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Creator / Fox Eye

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The circle's logo as it's shown in Sacrifice Girl.

"Fox Eye" is a Doujin Soft circle that was established in 2008 and led by a designer who codenames himself "Fox". Their niche is developing underwater fantasy games with a large emphasis on maintaining an Oxygen Meter in order to complete their games without letting their (usually female) protagonists drown. Thus, the main focus and challenge of the games is to learn the required timing for when and how to travel underwater, and answering the call to resurface for air. The circle has covered several different Video Game Genres with the Oxygen Meter as their central and unified mechanic in mind.

The underwater/drowning theme of this circle owes itself to its main designer's huge fascination for it, as Fox seeks to portray the beauty of girls in all sorts of safe and dangerous underwater scenarios, while also building a gathering of fans that share his same thoughts. As such, despite the relatively-clean, all-ages material that can be seen in their previews and their developer's website, most of Fox Eye's games can be seen as Not Safe for Work due to the large drowning focus of the developer giving off fetish vibes, among other NSFW Fanservice tropes in certain games such as Stripperiffic and Clothing Damage. It is not uncommon for some fans to even mistakenly view some of these games as H-Games due to these factors (however, the circle does have near-genuine examples).

Owing to its niche, this circle is quite small, as nearly all of the work that is put into Fox Eye's games, such as programming, debugging, character design, stage design, script writing, sound effects, and website development, are all done by Fox himself. He tends to hire and collaborate with musicians, voice actors and (sometimes) English translators from other groups and parties to cover the rest of the game's development.

Although developing games has been Fox Eye's main forte, the circle has been expanding its output into other mediums, such as releasing artwork on Pixiv (found here), itself. On April 3, 2020, Fox opened up a fanclub on Fantia (a Japanese alternative to Patreon), so that fans can further support Fox Eye and gain access to exclusive artwork and manga-styled stories.

You can visit Fox Eye's official website (Japanese). There's also a sister site called "Fox Eye ABYSS" created in 2016, that exclusively covers the developer's R-15/18+ games, starting with BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret. Find the Fox Eye ABYSS website and the link to their games under that label here (Japanese).

In addition, Fox runs an account on Pawoo (a social networking service owned by Pixiv), where you can usually read up on updates and development of their upcoming titles. Fox also has an FC2 blogspot, where he will post bigger announcements on his projects and always post download links for his Christmas Eve-only event games (some of which were subsequently brought back permanently as a purchasable Compilation Re-release).

Several of Fox Eye's non-event games can be purchased and downloaded from DLsite, with several of them offering demos beforehand (see here), while other games are instead Freeware titles that can be downloaded either from the circle's main website or from their own dedicated websites.

Doujin games developed by Fox Eye:

Tropes associated with Fox Eye:

