There are games I love, and games I learned a lot from.
The Stanley Parable. Doki Doki Literature Club. Totono.
They are all works I truly love and respect. Games that are aware of themselves as games, and look directly at the player. As a metafiction nerd, I always wanted to make something like that someday.
I like games as play, of course. But as a creator, I especially like games that feel like playing together with the player, then leave room to talk afterward.
Not a Smaller Version of the Full Game
I love the demo for The Stanley Parable. It was a completely separate work from the main game, and it treated the very format of a demo metatextually. I wasn't trying to copy that approach exactly, but I was strongly influenced by the way it told its story.
I wanted EULA's demo to work that way too. Like The Stanley Parable showed, I thought it would be good if the format itself could become the message.
It Starts as a Strange Dating Sim
The demo starts like a normal dating sim, though a slightly clumsy one. A transfer student, a chance meeting, affection meters. The genre cliches are exaggerated.
The art is crude. MS Paint level. "Something feels weird about this game." That discomfort starts to build.
Then the screen zooms out. The game you were just playing is inside a monitor, and in front of that monitor is the developer making it.
"Even if it's crude, I should release it with my own drawings... but is that really right?"
An Attempt as a Creator
The most fun part of making the demo was playing with the format itself.
Just as the earlier games I mentioned offered new experiences in their own ways, I wanted this demo to offer something other than a simple taste of the full game.
I don't know if it worked. But while making it, I had a lot of fun.