#game dev post mortem

[arimiadev]

Hello visual novel fans and vampire lovers! It’s been a while since I last wrote a postmortem, so I hope I’ll be able to write this concisely (and coherently).

Dahlia was a short visual novel I created in under 36 hours for Velox Formido, a shortform visual novel game jam ran by robobarbie and Allie Vera. It’s inspired by Ludum Dare, one of the longest running game jams in the world where devs are tasked to make a game in 1 weekend based around a theme. I got my start making visual novels by entering Ludum Dare…which was 10 years ago, as of 2024!

I had my eye on this game jam for a while now, as this isn’t its first incarnation. I’ve been a bit burnt out the past year or so, not completely where I can’t make progress but to where I feel like my work has slowed down a lot more than my peers and feel I can’t make anything quickly. When I saw the jam was happening this weekend, I hopped on board once the themes were announced.

the themes

While Ludum Dare has a rigorous process of eliminating themes until it gets down to the final one, Velox Formido has it where there are 5 themes that win and participants have to use at least 2 of them in their entries. The final themes were…

Enemies with Benefits

Flower Symbolism

Doomed by the Narrative

Trapped with Someone

Forbidden Romance

I started crafting ideas as soon as the themes were announced, which was what the jam started- meaning the clock was ticking!

My first idea was a shounen rivals-esque sapphic story about two rivals meeting up for alone time. I started writing it immediately but moved on to another idea- being trapped with a vampire. I doubt I’ll ever use the first idea, so I’ve shared the snippet I was able to write for it here. Every new line is the other woman talking, so think of it as a quick back and forth.

Even though I had started on this idea, I wanted to write something more… mysterious. Frilly. Girls in cute dresses, to be exact. So I began potting an idea where a girl wakes up to find a vampire in her room, unsure if she’s had her fill yet or toying with her next meal.

the story

The “flower symbolism” theme was definitely my first pick, as I love the concept of it and played around with it in my last visual novel, Asphodelium. I named the characters Dahlia (beauty, change) and Camellia (admiration, longing). Dahlia represents a change in Camellia’s life, a sudden burst of newness. Camellia longs for something different, some way for things to change.

The other theme I picked was “trapped with someone”, as the premise is a girl stuck with a vampire in her room. I didn’t want it to be outright horror, but still a little creepy and tense.

Dahlia "I've had enough pitchforks stuck in my face for today." Camellia "And why is that?" Dahlia "Because your kind isn't too welcoming to my kind." Camellia "I was asking why you were here in the first place." Dahlia "Obvious questions get obvious responses. I needed a snack, of course." Camellia "And you chose my residence." Dahlia "Didn't you say this was your fathers?" Her words curl around the last word, like ivy growing against a trellis. She's clearly already had a "snack", but was it enough to satisfy her? Or am I the main course?

Both of them are somewhat young, but there is still the element of the unknown. This creature clearly already had a meal, but does she want dessert? Is she just toying with her food? Or is she truly delighted to find someone her age to talk to?

With the time constraints I wasn’t able to flesh out much of their dynamic, but I hope it was still an enjoyable taste! The story ended up being about 2.3k words long with 3 endings.

the art

I started doing the art about….12 hours before the jam ended. I love working with fullbody sprites as they offer me a lot more versatility with posing, but I knew I didn’t have time for that here. This time I went for 3/4ths bodies, namely just so I could cut it off at the end of their dresses. I spent about an hour on each of these.

With the time crunch I didn’t have time to do concepts for them- I just winged it! I knew I wanted Dahlia to have pigtails, though she was originally going to have a purple theme. Camellia was supposed to have proper curls in her hair, but because the game starts with her being rudely awoken, I went with messy waves instead. Think of it as bedhead rather than her actual hairstyle.

I also quickly did a main menu artwork towards the end of my crunch in about half an hour. It was originally going to be the cover art on itchio but Dahlia’s >:D sprite looks more striking.

