#GUESS WHO JOINED OTOME JAM

[minthe-drawings]

Here comes the boys✨ (for otome jam)

[bunanawhale]

Hello everyone! So for all of you who didn't know, I was fairly inactive last April until May due to the fact that I joined Otome Jam 2023 to work on Assignment Due: Project Blue! I was recruited to be their background artist and helped render the sprites for our dearly beloved Asher, the game's main love interest, whom you will have the opportunity to get to know soon enough.

The Plot

A weeklong online project being partnered with the quiet boy in your class that spirals into something different. Career dreams and the color blue, you wouldn’t have guessed an online class you were forced to take for your second year of college would lead you right to anything. Let alone to someone.

Assignment Due: Project Blue is about the familiarity of working on school projects, late-night talks about your dreams and the future, and navigating through the treacherous plains of self-worth, familial issues, and sacrifices for the sake of your loved one's happiness. Oh, and maybe a pinch of the academic rivals-to-lovers trope gets sprinkled in there, too.

We are still finishing it up at the moment but please do check it out once we've released the full game on the 30th! I'm very excited to see the outcome of our hard work, and I'm also proud of being a part of such a wonderful team as this is actually the first time I've ever joined a game jam!

As for a more personal update, I'm currently taking some time off from drawing as it's been tiring for me to be able to draw too much after all of this and art block has been clawing at my back. However, I'll be opening some doodle requests and will try to get to them whenever I can so feel free to send them my way too (,,,^ ^,,,)💙

Thank you and I hope you all have a nice day!

[awiola]

Normal update, autumn??? XXIII

Okay, so I thought it would be a nice, winter quarterly update but turns out the last one was titled summer and I guess going by calendar, winter barely started so it's??? autumn??? I guess??? Last day of the year but autumn, sure, let's go with that. That being the case, I have no new year's pic for y'all cause I can't draw I was devving uhh, rly hard, let's say. Totally.

Anyway, the mushroom jam has ended and I planned to have a release update BUT THEN I DIDN'T FINISH THE GAME ON TIME YET AGAIN, who would've thought, so, like, there's nothing. I mean, something exists but yeah >_> I'll write a devlog when it finally looks presentable. Moving on...

Current game stuff

The spooktober game has been finished, kinda - The enmity of dead things. It, well, it works and it contains the full script and everything but lacks both art and music cause I couldn't finish it on time laziness goes brrr. Then I wanted a break and worked on other games and kinda left it like that... So that's the first item on my "Finally finish it in 2024, you stupid fuck" list. All in all it wasn't a total failure and I had fun for the most part. Committing to my bad decisions [look at the textbox] is actually the main cause the game wasn't finished on time... You live and don't learn.

The failure of the year... Or quarter at least - Mushroom game. Despite being technically published to add it to the jam, it's so unfinished I won't even link it here. And it's all my fault cause I was being lazy and, as usual, forgot I can't actually program. Yeah...

Helped with Cool Days. There's really not much of my work there, I honestly considered making a new category for games I kinda helped with but tbh the amount of work actually finished was close to zero but hey, it's still more than nothing so Check it out, it has cool graphics.

The ace teens game got shelved/postponed and it's not my fault this time but instead we're working on a fantasy kinda thing for Ace jam [and maybe also Zack jam while we're at it but that might've been said in jest]. Fortunately it's small enough I don't expect any delays. I can say it involves a golem who isn't a humanoid (灬˘╰╯˘灬)♥｡･ﾟ

Now for the big thing.

Fanfares, please.

🎉🎉🎉

IMPOSTOR SYNDROME - is a game for winter jam which also happens to be a demo cause we ran out of time but! - it will be finished soon-ish. I'll share more details in the release devlog so if the link to the game works already, that means the page's up and so is all the info. If it doesn't work, check again in a few hours but I'm assuming most people who actually read all that will do so post winter jam anyway.

Genre wise it's an otome chat sim comedy that's extremely self indulged and I'm not ashamed of that. Gotta make games for yourself and all that. Though, again, my own conribution to the development process remains minimal. I'm truly becoming the idea guy.