  • Action Girl: Yuna of Sufferer, Mana of Hades Vanquish, and the titular BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret stand out among the rest of Fox Eye's protagonists for this trope. Yuna must fight off hostile animals and pirates to escape from a dangerous island, and can find a sword to help her out with this, Mana must literally invoke the trope Escaped from Hell by kicking around underworldly beings and shooting them with a flare gun, and Margaret fights by Dual Wielding holy guns to fend off demons that have invaded the tower of a water deity. Due to Fox Eye's artstyle, they all also double as the circle's biggest examples of a Badass Adorable.
  • Art Evolution:
    • Shows throughout every character from the circle's earlier years that still gets more artwork from Fox following his use of this trope later on. His earlier girls are often given more well-toned bodies to better match their frequent swimming activities and the figures of Fox Eye's later characters, making them slightly taller, curvier, and overall more attractive in the process. Compare this 2008 art◊ of Rico from Blue Port to this 2018 portrait◊ of her from Fox Eye's website. Or compare this 2011 art◊ of Chie from Blue Port J with her own 2018 portrait◊ also from Fox Eye's website.
    • All of the Christmas Eve event games included in the Fox Eye Limited Game Collection has had their artwork updated, changing things such as improving the details and changing the poses of the heroines, and upgrading the Scenery Porn of their surroundings. The original versions of said artwork are still available for comparison's sake.
    • In April 2021, the 1st anniversary of Fox Eye's presence on Fantia, in response to the discontinuation of Adobe Flash, Fox announced that all of the circle's games' websites that used Flash will be converted into an HTML5 format so they can be fully-accessible, again (which includes most games' websites from 2008's Blue Port and Aqua Cube all the way up to 2014's Hades Vanquish). The announcement of each website's redevelopment is commemorated with brand new Fantia artwork of each game's respective protagonists, showing an even deeper look into how Fox's has improved their looks and his drawing skills since their first appearances.
  • Author Appeal:
  • Author Avatar: Fox draws himself as a cute◊, Super-Deformed fox that converses with his fans, as well as some of his own characters, on the development of his games. Said characters may even be an Audience Surrogate for the circle’s fans wondering about Fox’s activity and progress.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy:
  • Choice-and-Consequence System: While Into the Aquarium: Sinking with Kana is an art collection of the titular heroine's time in an aquarium, the title can be read like a Visual Novel where making different choices can lead to different outcomes, such as making Kana wear a worn-down swimsuit over a fresh new one and eventually becoming naked from it tearing off over time, or having her drown from taking the wrong way to catch a breath.
  • Clothing Damage: Many of their 2D games, such as Mermaid, Holdover, Sufferer, Barely Breakout!, and BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret can have this happen to all of their protagonists as a secondary Fanservice feature, though similar to the Senran Kagura series, as they become more and more naked, they'll take more damage-per-hit and overall become much easier to kill. In the case of Barely Breakout!, this is actually invoked to beat most of the rounds and induce a completely different kind of "death" to the game's heroines.
  • Crossover: Unless otherwise noted (Such as the relationship between Karin's Skin Diving Diary! and Sinking with Kana), characters from different games are treated as hailing from different worlds and universes, and as such, they normally don't get to interact with each other. So on the occasion that they are drawn together, it's often treated as this trope. Natica seems to be a favorite to use for this, as she is shown with her closest counterparts Rico and Marie on one occasion◊, and Takahara-san, Yuna, Karin, Mana, and Margaret on another more special occasion.
  • Cute Clumsy Girl: Some games plots are literally started from an innocent girl goofing up at a moment's notice.
    • Erica, the heroine of The Moon, the Mermaid, and the Underwater Adventure, accidentally dropped too many more chlorine balls than necessary in the her swim team's deep pool. She panicked and tried to recollect them before they dissolved too much and oversaturated the pool, but she was so focused on doing this that she forgot to give herself time to swim to the surface to catch a breath, leading her to drown at the bottom of the pool until she was taken away to a different land by a mysterious force.
    • Both Mana and Yurina of Hades Vanquish end up being this way. Yurina accidentally gives Mana alcohol when she got thirsty during their sleepover. It would eventually lead to Mana catching a hypothremia-induced coma, because she tried winging not having dried panties to wear in time for the sleepover with her long green dress. Both of these accidents combined are what led Mana to die and enter the underworld of Hades to begin with.
  • Darker and Edgier: Most of Fox Eye's catalog focuses on ideal underwater fantasies of adventure and discovery, covering both realistic and surreal environments. However, two of their games, Holdover and Sacrifice Girl, are among Fox Eye's darkest-themed games, as they're so far the only two to feature violent and bloody deaths, such as getting impaled by spikes or shot by lasers for the former, and attacked by sea monsters or eaten by giant demon snakes for the latter (the blood can be toggled off in both games, however). Their storylines and settings are also among the bleakest seen from Fox Eye as they both give their heroines a sense of helplessness and isolation in the face of dangers they have little to no way of fighting against. Other games have this trope to a lesser extent, such as Hades Vanquish and BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret, but it's downplayed due to those games' heroines being Action Girls capable of defending themselves from the start despite the latter having a bevy of disturbing deaths to dodge and the former starting her adventure as a dead soul escaping from Hell.