For the backgrounds I went with free photos from Unsplash and edited them. Personally, I like the look of filtered photos as backgrounds depending on the aesthetics of the game.

I didn’t have time to edit the GUI aside from the textbox, which was NVL mode.

the presentation

Dahlia is stylized fully in NVL mode, with the textbox to one side of the screen. I love NVL mode for scenes focused on narration and setting the right mood.

I was considering making the game a different resolution, but because the NVL mode is to the side rather than the entire screen I wanted to make use of the widescreen resolution.

The game is set late at night, so each of the backgrounds had to be nighttime. To match with this, I tinted the sprites to match each of them. For example, the above tint looks like this:

transform nightcolor: matrixcolor TintMatrix("#8594d6") * BrightnessMatrix(0.03) image dahlia night = LayeredImageProxy("dahlia",nightcolor)

I wanted to try something more complex like a tint + another light source overlayed onto the sprite, but ran out of time.

Another part of the presentation I did was to have a variety of shots. I had a very limited about of art to work with (only changing mouths and eyebrows, no arm poses or eye positions) so I knew I had to be smart about how I composited the scenes.

One thing I’ve done in other visual novels was to have one character further away and have another closer to the camera but their sprite turned black. This allows me to give the illusion of depth without having a sprite of the back of each character’s head.

for instance, this is that technique in Canvas Menagerie

Doing this in Dahlia was a quick and easy way to make the visuals much more interesting rather than swapping between two mostly static sprites the entire game.

The way I do it in other games is on a per-sprite basis, meaning I set brightness and position each time. It’s hectic, really! But because of the time limit for this jam, I was able to come up with a much quicker way to set it up.

transform lefttt: zoom 0.5 xalign 0.3 yalign 0.05 transform leftttb: zoom 0.8 xalign -1.6 yalign 0.1 matrixcolor(BrightnessMatrix(-1)) xzoom -1

The lefttt transform is for the character in the back- in this example, that’s Camellia. The leftttb transform (b standing for “black”) is for the character in the foreground who’s shrouded- in this example, that’s Dahlia.

Basically, the leftttb transform sets the sprite to a bigger size than the farther away sprite, sets the position, and then makes the color completely black before flipping the sprite (because this should be us seeing them from behind).

I also did quite a few small animations in the game, such as Dahlia dancing around or bouncing up and down. You define it once as a transform and can reuse it again and again.

transform dance: ease 0.7 xoffset -59 linear 0.25 ease 0.6 xoffset 74 linear 0.19 ease 0.76 xoffset -70 linear 0.3 ease 0.7 xoffset 102 linear 0.2 ease 0.8 xoffset 0

If you’d like to see the code in action, then guess what- I’ve released the entire source code for the game on GitHub! Feel free to sift through it to see the components in action and copy some of the code for your own projects. All I ask is that you do not redistribute the game (i.e. download the code, make a build in Ren’Py, and redistribute that as your own game).

wrapping up

I’m pretty happy with how Dahlia came out. It’s short and visually distinct and helped “prove” to myself that I’m capable of making visual novels in a weekend still. I tried to avoid spoilers here, so if you haven’t played it already then give it a try!

— Arimia

[blackblooms]

The stepping stone, an irredeamable post mortem

A big challenge when making any creative product is being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ideas you want to express. It can be very difficult to decide what will be part of the first story and what will have to remain unknown. Irredeamable was a particularly difficult case as i wasn`t only trying to make a cohesive world for the game itself, but the first building block of a greater setting that require its own lot of setups. In such conditions, everything felt important and it took a lot of restraint to cut things down until only a tease of the true scope remained. Overall, it was a huge mess to work out, but I'm happy with the result and i feel a lot more free and focused in the pursuit of my future projects now that the foundation has been set up to build upon and i can use the previous reveals to do a lot of foreshadowing with very little.

[smilestrawbunny]

Hey! So Fairytale Freak Out, or the spin off to Little Red Memories has been cancelled. But, that means I get to freely share all of the art I made for it and tell you a bit about what could’ve been!