The "Finally finish it in 2024, you stupid fuck" list aka the stuff that should've been finished already but isn't

Umm, yeah, everything. Or, to be more specific, Mushroom game and Enmity take priority here but all the other games that needed some quality of life adjustments like making the web build work on mobile etc are also included [which is kinda funny cause a lot of them could be corrected in like an hour if I actually sat and did just that].

It's been more than three years since I released Argousze and yes, you gessed it, it's also unfinished. Which is extra funny in a pathetic way cause it was supposed to be a low effort game with, like, 2k words of wordcount. To be fair I kinda dropped it cause I couldn't design my aliens but maybe I'll actually get a good idea for once and manage to release it on its fourth anniversary. That'd be nice.

Other than that, well... That's more of a resolution than anything but I should stop constantly joining new teams and all... And either take a proper dev break or work on ye olde projects waiting for me since the beginning of HS. I'll become older than my oldest LI before I finish them at this point lol

Pariiish noootiiiceees

This year we're gonna have two new jams instead of one. Stuff happened and yeah. No links just yet cause not only are the pages not finished but there's also no planned date/duration beyond 'sometime in the later part of the year'.

The first jam is Tentacle jam which, I'm pretty sure, would bring us eroges. This was not my intention and all kind of sfw tentacles are allowed but tbh as long as there's a proper story, even a nukige would pass. Basically the rules remain like in all the previous jams I hosted.

The second jam is Insect [adjacent] jam which actually accepts all kinds of arthropods but it started as just insect jam and I wanted to keep the name. So yeah. Obviously more detailed rules of what's allowed would be written on the page when it's up properly and not in a half dead state like right now.

Incidentally, whatever the date ends up being, both of these jams would be hosted at the same time so if you wanted to make a story taking place underwater or something, you could submit it to both of these jams. Neat, right?

That's it for this year.

Over.

[rainslices]

so. guess who's joining otome jam this year again LMAO

[pumpkin-spike18]

✨Weekly Progress 2023 #18-20✨

idk what happened, but at least I got a lot done?? 😅

Weekly Progress #18

Sketched designs for SCS

Fin. coloring SYVNH chibis

Fin. base outline for KHP (bg info)

Fin. EKL script editing

Determined EKL monster powers

Sketched EKL fight scene

Updated SYVNH schedule

Made EKL schedule

Finished EKL run CG

Wrote 400+ words for SYVNH

I was bored at work so I did some design work for Side Character Syndrome (SCS), which is going to be a future project. Hopefully. Totally not swayed by everyone who gave me positive feedback once I told them the idea. I whited out their names because my hanzi choosing method embarrasses me.

I worked on a lot on Exorcist Killing Lie (EKL) this week, which is great because Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam 2023 is starting in a little over a week! Join us for a month of shounen trope indulgence and battle VN making!

Two monsters will be showing up in the world I've created for EKL. These were the original sketches for their designs.

Don't worry, I've reworked them lol. Each monster has a mini story attached to them, but I'll tell those another day~ Perhaps you can guess based on their designs?

Weekly Progress #19

Finished drawing all planned EKL scenes

Finished thumbnails for EKL "CGs"

Programmed a sprite for Otome Jam

Wrote 700+ words for SYVNH (Main story done!!) ✨ ✨

Finished all BW EKL "CGs"

Sketched, lineart, flat colored, and finished color EKL "CGs"

Wrote 2.1k+ words for SYVNH Side B

Started sketching EKL comic scene

I was able to finish up all the "planned" art for EKL fairly quickly since a lot of it were simple silhouettes.

My "planned" CGs are thumbnails I made in early April. The remaining unplanned work was due to it being the major fight scene for the game and I didn't know (at that time) how to portray it.

I ultimately decided on making the fight scene in the format of a scrolling webtoon, to just... fully embrace the comic/manga aesthetic of this game.