  • Didn't Think This Through: A lot of drowning peril situations in this circle are based around this trope, and get invoked in the circle's games to various extents of Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Most protagonists take a dive on their own, but this can threaten them of drowning when they potentially get stuck or trapped somewhere underwater and there's no one around to bail them out. Chie and Natica are notorious examples of this, since they have their own respective friends that can watch their backs and vice-versa, and are prone to being less than a breath away from losing their lives by drowning whenever they're diving on their own.
  • Drowning Pit: Sometimes in these games, the heroine is forced into one of these against her will, usually either as an execution, or from falling into a trap. Other times, she may deliberately invoke one upon herself, usually either to practice her Escape Artist skills, or she's a Thrill Seeker that likes to nearly drown herself for the sheer pleasure of it:
    • For an example of a involuntary use, in BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret, if the player gets caught by a wizard towards the end of the game, Margaret is stripped naked and thrown in a tank that slowly fills with water. The first time, she passes out and has to find her stuff again. Get caught again, she drowns for real.
    • For an example of a voluntary use, a selection of artwork for Let's Practice Takahara-san! features the titular protagonist sitting in a bucket that fills with water until she's almost completely submerged (her kneecaps still stick out of the water). Subverted because Takahara isn't actually trapped. She can climb out whenever she wants (and is filling the bucket herself with a garden hose).
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Nearly all of Fox Eye's games star a cute female protagonist. The only exception is one of their 2008 games, Aqua Cube. The game initially stars the young male Yuu who rescues his older sister, Aya, but they switch roles later on in the game and Aya becomes the playable lead, instead. Due to the game's mechanics, it was also the only Fox Eye game where you have to manage two Oxygen Meters at the same time until Natica and Sandy: Underwater Rescue brought it back almost 10 years later.
  • Ecchi: While most of the circle's games have some degree of Fanservice (usually of the Male Gaze variety), it's the Hotter and Sexier ABYSS titles that deliberately qualify for this trope. Karin's Skin-Diving Diary! and Sinking with Kana are straighter examples, while BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret leans dangerously close to being a flat-out Eroge.
  • Fanservice: Even without counting the developer's trademark drowning fetish material, the fact that all of Fox Eye's games share a general theme of Under the Sea fantasies makes it a good opportunity for most of the their heroines to wear revealing or skin-tight swimwear. Several of the circle's girls are pretty well-endowed, and often also have thick, shapely legs to match their swimming capabilities. Several games also have Clothing Damage in the vein of the Senran Kagura series that eventually leaves the heroine completely naked after taking enough damage. There's usually plenty of artwork of the games' heroines for beating them with or without 100% Completion that tend to be pretty fanservicey, as well. Some games with art collections are even generous enough to have their guides offer you special inputs and Cheat Codes to unlock all of their artwork as an option, so you can view and enjoy the eye candy without having to first earn them by playing the games themselves if you wish.
  • Female Gaze: Seldom used compared to the huge amount of Male Gaze the circle has due to its equally-huge amount of female protagonists, but expect this trope to inevitably occur whenever there's a youthful male character among a given game's cast, usually by nearly averting Barbie Doll Anatomy with them. Examples include Yuu in Aqua Cube, Kai in Karin's Skin Diving Diary!, and after certain conditions are met, Apollo in BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret.
  • Freeware: All of these kind of games are cataloged directly on Fox Eye's website, including the Japanese version of Sacrifice Girl (which is identical to the English trial version, alternate language notwithstanding). Some of these same games, such as Holdover and Sufferer, can also be freely downloaded from their own dedicated websites.
  • Genre Shift: While the circle as a whole typically goes through different genres and characters every game, some previous characters have made encore appearances from this process:
    • Sufferer: The Final Escape is the Immediate Sequel to the original Sufferer and continues to star Yuna as its protagonist. However, while the original Sufferer was a top-down Retraux Action RPG, The Final Escape is instead a Stealth-Based Platform Game that combines the on-land platforming and sneaking around of Holdover with the underwater swimming mechanics of Sacrifice Girl.
    • Natica and Sandy: Underwater Rescue is a Tower Defense game where the former character must protect the latter character from ravenous piranhas and sharks. Natica is brought back as the playable protagonist of NATICA STAR SPLASH, which is an Action Game focused on collecting underwater stars.
    • Karin debuts as the protagonist of the turn-based Block Puzzle game At Night in a Party: The Whisper of the Sea. Her second appearance is the titular lead of the Point-and-Click Adventure Game Karin's Skin Diving Diary!
    • Kana is among the characters Karin meets in the aforementioned Skin Diving Diary. Kana later on becomes the protagonist of her own spinoff game In the Aquarium: Sinking With Kana, which is entirely an art collection that can be read like a short Visual Novel.
  • Kinetic Novel: Polon Memories and Sinking with Kana aren't actual games, but rather collections of artwork that come with short stories of what's happening in them. The former is more straightforward with describing its titular character's life, while the player can sometimes take branching paths to affect what happens to titular protagonist of the latter, feeling more like a Visual Novel with a Choice-and-Consequence System that leads to Multiple Endings.