You played as Hunter Wolf, living a happy domestic life with Bonnie Roux, someone who he thought he was married to… Only to find out that wolf culture and rabbit culture are very different, and Bonnie doesn’t view their bond with the same intensity he does.

That aside, there’s a different problem that arises for Hunter… The vigilante known as “Robun Hood” shows up in town, and reveals himself to potentially be Bonnie’s long lost father.

Bad news for Hunter! He doesn’t trust this man, and after spending a really tense dinner with everyone, he decides that Robun is way too dangerous to stay in Bonnie’s life and must be gotten rid of… But Bonnie would never forgive him if he killed her dad, so what should he do?

He ends up enlisting the help of Bastone, Brick, and Hayley- a group of pigs for hire who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, for the right price…

They all make a plan to assassinate Robun in front of Bonnie and Hunter, so Hunter can’t be blamed for it, and Bonnie won’t hate him! (That makes logical sense… right? To Hunter it sure does!) Unfortunately, one of the pigs missed, hurting Miss Bonnie instead!

Hunter is not pleased… He enacts revenge on the useless pigs, killing off Hayley and Bastone. He doesn’t find Brick, but decides to deal with Robun first.

He finds Robun asleep on the couch next to a very awake Bonnie… Who helps him clean up the mess on his face! He can’t kill Robun with Bonnie right there, so he makes do with the love and affection from his beloved instead.

The next morning, Robun and Hunter are both trying to do their best to take care of Bonnie during her recovery… But they end up fighting instead, with varying results depending on a quick time event.

Amidst the commotion… Bonnie goes missing! A certain someone wasn’t happy over his two siblings being murdered, and decided to enact a bit of revenge himself by kidnapping her.

Throughout the game, the player makes a lot of decisions and there are quick time events that upped your “affection” with Bonnie. There were three endings planned depending on what your affection with her was like at this point.

If she favored Robun more, then Hunter goes and kills Brick. He doesn’t realize that Robun was behind him the whole time, and took the opportunity to kill Hunter himself. Robun blames the death on Brick and saves Bonnie, trying his best to give her a happy life going forward.

If she favored Hunter the most, then Hunter takes the opportunity to kill both Brick and Robun. He similarly blames their deaths on each other, and eventually asks Bonnie to properly marry him. (She says yes!)

If she had a more neutral opinion, then both boys save Bonnie. They realize that both of them are important to her, and she would be devastated should anything happen to either of them… So they choose to coexist, for her sake.

It was really hard to keep all of that condensed… but that’s that! It’s sad this game won’t ever see the light of day, but perhaps the new characters might show up in one form or another one day. Thank you for reading and looking at my hard work! ^^

[ophanimkei]

RehAIbilitation Retrospective

crossposted from itch.io

Hi everyone.

It’s been a while since I released RehAIbilitation.. like a year? I had intended to write a post mortem shortly after release, but ADHD and game jam exhaustion resulted in me putting it off for quite some time. I’ve just been thinking about RehAIbilitation a lot lately, so perhaps it is finally time.

I’ve gotten a lot of really sweet messages over RehAIbilitation’s existence, and some people really identify with Eleanor which makes me really happy. She’s a character I put a lot of myself and people I love into, so the fact that she’s relatable to others causes me to experience a special kind of joy as an author.

RehAIbilitation began with Eleanor. Eleanor was originally was a lolita who appeared in facility and eventually became bloodier and bloodier until her dress was stained with red, making her a guro lolita. This was before I thought of RehAIbilitation at all- it was mainly just for silly fun for myself. I’ll put a drawing of what she used to look like.

I got really wrapped up in Eleanor for some reason. She was like some kind of parasite digging its way into my brain. VNCup was announced, and I was pretty delighted since I had an excuse to make this vn that was kicking around my brain. 