I haven't gotten that far yet, but here's an example of how it goes from thumbnail -> digital sketch -> lineart

Oh, and I finished writing the first draft of SYVNH!! 's main story There's a short after story that'll be included, too. 😊 ...I'M SO CLOSE

Weekly Progress #20

Wrote 2.6k+ words for SYVNH Side B

Finished sketching EKL comic

Refined sketch + linearted EKL comic pg 1

Okay I showed off everything I had in the previous week. So that's it for now! See you next week! 😃 Hopefully

[tackyink]

Recount of my last Thursday and Friday. Warning: it is very long and deals with a terrorist attack.

Recurring characters:

@blackcuttingmoon, L, A – my best friends

L’s family – my benefactors. Seriously, this family is made of angels

Y – A’s ex and an extraordinary guy we all get along with still

I was at work when shit started to go down. One of my friends, L, is coming over to the office every afternoon to cover for a coworker that’s on vacation, so instead of going straight home after my shift’s over, I’ve been staying after work to chat with her. The place is otherwise empty, since in August we have reduced shifts and most people are away. We’d been together for about fifteen minutes, around 5:15 PM, when her mother called to ask where she was, and we found out that a van had run down several people at Las Ramblas, and though it wasn’t still official, people were talking about a terrorist attack.

I sent my mother a text to ask her if she had heard the news and called blackcuttingmoon, only to find out that she’d been on her way to the place where the attack had happened, but the metro had skipped that stop and brought her to Universitat, the square near our old university and our usual meeting place. We told her what was going on and to leave the area, and she told us she would when the last friend they were waiting for arrived. At some point in the middle of this convo, my mother, who hadn’t read my text, called and I told her that we were okay.

Meanwhile, our boss called from his home to make sure we were alright and to tell us not to go out. L warned A, our friend that was taken away last year and who is still living outside the region, about the terrorist attack and told her that we were all safe. She also contacted Y, who works as the manager of a bubble tea shop right in front of where the attack had happened and was locked inside with his coworkers, customers and, we assumed, people who had fled the site.

Around that time, rumors that a bar around the corner of his shop had been taken by the terrorists and they were holding up hostages began to circulate (it was dismissed hours later by the Mossos d’Esquadra, our regional police), that there was at least one terrorist on the loose, and that streets Tallers and Pelayo, which end up at Universitat, were a danger zone and being cordoned off by the police. I called blackcuttingmoon again to tell her to leave the spot asap and to take refuge with her friends at L’s apartment, who lives with her family two streets away from there. The call got cut twice because the police had deployed signal inhibitors, and when it finally got through I was barely able to tell her not to go to Tallers when I heard loud noises in the background, she told me she’d call soon and yelled to her friends, “RUN!”

I’ve said some times that emoting isn’t a thing I do much. I come off as pretty aloof and dry in person and I’m way, way more expressive through text than face to face. A said once, in a very accurate description, that interpreting the intensity of my emotions from the outside took years of experience. And even then, the way I took it surprised me a little. I held a breath, tried to process what I’d just heard, looked at the phone screen, at L, said that blackcuttingmoon had to hang up. Somehow the panic had gotten buried under the raw tension I was feeling. And, thinking logically, there was a good chance that nothing had happened specifically to her. I’d only heard yelling.

(To be honest, it felt very much like those videos you see on TV where a cameraman is recording until something terrible happens and they need to grab the camera and run or let it fall, and it hits the floor, and the image goes black. Only with sound alone, instead. But that was a feeling, and my relationship with feelings is at best complicated, as I’ve hinted above, and it wasn’t the time to be dramatic.)

L asked what had happened, I told her, she got the scare of her life, I tried another call but it didn’t work, so we had to play the waiting game. I think my mom called at some point during this again, but I cut her short in case blackcuttingmoon called back, and a couple of minutes later she did. She had run inside a shop with her friends and they were shut in. Apparently, someone had gotten scared and provoked a mass panic on the street, so obviously, when you see people run in that sort of circumstance, you run too.

After a while locked inside, she told us they were going to try to go outside and stop a cab, but in the end everybody was doing the same and weren’t able to, so they had to take two different buses to get home. I’m not sure what hour it was – sometime between 6 and 7, I’d guess, since public transportation was still running.

