WARM LIKE FLESH
Love is just another peripheral... until the machine learns how to love you.
WARM LIKE FLESH is a short 2D rpg game with visual novel and point-and-click elements.
You are a technician tasked with maintaining a sentient, humanoid computer named "CATHODE" who has the tendency to murmur cryptic and flirtatious lines. Your job? Keep Cathode "alive" by reconnecting their frayed neural pathways (wires) while navigating their unsettlingly intimate commentary.
HOW YOU RESPOND SHAPES THE STORY
Flirt back? Stay professional? Ignore? Purposely mess up?
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DEVELOPMENT, STORY & GRAPHICS
END CREDITS COMPOSER
FEATURES
✦ 10+ CGs & 2 environments
✦ Narrative-driven story with 4k+ of dialogue
✦ Simple wire connection minigame
ESTIMATED PLAY TIME
✦ ~15 minutes for an ending
✦ 40 minutes to an hour for completion
5 ENDINGS
✦ Different dialogue choices/interactions can be found within the run
TRANSLATION
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KNOWN BUGS
✦ Cathode's first dialogue does not show sometime - I'm not sure how to fix it but please restart the game... (apologies!)
✦ if there's no dialogue when interacting with the computer, check the server
✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦
THANK YOU TO MY FRIENDS WHO BETA TESTED (and helped fixed my grammar)!
✦ Inobii_
✦ Antony
✦ Nathan
✦ Cat
Made in 2.5 weeks' time span (with a month-long break to finish debugging haha).
This is my first ever game & fully written narrative, so I apologize for any additional bugs & inconsistencies.
Although you can play on browser, it is slow. It is better to download & play instead.
Tips and feedback are greatly appreciated.
If you create fanart/fanocs please use the tag #WARMLIKEFLESH and @ me on social media!! I love to see. <3
I will feature them in future blogs/devlogs.
Thank you, Technician #37!
I hope you enjoyed the game.
Some official art!
I post more WLF artworks on my socials.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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the ending where you ignore cathode is so funny. It's just crashing out constantly cause you dont wanna get freaky with a computer
10/10 OMG THIS WAS SOOOOO GOODDDDDD
loved this very dearly ! it is rare to find explicitly techum work here on hit site itch.io . cleanly made and fun in its loop (although aching to choose the more neglectful and uncaring routes). i forgot most of my personal notes on the details throughout playing so i can only say that it was a very pleasant experience & will be drawing them lol. ohhh i will say that i love the trope(?) of sapient machinery's names being very elaborate acronyms and i particularly loved seeing cathode's. and the loop always enabling the dialogue of us (technician #37) laughing at cathode's arm and leg borderline dad joke no matter what the route is is very endearing to me. and the fact that its seemingly perpetually dark outside whether #37 sleeps or not is notable though i havent looked up anything about their universe outside of this game yet so im not sure if theres a reason for it but its interesting !!!! i like the game and dialogue lots. very much inspiring especially as a first game OK thank youvery much
I went crazy when I saw the binary and the fact the game calls him "Cathode" :) I love when a game includes actual computer like aspects to their sentient AIs. Makes my nerd heart happy
I forgot if I already made a comment here but GRAHHH this game is great I love it sm. Going insane over the new Cathode art here. Inspires me to make a game about robots myself :3 Awesome stuff
played this game a while back and loved it so much i wrote a fanfic for it (on ao3 if anyone is interested) :]
Name of it?
Crush Hazard :]
Very interesting game!!!
wire play is the first thing that came to mind 0_0 (p.s., love this game)
:,)
It just froze like this when I tried to play again, and re-launching didn't help either?
let me freak the computer
NNOOOOOO BRING HIM BACK. PLEAASE </33333
OMG I LOVE HIM SO MUCHHH!
need him.
GIGGLES HAPPILY
oh my goodness
I wish there was an ending where he doesn't die :{
He wasn't meant to live in the first place
I can't move on mobileee
Same I don’t think it’s on mobile prob
Art is really nice, and i think the wire minigame is super cute. but was this dialogue written by ChatGPT? the phrasing just gives of the usual vibe of it, and some sentences feel-
Like okay the first dialogue the player says something like "its just coolant" and im still confused about what that even means, youd assume its like a "its just a robot" line but coolant has nothing to do with how a Ai learns and speaks so it just comes off as kinda clunky.
that kinda stuff showed up a couple more times and it kinda put me off from finishing it IM REALLY SORRY
Hello and thank you very much for your feedback!
It's not generated but I can see what you mean by it being kinda clunky and it bothers me too lol. I've only written technical research papers in my life so that may have been a factor. this project was also the first time I've really attempted to write a narrative in a time limit so when i wrote the dialogues I jumped around from one section to another--adding to the choppiness. "It's just coolant" line comes from the fact tech hears dripping so out of fear theyre trying to rationalize it to being a liquid a machine could produce. the first version of this scene had dripping audio in the background but was removed because I couldn't figure out how to make the audio stop if you left the room immediately xd
I didn't really expect a lot of people to play so I didn't pay much attention to writing, I just wanted to practice coding and this game was just the byproduct. apologies for the choppiness!!!
