I submitted my O2A2 VN Jam 2023 entry but I'm not satisfied with it so I didn't make an announcement post. It took some days of my brain fluctuating between the phases of 'this is fundamentally shit, nothing can redeem it, why bothering' and 'the individual parts are okayish, it's just not coming together properly'. I found it quite interesting how in this year's O2A2 there are quite a lot of games that deal about self-doubts. Of the ones I've played and enjoyed which tackle this theme are:
- Making a Monster by Knickknack PJ: https://knickknackpj.itch.io/making-a-monster
- Going Out Out by rottentief: https://rottentief.itch.io/going-out-out
- Beta:Over by HusbandoGoddess and elduator: https://husbandogoddess.itch.io/betaover
(There are more O2A2 entries I loved, too bad ratings are not openly visible unless you follow that person on itch.io. Nowadays I don't really write comments anymore except for rare occasions)
I took some baby steps such as looking at my gamepage and analytics again on the day after submission, which I strangely enough found very confrontational, despite the fact that I can't even get jumpscared by bad ratings with that turned off. I probably will keep that permanently turned off and with the comments section open as an experiment if I like it better. I mentioned this last time for a DevLog in Faceless Date that I've always wanted to try it out, but it's also because I want my games to be seen via the itch algorithm so I never did it. There is a strange self-fulfilling prophecy about how Even The Silver Knight Panics exactly turned out to be the game I would turn off my ratings for.
This time there is an external factor of a new type of internal struggle that really affected my mood around the start of O2A2 jam. It's still lingering while I'm typing this and that puts a damper on every single thing. I'm not comfortable saying what it is, but at least with recognising what it is, I hope I can tackle this problem better.
Other than this, I simply was not feeling the writing because the story is so tonally unusual to what I normally publish: too off-kilter for my taste. There would be some visual gags that didn't make it into the released build which would reinforce this vibe. Not to mention I went off-track from my original story design plan, and took a decision that muddled the storyline, by tackling too many subplots at once.
It's not made for Fire Emblem fans (my fanworks are not made for clout, I don't even have followers from fandoms apart from my friends), I doubt VN players would even find it enjoyable when there is no deep meaning behind it, so who is it even made for? When I ask a question like this, the answer is always: 'Me'. But sometimes certain projects that are too personal make me feel embarrassed that I'm posting it for the entire world to see. I have no good explanation why I even made the game, and especially the way it is.
So with everything stacked together, it is a recipe for disaster. It's a fight between I give up on time or I just pull through. I considered whether or not I can even submit the end-result, but using the exam analogy: the entry meets the criteria of O2A2 jam (one of any asset, there is a story script with less than 1000 words) so it should count as acceptable, not that it means it has to be a visual novel I consider good.
If you watch MasterChef or any cooking competition shows, you know how you often see contestants having prepared all these separate elements, but somehow at the last minute when they have to assemble the dish, they leave things in the refrigerator and serve it up in an incomplete state. That's what happened. In the next morning I also suddenly realised that I forgot to include the title screen background images, because the animation took too much time to my liking that I commented out the code during development but it's supposed to be put back for the actual build. Normally I build a web version which I test throughout, but since this wasn't the case, I missed it completely. It didn't even feel like the worst thing to scream over. More in the sense of 'ahaha, shit happens' and it's almost the cherry on top of it all. A part of me wants to do a quick patch to put it in... however this time I took a different route and that is just simply letting it sit when I 'planned' a larger update anyway.
I think with failures like this, it's a learning process too. Looking at it in a positive way, this would be a good practice project for continued testing of Ren'Py features I never used before. That was the original intention, and before I knew it I had a full bucketlist of TODO tasks. That most likely is the real danger, I wanted to cram everything into a single project because I'm not working on game dev projects often. It's that false sense of productivity. At least this project gave me an excuse to check out if an RPG battle loop is quick to implement in Ren'Py and I'll simply link this tutorial video by Visual Novel Design / Vimi which I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vjd7XhZNtU
Somehow I also expected myself to be able to write the story in just 1-2 days and then leave plenty of time for other tasks. That probably is the most unrealistic of it all, because... did I ever have this writing speed in my life? Well, maybe back then when I was writing fanfiction as a teenager but that's more than 10 years ago! I lost that mentality where I thought that my writing is pretty good. That's what happens when high school teachers praise you too much and you're full of overconfidence. And as an adult, you'd be shocked how you ever felt that way.
So I'm trying to take this energy to work on it during the remaining days of Yaoi Game Jam 2023, and see if I can still get a proper update out of it where I can be finally content. Personally I doubt it, but at least I’m happier when I have a build that is somewhat presentable.
If you're interested in what I made for O2A2, I actually recommend my previous games: https://itch.io/c/3288241/o2a2-vn-jam-only-one-of-any-asset-1000-word-limit
- Faceless Date: the most mainstream VN of my releases, it's a wlw romance story that is a little bit spooky due to paranormal themes.
- Find My Mind: not a very conventional VN so I don't even know what the target audience is, but if you're interested in hidden-object game experience with a narrative tied to it, it may interest you.
Finally I'll be able to watch Barbie soon!