I posted here and on Twitter to say the three of us were okay. Got a much bigger response than I thought I would, and from more than a few people I’d been mutuals with but never really spoken to that asked me to update until I was safe. Thank you so much. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

L kept trading texts with Y and A, and after a while I started talking to A as well, since she was more nervous than most of us. We promised to Skype her when we were home. L was also busy trying to locate more people, since she has a lot of family members in Barcelona.

By the time L’s shift was over and we were ready to leave and close the office, around 8 PM, Barcelona was on lockdown and I had no way to get home because I live in a nearby city. Walking home would have taken me over two hours, cabs were offering free help but there were traffic jams at the city exits that lasted up to 6 hours, and all the subway stations I had within reach were closed. Bus service was nonexistent in our area. L offered me to stay home with her and I accepted, and though it was a short walk, his father came to pick us up by car anyway.

Y was still locked up at the shop, and they were handing out tea for everybody while they waited for the Mossos to give them the okay to open the doors and leave. I brought the work laptop with me to have somewhere to write, check news, and work in the morning if it came to that.

I told my parents we were safe. I got laughed at by L’s family with pity and a hug when I thanked them for allowing me to stay. We spent about one or two hours with them, having dinner and watching the news. L’s sister told us she had been at Las Ramblas only two hours before the attack. We got confirmation from Y that he was home, and from blackcuttingmoon that her sister had been able to get home from work too, and I told her that we were going to Skype A in case she wanted to join.

If something good came out from that day, it’s that the four of us got to talk together for the first time in two years. A had spent the whole afternoon and evening crying because she wasn’t here with us, and we told her that to us it was better that she was far away, since she used to live precisely where the attack had happened. She also said that there were many people she knew from the neighborhood that she couldn’t check up on, since she didn’t have a way to contact them after she moved. Blackcuttingmoon joined halfway through the call, looking exhausted, she told us about the crazy ride that was her day, and somehow we ended up talking about otome games, and how glorious Bleach’s ending had been, and how our priorities in anime men had changed and now we looked for someone that seemed the type to do his laundry and fold his socks. I think we cut the call around 1 AM, and I went to sleep with L, but I mostly took five minute naps during five hours while I thought and listened to L’s pet rats play in their cage.

I got up at 8 when I read on my phone that there had been another attack in Cambrils, a town down south from Barcelona, and padded to the living room while L slept, with the work laptop to see if my boss had sent any emails. L’s parents were up too; her mom left for work and her dad gave me coffee and toast and fruit (angels. ANGELS.) while I called my boss and watched the news about Cambrils.

My boss was on his way to the office and said that if there was any problem he could get us the material we were missing and bring it there, but I told him that it wasn’t necessary. I worked a little bit from there, I listened to a lot of news and I wrote some fic because why not, then I headed back to the office. Buses weren’t running smoothly yet, so I walked my way there and bought a sushi tray at the supermarket because I felt like indulging myself a little.

Laptop was screwy for about an hour, but I did my work, boss asked for my lunch’s ticket to pay for it, since I always bring my food from home and I hadn’t been able to, I refused, and in the afternoon L came for her shift. We fought over who was going to eat the last cookie in a package that is still there because both of us refused to. And around 7:30 PM I was able to take the bus home, at last, and got there 35 hours after leaving it. My parents told me that they had narrowly missed being near Las Ramblas at the time of the attack, since they had planned to go until my dad remembered he had a dentist appointment.

As always when something really stressful happens, I crash with a delay. I’m physically drained even now and still kind of in a mental limbo, but I suppose it’ll go away soon.

Things I learned: Must always pack concealer, BB cream and clean underwear. People I’ve never met in person seem to care a lot more about me than I thought. And it feels surreal when something like this happens in places you’ve been hanging out, studying and living at for so long.

It’s taken me two hours to type this up and I’m sure it’s full of mistakes, but I don’t feel like rereading now. Time to do something silly, like write SI fanfiction.