  • Hotter and Sexier: Fox Eye is already known for its light Ecchi content and fetish material, but games labeled under "Fox Eye ABYSS" are meant to directly highlight that the game will contain R-18+ material, skirting nearly into H-Game territory (but not quite to the extent of actual H-Games). Specific things to encounter from these games include its heroines completely averting Nipple and Dimed, and potentially being subjected to Bestiality Is Depraved by aggressive animals and monsters.
  • Lighter and Softer:
  • Mascot: As many girls as Fox Eye has created, these few stand out to represent the circle as a whole.
    • The titular Polon of Polon Memories is one for Fox Eye as a whole, with other mascots including Takahara-san from her titular Let's Practice, Takahara-san, and Rico from Blue Port. Polon is featured in the header of Fox's FC2 blog page, and was also his Twitter profile picture for several years before switching to Chie from Blue Port J. However, once Fox Eye's Twitter account was suspended and they migrated to Pawoo, Polon has returned as the circle's avatar for their new social network residence, and their first image post there is new art of Polon, as well. Following the July 18, 2018 update to Fox Eye's main website, Polon would then get two art pieces of herself to be displayed on the site's front page in a timely matter, compared to the single art for the other Fox Eye girls featured there. Indeed, Polon has among the most official artwork of any Fox Eye character, among the strongest affinity for underwater life (which goes well with the developer's overall theme), and even has the most interactions with Fox's own Author Avatar.
    • Natica, whose first game appearance is in the event game Slide Loop Puzzle, is considered a mascot for the circle’s Fox Eye ABYSS faction, alongside Karin of Whisper of the Sea and Karin's Skin Diving Diary, and the titular BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret. As such, any ABYSS game that they star in will put them in Hotter and Sexier situations, primarily by allowing them to avert Nipple and Dimed unlike the rest of Fox Eye’s heroines. Natica is also used the most in artwork that brings several Fox Eye protagonists together, including Polon, herself, and has also been featured frequently in the circle's Fantia blog posts, such as starring in a couple manga-styled stories, including a weekly storyline. Similarly to Polon, Natica's affinity for diving underwater is shown to be greater than many other characters from the circle, and she looks to sometimes outpace even Rico as Fox Eye's top blonde mascot.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Downplayed. Despite being named Fox Eye, this developer's games have nothing to do with foxes nor their eyes beyond different variations of the developer's logo, such as the one from Sacrifice Girl that provides the page image. The "Fox" in "Fox Eye" references the lead designer nicknaming himself after, and drawing himself as, a fox, while the "Eye" in "Fox Eye" refers to the vision he has of the games he develops.
  • The One Guy: The amount of male protagonists in the circle can be counted with one hand. As mentioned above in Early-Installment Weirdness, Aqua Cube has Fox Eye's only male protagonist in Yuu. Every other game only has a female protagonist, or up to 3 of them in the case of both Blue Port games, while any other males in these same games are either nameless NPCs, Mission Control, or even enemies up to the Big Bad. Sacrifice Girl was going to introduce another male protagonist to travel alongside its female lead, but this idea got scrapped. The closest Fox Eye has reached to this character type since this is Kai of Karin's Skin Diving Diary!
  • Our Fairies Are Different: Barely Breakout! Underwater ReMix has Momoka, an attractive green-haired fairy that can switch between being small or being human-sized. Her wings also turn invisible when she dives underwater. Unlike most fairies, however, she can't breathe underwater, and as such is one of the three girls that will need to be saved from drowning in the game's Rescue Puzzles.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: True to the circle’s devotion to Under the Sea fantasies, mermaid characters show up from time to time. Some of Fox Eye’s human characters (such as Natica and Sandy in Underwater Rescue) like to dress up as mermaids, while actual mermaids (such as Medina from The Moon, the Mermaid, and the Underwater Adventure, and Rittie, the titular Whisper of the Sea) wield mystical powers, such as increasing how long a human can hold their breath underwater.
  • Oxygen Meter: The cornerstone of the Signature Style for single every game made by this doujin developer, represented by either a shrinking air bubble or a decreasing bar. Each game has it behave differently, such as having it completely separate from a Life Meternote , to draining health after the Oxygen Meter runs outnote , to basing the Oxygen Meter's Cap on how much health is leftnote , to making it into the game's Timed Missionnote , to having the Oxygen Meter also represent the character's Life Meter, which means, depending on the game, drowning may be the only way they can die at allnote . To play up the Author Appeal regarding this mechanic further, most of Fox Eye's games also give their characters verbal and/or vocal cues when they're running out of air, and this is occasionally the only way to know that the character is even drowning at all if the game actually has no visible meter. Some of these same games also have ways to improve how long their protagonists can hold their breath, such as a one-use oxygen recovery item or a permanent oxygen powerup. This mechanic is used somewhat more realistically in these games than in others, as while a character is submerged, their oxygen will drop faster the more they move around, and decrease at a slower pace if they stay still while underwater. In some games, the oxygen meter will also even recover rhythmically as if it's following the protagonist catching their breath.
  • Retraux: Counting all of Fox Eye's games in the list above, Fox has started developing games since The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games up to the ninth. However, several of them were intentionally developed as if they were made during either the fourth or fifth generation. For some examples:
