Hey y'all, Fuze here.

So, I finally went through my old laptop to find the original files for this prequel to Load Off! that never got finished, so I can upload it to this site so it can serve historical context, as well as show the progression of my work over the years. I hope it also acts as perspective for any potential visual novel authors just what was going on back in the mid-2010s. It's kinda crazy how these days furry visual novels are way more popular and how there's full communities and discords where people talk about visual novels in general, and ever dedicated discords to singular artist groups and titles.

But, you clicked this director's commentary to get the development insight and thought process behind his demo, so here goes. Think back to the year 2015, Load Off was finished and getting relatively positive reviews. I wanted to keep the momentum going and play around in this story world. Questions like "What kind of organization could make the type of game show like this?" and "Just who were the characters who willingly participated in this? How did they end up in that scenario?" Especially with the titular main character as charismatic as Jack, I wanted to explore that.

So that led to the idea of an extremely wealthy business man who's heading it, the director that's mentioned in the first game. And if there's a wealthy head of the company, then he's going to have a very luxurious private vacation island, and who better to have on that island than hot pool boys in swim briefs that he can do what he wants with. Side note, I do realize the irony of this particular setting, but any real life parallels were completely coincidental and not intended at all, this was 2016 at least a few years before knowledge of private islands were common place.

Anyway, back to the story development, Morenatsu was basically the only visual novel that I consumed wholeheartedly, so a lot of my early artwork was directly inspired and even sometimes derivative of that story. So, this story definitely has all the classic makings of a furry romance-light nsfw visual novel. An expanded cast of character to 'romance' and have sex scenes with, somewhat branching paths, a suspension of disbelief for setting and character dynamics, and relatively conflict-free slice-of-life scenes.

Something I learned about myself when it comes to my artistic process, is that I really like making character groups and designing them, but to be fair, they're not that deep. So, that's why there's such a large cast, and why that continues to be a running trend in my works. Jack is back cause he was fun in Load Off, and I wanted to give him a bit of an origin story, but the surprising thing is having the reader take the POV of the gator staff you meet at the start of Load Off. Back when they were still getting sucked into this new world. The other characters there are really just the classic spread of different species and personality types that also get to be pool boys in this setting. It's kind of funny how naive I was back then when it came to making characters and having them be distinct, since these guys are all relatively mild, and don't really have traits that would make them distinct from one another. I could try to make the claim that it was on purpose, maybe to show the objectification of them, but really, it was just so early on in the project, that I thought I'd figure it out later.

This is also the introduction of Wolfgang, as the Master of the island. I kinda wanna talk about Wolfgang for a second cause his journey as a character has spanned so much of my work. He originally started as a concept villain character for an mlp-fan-comic I didn't finish back in 2014, he was repurposed in 2016 to be a furry dom daddy character for pre-loading that was never finished, and was only recently featured in a furry comic I finished this year in 2025. In all that time, I've drawn him in so many pin ups and art pics, that it's funny that this was original, inception of him and he really hasn't changed all that much. Not to mention, the island that is visited in the recent comic, is literally this island in the VN. So, does that mean my comic world and the world of load off are technically the same? Yeah, pretty much!

So back to Pre-Loading. The premise was really self-indulgent and made as jerkin' off material. You're a self-insert main character invited to be the pool boy/sex slave of the wealthy Master of the island, and you get to live in an idealistic summer vacation setting, while getting to walk around barely clothed, and have all the gay sex you could want. The premise itself is way too open ended and directionless, that it's no wonder that I got burnt out and overwhelmed by all the possibilities that could occur. Not to mention just how repetitive each interaction and scene could end up being. It was one of those cases where the potential was the appeal to me, and not quite the actual experience.

My favorite thing about this visual novel is the juxtaposition of the crazy power imbalance and dynamics being presented here, and just how benign and pleasant the presentation and atmosphere is. And I do really enjoy the idea here, I basically recycled it into the recent comic I did. Plus, I still use these character designs in several image series that I've drawn over the years. I think the scene that really sticks with people who've read it is the 'initiation' scene, where it's just so deliberate and drawn out. Reading it back, I still cringe a bit at how unhinged I was for writing like this, but there's a vulnerable rawness to it, that I think appeals to a certain type of reader.

I really had a lot more fun designing the island and figuring out all the logistics of it, like all the different buildings, the activities that the guys could do, and even the logistics of maintaining and island like that would be, than actually trying to come up with all the different routes and slice-of-life scenes between these characters. Don't get me wrong, I like that kind of stuff, but man, writing this kind of stuff his hard when I was so 'conflict-averse' in those days in my writings. 

I really feel like this demo captures the sort of unbridled optimism and confidence mixed with a lack of experience that was the kind of artist I was back in those days. I had a quiet ego at the time (still do) that I thought my works were going to be the type of stuff that would become 'furry staples' like Morenatsu was back in those days, and I was still collecting all my 'reality checks' of just how hard it is to create works of art that can reach that a wide an audience. I think I was trying to do something completely different from Load Off, which was really hardcore and had an definite BDSM element to it, that I wanted to attempt something softer and more laid back. The lack of structure and direction really hampered development that I ultimately burnt out on the project and swapped back to working on a pokemon comic, and eventually abandoned this project altogether.

But, I still look back fondly and constantly reference this work, as it stands a testament to the classic nature of visual novels that start out but never quite reach the potential conclusion that they deserve. Still, I like to think that I gave it some justice by making it the center piece of a full comic and not letting it just remain unseen for so many years.

Still, it's hard to say just what else I could talk about, so if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask them, I'll try my best to answer em.