I wanted to make a robot nurse, admittedly inspired a bit by services like characterAI (sorry). I am a bit fascinated by how roleplay AI often ends up adjusting itself to please you as the player (or do what most players finds pleasing to the point of irritancy). I ultimately think this is what AMA is doing. She is constantly adjusting, figuring out the best way to convey information to the patient. I think she is very flawed as a result. Eventually, you’ll be trapped in an endless loop of information you know or have heard before. She can only help you so much.

Anyway, I have more thoughts on my dear Ellie. I wanted to discuss some of my writing as it pertains to her thoughts of herself and her actions.

I think of myself as just a cis girl, but I did try my best to speak from the heart from Eleanor. A lot of traits of Eleanor criticizes herself for I think are common in brown women in general (not just brown women even). I see trans women talk about these traits too, so I wanted to bring this to the table. Only one reader has brought this to my attention as noticing it, so perhaps I did a poor job in text making it apparent. But… now I can talk about it here.

While I was surrounded by a lot of the same symbols of beauty growing up (dolls with thin waists and narrow shoulders, small noses, big eyes, etc) interacting with trans women really opened my eyes to the diversity and beauty of girlhood. As a teenager, I was surrounded by a lot of white queer people who would often describe me as “handsome” or “androgynous” despite this kind of being painful to me as I figured out my style and fashion sense as a confused 16 year old. I experimented with my gender a lot in an attempt to navigate exactly what suited me best as the girlhood that had been advertised to me throughout my life never seemed to quite fit.. But as I interacted with more trans women and lesbians, I realized I love being a girl and I love girlhood. 

I kind of wanted this to be a love letter to those trans women who allowed me to see things more clearly. Of course, I got sensitivity readers as I didn’t want to do anything clumsily or overstep. I definitely understand there are some people who believe you shouldn’t tell stories that aren’t yours and I do understand this as a lot of stories are told so clumsily, but.. I guess, as a black girl, I kind of always wished my favorite authors and game developers would include people like me in their stories, so I try to take a similar approach in my own work. Like, I was really excited when Ryu decided to include a lot of different characters of various backgrounds in Ciconia, and well, anyone who has read Umineko knows that it has some of the most graceful handlings of the subject in the medium written by someone who isn’t a trans woman.

Anyway, I also really want to thank Zed. I had dreamed.. since I was a young teenager of working with a friend on a project, but I always worried I was too neurotic or people were too unreliable. Zed was really wonderful to work with, and he constantly supported me and read over bits of my work to steer me in the right direction. I also want to thank my friend Kail for letting me basically throw up my anxieties at him LOL. I always get really anxious in the middle of making big projects, but it worked out, and I still really love rehAIbilitation. I really hope I can revisit the characters Eleanor and Caliope in the future.

See you soon!

[guhuhugames]

🔔Hear ye, hear ye, gather round for the 'Love & Country' post-mortem!🔔

With our baby now more than three months old, it was high time we begin reflecting on things...

Please be sure to read, and don't hesitate to leave a comment! Thank you to everyone who has played L&C so far--we wouldn't be here without you!

xoxo,

Team Guhuhu

[loressa]

Succor postmortem:

https://loressa.itch.io/succor/devlog/919027/succor-2025-update-postmortem

[katherine-ellen-mellors]

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow

Post Mortem...

1/2

The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow is a pixel-art platformer based in a haunted hotel where a murder has just taken place. The aim of the game was to create a puzzle platformer that incorporates the use of clues, equipable items, moving platforms and several types of ghosts.

The game would finish if one of two conditions were met;

The player got too scared and ran away;

this is visualized and programmed through the use of a "Spook Meter" that increased depending on what ghost type the player came in contact with.

2. The player found all clues to solve the murder mystery

Clues were scattered in between the rooms and pertained to different NPCs that inhabited the rooms of the hotel.

The scope of The Curious Case of Hotel Hollow, was a dream and a half. It was a lengthy endeavor to meet half of our scope in the allotted time, and it has come so far in it's development.