    • Holdover looks like a game that one could find on the MSX, while also resembling a classic Metroid game, being a Metroidvania and all.
    • The first Sufferer game's was intentionally designed to be an 8-bit Action RPG experience, to the point that Fox made his own chiptune music for the game. The tabs on this game's Japanese and English websites are even spot-on recreations of the designs of Famicom and NES controllers, respectively (minus the buttons and their labels). However, its graphics (Yuna's sprites, in particular) more closely resemble 16-bit graphics of what can be seen in games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy's Super Nintendo games (IV, V, and VI).
    • Water Leaves' low-poly graphics are intended to invoke the nostalgic look of Japanese-developed Nintendo 64 games.
  • Signature Style: As mentioned above, every Fox Eye game has one or more of the designer's many girls (and in one case, a boy) explore underwater areas at the high risk of drowning, with an Oxygen Meter of some sort to gauge how much time they have left before they drown, with various games giving you different opportunities to temporarily and/or permanently extend the meter's length. This is mainly out of both Author Appeal and for inviting in players that have a fetish for this material, as well. With that said, there is quite a lot of realistic and graphic effort put into how this circle portrays drowning, such as having the heroine struggle to cover her mouth and nose, making her swimming look sloppier and/or more frantic, having her face turn blue from lack of oxygen circulation to the brain, and leveling how hard she gasps for air upon reaching the water's surface (assuming she makes it in time), which can range anywhere from exhaling her breath softly to painfully coughing up water from her lungs. Due to the Video Game Cruelty Potential of these factors, and the Ecchi content the circle has in general, this has the side-effect of making all of Fox Eye's games appear to be fully-fledged H-Games, and playthroughs of these games are often grouped alongside much more blatantly-explicit H-Games by content creators on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga (in reality, only the circle's "ABYSS" games are intentionally closer to being this way).
  • Temporary Online Content: Besides the mainline games listed above, Fox has also released event games to download from his FC2 blog almost every Christmas Eve since 2012, but only for that day, such as the above-listed At Night in a Party, Natica and Sandy: Underwater Rescue, and NATICA STAR SPLASH. Anyone who missed these events missed out on downloading and playing these games, and may not even know that they existed due to their very limited availability making them quite obscure compared to Fox Eye's larger games, including the lack of an English version for them. Five of the most popular of these games would later on avert this trope by being put into a Compilation Re-release titled Fox Eye Limited Game Collection in 2019 for those that missed their events, with the games also being Updated Rereleases, with brand new artwork, a voice actress for Natica, and even an English translation for all 5 games released later on.
  • Under the Sea: The primary objective of this Doujin Soft developer is to invoke this trope on all of their games in some way or form to appeal to the creator's desires of underwater fantasies (and dangers).
  • Unexplained Recovery: Tends to be Zig-zagged. A major factor of Fox Eye’s Author Appeal is how often its heroines are portrayed drowning in some sort of underwater peril as the circle's primary source of Fanservice. Mainly outside of the games, such perils tend to be drawn as hypothetical artwork, as the girl is usually shown to be alive and well by the next artwork she’s put in. However, at times, this may get Handwaved as having the heroine go through an expensive medical treatment to get revived from her drowning, or having the girl summon a Heroic Second Wind that helps her immediately spring towards the surface even after, or right before, losing consciousness. So even if they are drowned, they're never usually Killed Off for Real unless the plot calls for it.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Considering that every single game from this developer makes it a trademark to put all of its cute and attractive heroines in multiple dangers of drowning, this trope is very much in effect at anytime the player desires. Even then, drowning is hardly ever the only thing that can kill them in their games, nor is it even the most brutal or graphic way for them to die, as what's listed in Darker and Edgier above can attest to.
  • Video Game Perversity Potential: Can apply to every Fox Eye game that lets a heroine suffer from Clothing Damage. You can beat some of them while completely naked, and even get some unique artwork that reflects the girl's complete lack of clothing, though doing so is typically no easy feat as it often makes them more vulnerable to damage.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: The art collection for In the Aquarium: Sinking With Kana features a playable visual novel with the art available. A bonus section allows the player to pose/dress Kana using a selection of preset expressions and positions. There are only a few expressions and poses available, and only two outfits. The customization emphasizes how much of Kana's tanned body is showing, and since it's an ABYSS title, the player can pose her completely naked, nipples and all.
  • Visual Innuendo: One piece of artwork for Let's Practice Takahara-san features a rather blatant example of this. Takahara is completely and willingly naked (albeit, her nipples are covered by Hand-or-Object Underwear), she's sporting a rather suggestive Luminescent Blush, and she's sucking on a hose of air. And she seems really into it...
  • Your Size May Vary: Momoka of Barely Breakout! Underwater ReMix is a fairy, but she can switch between being fairy-sized to being human-sized in order to be more in line with the rest of the characters in the game.

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