Eric

>> play here <<

with this game i finally had a chance to make a game about aromanticism, a topic near and dear to my heart. neither of the characters use that word, though – one because he’s never heard it before, and the other, well... he might have heard it in passing, but even if he did, he probably doesn’t think people would understand if he used it.

i was tempted to include some kind of definition of aromanticism in the game, or to directly answer questions such as “what’s the difference between deeply trusting someone and loving them?”, but it’s important to me that my characters speak in a way that feels natural to them, and they’re not people who can explain, or even understand, every little detail of who they are. they can only speak from their own experiences, so that’s how it is.

...also, the 1000 word limit for o2a2 meant that the less i explained, the better. the pov character was always curt, but some of his three-word sentences had to become one-word sentences... sorry, buddy. meanwhile, his date used to be into farming rpgs, but i realized that letting this rambly guy try to explain farming games and rpgs and the joys of combining the two of them would put me way over the word limit.

aesthetically, this game draws a lot from nothing to say by celia and rose. when i played it back in 2019, i was immediately struck by how efficiently the game uses a limited colour palette, a small word count, and a single major gameplay mechanic to tell a compelling story. and i knew it was time efficient too, because the game was made for ludum dare in less than 72 hours!

the game actually ended up looking more similar than i expected. i had ideas like making a full colour background, or having the tail of the speech bubble curve down to the date character’s face, but a monochromatic background and a simple triangle for a tail are just easier...

anyways, one of the features i loved about nothing to say is the vertical aspect ratio of the game, which really pulls you into the conversation between the characters and makes the space feel more private and intimate. Ever since then, i've wanted to make a vertical game, and i'm very happy that i finally felt like i understood ren’py enough to go for it.

i've actually experimented with custom aspect ratios in ren’py multiple times before, but i usually got overwhelmed by the prospect of overhauling the GUI, which is optimized for 16:9.

also, for some reason, a lot of possible aspect ratios result in there being a tiny black bar on one side of the window that won’t go away. i'm sure there’s some reason for that, but i don’t know what it was and it was very frustrating, haha. ultimately through trial and error i found out that a 500 x 700 resolution didn’t have this problem.

since this was a small game, i found the easiest way to handle the menu UI was to disable it almost completely, leaving only an audio toggle and a credits screen. i suppose that makes it the biggest overhaul to the ren’py default menu i've done so far. i'd like to experiment more with this in the future!

this is also the third web game i've made so far, and my second using ren’py. it’s definitely gotten easier, and i'd like to make more in the future.

i've still got lots of things i’d like to try, and little games like this are a wonderful opportunity for that. ❤️