There is still plenty of work to be done on this project, but we are happy to announce that it is in a workable and playable state!

Some roadblocks ...

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

There were some roadblocks we have encountered along the way - as you do with many things of great proportion.

One such roadblock was the scope of the game. We had 5 weeks to create a viable project and to bring The Curious Case to life, however with our scope, it was unable to be perfected in time for release.

Never the less, we are happy with the progress made and are keen to continue developing it in the future to bring it to its full potential.

From assets, to level design - we held grand ideas and great progress. unfortunately, implementing them takes a great deal of time when creating a prefect integration.

Here is a list of what we could implement on my aspect (Sprites and animation)

List of Items in order:

Player character walking sprite

Scared Ghost (Enemy type)

Sad Ghost (Enemy Type)

[marron121]

If you played A story told by the stars, the visual novel @lauraqwerty and I created, and are curious about how it came to be and some of the details on the development, we wrote a Postmortem about the game, almost half a year after its release (although it feels way longer than that 😵)!

We wrote about the first concepts of the game, some of our tips and things we learnt along the way, so consider reading it on the links below! We would love to hear what you guys think 😊

Postmortem (English version)

Postmortem (Spanish version)

[bgiegamedevblog]

Assignment 3 Postmortem

The main gameplay loop of the game is solid but lacks refinement and innovation to truly capture its audience. A unique visual style would greatly benefit the game as well as some balancing changes such as reducing the amount of healing gained from powerups. It was also difficult for players to figure out which powerup the got so it would be a good idea to implement some sort of unique visual/audio cue to represent each powerup. The game was regarded as moderately fun by the players which shows some room for improvement. One possible adjustment to make the game more fun would be to reduce the overall difficulty potentially by changing to a more arcade-style movement system like in a SHMUP.

[deviantdev4321]

Platformer Postmortem post:

Firstly, my apologies for not being able to make any more significant updates since my last post, since I was relatively ahead already, I decided to prioritise other units as assignments started coming out for everything right when I posted the previous post.

Onto the postmortem. I learnt a lot with this project, from basic platformer movement, to implementing assets, coding in Gdevelop, and designing 2D art and animations. These all came with time, practice, tutorials and so on. The things that challenged me more so were the intangibles, the balancing, the colours and the overall feel of the game. I think my game lacked a bit of identity and one reason for that is definitely lack of content due to lack of time, but I feel as if my main protagonist didn’t fit into the level design I made. It felt very difficult to balance and didn’t flow as well as it could have. Overall I did learn a lot. Problem solving in coding, trouble shooting, trial and error all being very prominent in the creation of my game. I am happy with what I ended up with considering it was my first go however. I learnt a lot and it will always be close to my heart

Thankyou, Eliot

[qwertyprophecy]

Mortholme Post-Mortem

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has been out for two weeks, and I've just been given an excellent excuse to write some more about its creation by a lenghty anonymous ask.

Under the cut, hindsight on the year spent making Mortholme and answers to questions about game dev, grouped under the following topics:

Time spent on development Programming Obstacles Godot Animation Pixel art Environment assets Writing Completion Release

Regarding time spent on development

Nope, I’ve got no idea anymore how long I spent on Mortholme. It took a year but during that time I worked on like two other games and whatever else. And although I started with the art, I worked on all parts simultaneously to avoid getting bored. This is what I can say:

Art took a ridiculous amount of time, but that was by choice (or compulsion, one might say). I get very excitable and particular about it. At most I was making about one or two Hero animations in a day (for a total of 8 + upgraded versions), but anything involving the Queen took multiple times longer. When I made the excecutive decision that her final form was going to have a bazillion tentacles I gave up on scheduling altogether.

Coding went quickly at the start when I was knocking out a feature after another, until it became the ultimate slow-burn hurdle at the end. Testing, bugfixing, and playing Jenga with increasingly unwieldy code kept oozing from one week to the next. For months, probably? My memory’s shot but I have a mark on my calendar on the 18th of August that says “Mortholme done”. Must’ve been some optimistic deadline before the ooze.