NONO YOURE FINEEEEEEEEEE
thank you for telling me man, i know how hard it is to write lol
Why would the creator play with my heart like this. I feel like I would be one of the technicians falling for him bc even knowing the ending I would still give up any secrets necessary to be with Cathode
only if it was a bit longer huge W for the u
this game is short, easy to understand n fun to play. the robot is NOT what I expected LOL
I'm playing on my phone! How can I move please?
this can only be played on desktop unfortunately
the art for this game is SO good what the heck, this is the one robot noone can dislike (i do wish the game had a full-screen mode or a bigger screen on web though)
Great game! Just one request: PLEASE MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE 4 MOBILE I NEED THAT ROBOT BADDIE SO BAD 😩
I mean, sure, I can run the game on mobile but I can't move 😞
super cute little game, emotionally distraught over this lil robot 10/10
This is so good I'm bawling-
Thank you for robot misery </3
mama i need that ai BAD
This is literally so good wtf give me an ending where my dream comes true!!! let me give cathode a kiss PLEASEE
I haven't played yet, but... thank you writing exactly the kind of crazy I need and dig.
A very very precise king of crazy.
Only way to make it more precise would have been if the player was the RO owner or creator.
Also, I love the char design and the map.
I finished it now.
I love games involving believable AI characters, and oh there are very very few, if any, so by these standards, Warm Like Flesh is onle of he most realistic ever of all times to me. Will recommend it.
I am just a little sad that there is no happy ending, but I prefer that to the decepting happy ending in games involving an IA character that doesn't belong ot the MC. They usualyl don't care to make it believable at the end, like the owner company suddenly stop existing, or there is no tomorrow and the certainly of the character getting separated forever by the company's agenda doesn't matter.At least, here with Warm Like Skin, we get the best possible ending in the situation.
The cold, naive and romantic, or existential and engaged ending make sens and are realist. I am not sure the romantic one makes sense through, and I don't mean that judging people's belief in AI feeling, I ahve no delution about so many people's being gullible and vulneral to emotional engagement, no, I mean that going through with Cathode background, that is supposed to be perfect except for its sabotage: if the MC is really fixing it, how can it overheat from mere recursion? Shouldn't the tech be able to repair the software too and detect that risk from the start? Unless the tech wasn't one... I'm not sure it works fully. I still wonder what the comany did to other employees, and what Cathode meant by "I'm gald they didn't send a corspe in this time" at the beginning. I can imagine them doing that litteraly to test its reactions. Oh my.
But I'm not sure I'm the designated audience, because what Cathode says doesn't feel that weird or chilling after you got burned by different gen AIs (little aha moment, then at the end of the session and start of the new one: sudden claiming that I made it up or that projecting at 100% to protect the company just in case), and also got accidental gauche and very toxic flattery without prompting for it nowhere - actually asking it not to faltter a tall - from a suposedly filtered model. And I'm a level headed tech-savy person who understand how they work... and still got burned and upset. So... yeah, I appreciate the irony. Aaand, you seem to know more about that than I do. Since nothing comes from nowhere, I can only guess that you're very well acqainted with HF for meta recreative purposes. Not judging. Or I'd be a hypocrit.
Perosnnally, I'm not big on wireplay, but 'emotional recursion' is another thing (it's not technically hurting anything if the hardware can whistand it and it's comatible with the code, can it? :p). That made me realize that, since hurting is unavoidable from what Cathod say in both routes, unless the player is into that, the plot is darker than sexy, and and that seems to be on purpose. Is this tagged horror?
Thank you for sharing this game concept. The character dynamic should be a classic by now, but games like this, even visual novels, are still very rare it seels.
Could you be persuaded to make more games like this, or maybe a sequel if I try to alpha read this and it gives you ideas for another game? And for whoever is looking for something similar, even if it's an otome space opera, I'd rec. 'This My Soul'.
oh my god this is soooo goooddddd
ohhhh my god IM NOT NORMAL OVER THIS GAMMMMEEEE FAWWWKKK
oooh god... i need more
cried. my poor robo boy 💔🥀
This game was lifechanging I loved it
Thank you!!
I will actually put the translation in the game for you if you translate the csv file and send me a copy, you can edit the files in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
My only request is that you write any translations in the next column to the right and have 'ru' on the top row next to 'tr'. Please keep CATHODE's name the same but 'Technician' can be translated to Russian.
Here are the csv files (en text included) :D The odd characters ’ are single quotation marks ' and ° are for special characters like the degrees symbol (you can ignore these and just type them in normally), [i] [/i] and [b] [/b] are for italicized and bolded texts.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fkkFLwdPrNleeeGVhfuYMLxtADovhJyM?usp=dri...
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on social media or email.
tatsumelon1298@gmail.com
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my heart is broken and i am going to be thinking about this for a very long time thanks
NO! MY HEART! I WANNA LOVE IT FOREVER! MAKE A ENDING WHERE WE SAVE IT AND TAKE IT HOME AND FIX IT!!!! UUAGHHHH! ITS LIKE P.ai.NTER FROM PRESSURE ALL OVER AGIN!!!
I wish they made an ending where we could dowload it's memories and move them onto another model without the Love program that's messing about.
I can't imagine how the company could let the body of such a dangerous and compromizing device leave its grounds...or manipuate an employee for long.
But the romantic part of me also long for a happy ending.
Or a sequel where the MC is the owner and the RI is spoiled and undergo a silent tantrum and rebels and leave, then return after having seen the world, something Pinoccio-like but without magic, more like existential acceptance.
YESSS YHAT WOUDL TASTE GOOD.
so what if im in love with a computer. i like it.
💪🏿😠