A Thai indie developer has turned his sleeping wife's face into a game boss. She appears as the Guardian of the Wedding Ring in the dark fantasy turn-based RPG 'Billy the Hero.' Sharing the entire process on Reddit, the developer introduced it as his longest-running project, noting that it took 20 years just to create this single monster.

For indie developers, a lack of reference material is a common hurdle. JOJOsoft, a solo developer from Thailand, solved this problem right at home. In a post on the Reddit IndieDev forums, he revealed that the boss monster in his game, Billy the Hero, was based on photos of his wife while she was asleep.

After his wife, who had stayed up late making snacks for their children, fell into a deep sleep in the morning, he seized the opportunity to take reference photos from various angles. The developer wrote, 'You must never wake her up. If she's awake, she'll pose to look pretty. What we need is monster material.' He then cropped and combined parts of her face and hands, desaturated the images to grayscale, and repainted the shading. He added textures using photos of food and raw meat, drew in veins, tendons, and flesh, and finished it off with a layer of red.

There is a specific reason he chose his wife as the subject. The game features a marriage system in the later stages, and players need a wedding ring to propose. This boss is the guardian of that ring. The developer called it the 'monster that took the longest to create,' explaining that it took 20 years just to build the relationship.

His creative process didn't stop with his wife. He found inspiration in the irregular shapes of leftover chicken bones, combining them with french fries and tarts to create a spider-eyed, half-bodied monster. The game's Steam page also notes that the quirky designs of the monsters were inspired by completely unexpected everyday objects.

While community users found his development process ingenious, most were concerned for the developer's safety. They worried that if his wife found out her likeness had been turned into a monster online, she wouldn't let him off the hook. Some fans even joked that his wife would soon be updated to 'ex-wife.' However, JOJOsoft confirmed his survival by posting a photo of himself being scolded and stepped on by his wife, adding that she is not the type to hold a grudge and is still taking care of him as usual.

Billy the Hero is scheduled for release on Steam, though a specific launch date has not yet been set.