danganronpa H20'



On August 16th, 2019, developer Milkpunches published the final installment of their Danganronpa fangame, Hyper! Danganronpa H20: Abandon All Hope, becoming the world's first complete, playable, English-language fangame, and only the second ever complete playable fangame outside of the pioneering Korean fangame series Danganronpa Another by LINUJ.

''Hyper! Danganronpa H20'' was released episodically for free on itch.io beginning on October 10th, 2018 and was completed in just 10 months. Where similar projects struggle to release a single chapter in one year with large teams of contributors, ''Hyper! Danganronpa H20'' was completed at an incredible pace considering the entire project was developed, written, and drawn by just one person - an American teenager named Nick.

In Danganronpa Wiki's first official collaboration with our friends over at Fanganronpa Wiki, our moderators Scottier & Monollama had the opportunity to chat with Nick to hear about the challenges of creating a fangame from scratch, and hear advice for others out there who are considering creating their own fangame experiences.

''' THIS INTERVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS FOR H20 - PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK! '''

Is this your first game project?

NICK: Yes and no.

The engine I'm using is the OHRRPGCE engine, which I discovered like two or three summers ago, and it immediately clicked with me. Stuff like ' or ' were too complicated for me to understand, but OHRRPGCE was just SUPER easy. It's one of those WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) engines so it's all really basic stuff, with any kind of coding being pretty much completely optional. I actually made all of HDRH2O without writing a single line of code.

I started out immediately by making this small game about a little ghost dude walking around and exploring this little world with a bunch of monsters and stuff. It was super basic and was pretty much a walking simulator, but it was my first ever game so I was super excited. I did a few other short, experimental games too to sort of test it out, like this one about an alien flying through the universe to collect information for an intergalactic encyclopedia, or another one that was an RPG dungeon crawler about magical girls fighting dreams. I never actually finished any of them, but what I got out of it was that I got a good grasp on the engine and how it works, which is why I was confident that I could do a Fangan. All I had to do was replicate the basic story structure using the tools I had learned from those smaller, experimental games.

When did you first get the idea for your series?

NICK: Back in August of 2017, two friends and I decided to host our own Danganronpa roleplay, which we called Hyper Danganronpa 4: Abandon All Hope. I'm sure you can see the inspirations towards H2O already. I kinda took the reigns with that roleplay game - I came up with the plot and location, with an underwater facility in the basement of Hope's Peak Academy. I played Hunter in the RP, and he actually ended up dying in Chapter 4. The plot ended up being that a rich corporation, NHC, would raise children in training facilities to give them talents, then wipe their minds and give them fake backstories, and force them to battle it out in killing games to raise them as child soldiers to fight against the other corporations that ruled the world. It was like Danganronpa V3 but with an anti-capitalist spin. The mastermind ended up being another one of my original characters, Alma Kaiden, the SHSL Hacker.



Did you have the ending of the game planned from the start?

NICK: From the very beginning I knew that I wanted the mastermind to be NHC and have a general theme of "fuck rich people" and I knew that Oliver was going to be the mastermind but not actually die because I wanted to include an aspect of forgiveness and also Oliver's character is supposed to be similar to a flower in that they grow and start to blossom into their own person. As for what changed the most, it was probably Four's role in all of it. Originally she was going to die in chapter 5 after killing Ash. However, I scratched that and then planned for her to kill Ash, but when she's about to get executed, she reveals that she rigged bombs to the trial room and blows it up, then disappears into the ocean and wouldn't show up until the end of the epilogue where it cuts to her waking up on a beach. It was kinda dumb. Around the time I was working on Chapter 3 or 4, I realized that I could have Ash hypnotize her into attacking him, but then have a change of heart and finish the job on his own. The bomb thing would've been flashier but the drama of the final version of chapter 5 was too spicy.



Which characters were your favourites to write for?

NICK: My favorite character to write was definitely Maya, since her dialogue came the most natural to me, and it was super fun to write this super loud impulsive character. Kouji was also super fun because his dialogue led to a lot of humor which is always nice. Kami and Ricardio were also fun just because their way of speaking was very unique. The hardest character to write was probably pre-talent reveal Victoria. Having to find ways to fit in all those curse words was EXHAUSTING.

How did you decide who lived and who died?

NICK: In Chapter 1, I wanted August to seem sort of like he would be an important character, especially with his design and him being the first one Maya meets when she wakes up. Same goes for Marie, who was just too sweet to live. Both of them were pretty close to Maya, so being early deaths would be a good way to show Maya how serious her situation was. It's kinda like Sayaka Maizono in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

As for Chapter 2, I just had a gut feeling it had to be Ricardo and Kami. They both had fairly simple characters so it was pretty easy to give them plenty of development in the two chapters they were around, and the backstories intertwining and being revealed during the trial was pretty dramatic, which I think is good for a second trial.

With Chapter 3, I ALWAYS wanted to make Tamako the Chapter 3 killer because in a sense, she reverses the Chapter 3 killer trope. Instead of becoming unhinged, she pulls a 180 and reveals her true self, who's actually pretty mellow. Originally, the victims were going to be both Leona and Kokona, but I wanted Leona to live on even after her best friend died, so I switched in Chet.

Chapter 4 is actually where Chet got switched in from. He was going to be the victim, with Caesar as the killer. However, I realized that since Victoria was the SHSL Naval Officer and Caesar was the SHSL Marksman, and with their backstories into consideration they might have met at some point, so I played off of that. Chapter 4 is probably one of my favorite trials that I wrote. Then with chapter 5 I went with plenty of revisions involving Four and Ash, but Ash dying was always a constant.



What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in developing the game?

NICK: I think the biggest issue I had with H2O was motivation. Because I have ADHD I struggle with executive dysfunction pretty badly. I actually gave Maya ADHD because she's pretty much my self insert at this point (Maya is a long-term OC of Nick's, long predating H20). My ADHD meant that I'd have this annoying cycle where I'd work super hard for like a week, then burn myself out and not work on it for a month until I got my motivation back and started anew. This was especially prevalent with the FTEs. Since I was doing it in a way that I had to write a whole batch of new FTEs every chapter, it got SUPER tedious. As a matter of fact, the reason I started using the group FTE system is because it meant I could get two for the price of one and didn't have to do as much writing. Once I got to the later episodes, how I'd combat my motivation issues was by putting my phone on sleep mode so I wouldn't get any notifications, turning on some music, then setting an alarm for about two or three hours and just doing nothing but work until the alarm went off.

What would you say were the main factors that led you to be able to complete your series, over other Fangans which have struggled to get out of development hell?

NICK: Probably the fact that I was a team of one, and I was able to keep my scope in check. The issues I see with most Fangans is that they're trying to perfectly replicate the look and feel of the canon Danganronpa games, which is REALLY hard to do unless you have a LOT of time and resources. With H2O, I knew my limits and I knew that I wasn't trying to recreate Danganronpa. I stuck with my own art style because I feel that the typical Danganronpa makes facial diversity really difficult, and if I'm working in a different style I won't be able to get as expressive. I also went with a side scrolling pixel environment because I know that I don't have the patience to do a bunch of fancy backgrounds, and I didn't want to do anything too complicated. The key to getting places with a big project is settling sometimes. That's why I have mad respect for written (fanfiction or script-style) Fangans. They know not to get out of hand with imitating Danganronpa, and from what I've seen, written Fangans tend to be the only ones that make much progress.



So you would say that working alone was a major advantage?

NICK: Oh it was absolutely an advantage. I know this isn't a positive trait but I am SO bad with people. I'm definitely the type that's bad working in groups and when we have to pair up for stuff in class, most of the time I just work alone. One of the reasons I started H2O is because I'd been big on Danganronpa roleplay killing games for a while and they were plenty of fun, but oftentimes it was so hard to deal with other people. There were always those people that were never active, or tried to weasel into every single conversation even if something important was going on, or had characters that just weren't that great and we all kinda had to deal with it. There was also the issue of having to go with whatever the mod says and let me tell you now, just because the mod says it doesn't always mean it's a good idea. After a while I started getting tired of having to deal with other people so I said screw it and started working on my own Fangan.

I originally had a casting call open to find voice actors for H20 back in the winter. I don't think I actually wanted to find voice actors, but everyone kept asking me about it, and I felt like if I didn't have voice acting, I wouldn't be taken seriously. Eventually I came to my senses and realized that there's no way I can work with 16 voice actors because I am TERRIBLE with people and that would be SO stressful. Having H20 as a solo project was perfect for me, because it meant I could work on my own schedule, and didn't have to deal with anyone else.

What would advice would you give to other creators out there who might be thinking of creating a Fangan series?

NICK: I'd say the biggest part of it is actually getting started. If you have an idea for something, be it a Fangan or otherwise, just do it bro. The best time to get started on your big idea was yesterday, and the second best time is today. If you think you can do it, then do it.

It's also important to consider your medium. There's no set way to write a story, and there's an infinite amount of ways you can do it. You've got video games, web series, fanfictions, roleplay, you name it. Hell, you could probably do a fangan via a twitter account, and do the story via Twitter threads. Go with the medium that works best for you. I went with a video game because I wanted to incorporate my art with writing, and having a layer of interactivity in my stories is something that's important to me, but it doesn't have to be like that for everyone. Don't force yourself to make a video game or a web series because you think that'll get your project taken seriously or make you popular, because video games take a LOT of effort, and not everyone can handle that. The one medium that I wouldn't recommend unless you're REALLY confident that you can do it is comics. I can't even imagine the amount of work you'd have to put into that, unless it's kind of like the Homestuck style where it's a single image, with script style dialogue underneath.

Anyway my point is, get started but get started smart. One of the things I'm worried is going to come out of H2O is that people are going to try to imitate me and make their Fangans into video games, even if they don't have the skills or motivation necessary for it, and crash and burn. It's so important to work with a medium that works for you and once you find the perfect one, you're pretty much set.



Do you think you will ever make another Fangan, be it a sequel or a story entirely?

NICK: If I haven't made it clear with my Ominous Announcement on the 16th, H2O isn't quite over yet. There's still a bit more content, and it'll start being revealed as we approach October 10th, the one year anniversary of the prologue being released.

As for my next game after H2O, it is NOT a fangan, and I don't plan on making another Fangan. I threw the idea around for a while but I figured one was enough. I actually DID start working on my next project during the short hiatus between Chapter 5 and 6, and made a pretty good amount of progress. It has a larger cast than H2O, but I've done it in a way so that it's easier to keep track of. It'll be a lot more gameplay focused, and the story goes a lot deeper than H2O. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it's a weird hybrid between Danganronpa, ', and ', along with a bunch of those old RPG Maker horror games like ' and '. However, it'll be a ways off before we start seeing anything from it. Maybe around December or January.

That's pretty much all our questions, thanks so much for chatting to us about your experiences Nick!

NICK: Hella. It was super fun.

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You can find download links for ''Hyper! Danganronpa H20, as well as his previous non-fangame Take Me Home'', on Nick's itch.io page at https://milkpunches.itch.io/

You can also find Nick on Twitter at @milkpunchart.