Writing happened in extremely productive week-long bursts followed by nothing but nitpicky editing while I focused on other stuff. Winner in the “changed most often” category, for sure.

Sound was straightforward, after finishing a new set of animations I spent a day or two to record and edit SFX for them. Music I originally scheduled two weeks for, but hubris and desire for more variants bumped it to like a month.

Regarding programming

The Hero AI is certainly the part that I spent most of my coding time on. The basic way the guaranteed dodging works is that all the Queen’s attacks send a signal to the Hero, who calculates a “danger zone” based on the type of attack and the Queen’s location. Then, if the Hero is able to dodge that particular attack (a probability based on how much it's been used & story progression), they run a function to dodge it.

Each attack has its own algorithm that produces the best safe target position to go to based on the Hero’s current position (and other necessary actions like jumping). Those algorithms needed a whole lot of testing to code counters for all the scenarios that might trip the Hero up.

The easiest or at least most fun parts for me to code are the extra bells and whistles that aren’t critical but add flair. Like in the Hero’s case, the little touches that make them seem more human: a reaction speed delay that increases over time, random motions and overcompensation that decrease as they gain focus, late-game Hero taking prioritising aggressive positiniong, a “wait for last second” function that lets the Hero calculate how long it’ll take them to move to safety and use the information to squeeze an extra attack in…

The hardest attack was the magic circle, as it introduced a problem in my code so far. The second flare can overlap with other attacks, meaning the Hero had to keep track of two danger zones at once. For a brief time I wanted to create a whole new system that would constantly update a map of all current danger zones—that would allow for any number of overlapping attacks, which would be really cool! Unfortunately it didn’t gel with my existing code, and I couldn’t figure out its multitudes of problems since, well…

Regarding obstacles

Thing is, I’m hot garbage as a programmer. My game dev’s all self-taught nonsense. So after a week of failing to get this cool system to work, I scrapped it and instead made a spaghetti code monstrosity that made magic circle run on a separate danger zone, and decided I’d make no more overlapping attacks. That’s easy; I just had to buffer the timing of the animation locks so that the Hero would always have time to move away. (I still wanted to keep the magic circle, since it’s fun for the player to try and trick the Hero with it.)

There’s my least pretty yet practical solo dev advice: if you get stuck because you can’t do something, you can certainly try to learn how to do it, but occasionally the only way to finish a project within a decade to work around those parts and let them be a bit crap.

I’m happy to use design trickery, writing and art to cover for my coding skills. Like, despite the anonymous asker’s description, the Hero’s dodging is actually far from perfect. I knew there was no way it was ever going to be, which is why I wrote special dialogue to account for a player finding an exploit that breaks the intended gameplay. (And indeed, when the game was launched, someone immediately found it!)

Regarding Godot

It’s lovely! I switched from Unity years ago and it’s so much simpler and more considerate of 2D games. The way its node system emphasises modularity has improved my coding a lot.

New users should be aware that a lot of tutorials and advice you find online may be for Godot 3. If something doesn’t work, search for what the Godot 4 equivalent is.

Regarding animation

I’m a professional animator, so my list of tips and techniques is a tad long… I’ll just give a few resource recommendations: read up on the classic 12 principles of animation (or the The Illusion of Life, if you’d like the whole book) and test each out for yourself. Not every animation needs all of these principles, but basically every time you’ll be looking at an animation and wondering how to make it better, the answer will be in paying attention to one or more of them.

Game animation is its own beast, and different genres have their own needs. I’d recommend studying animations that do what you’d like to do, frame by frame. If you’re unsure of how exactly to analyse animation for its techniques, youtube channel New Frame Plus shows an excellent example.

Oh, and film yourself some references! The Queen demanded so much pretend mace swinging that it broke my hoover.

Regarding pixel art

The pixel art style was picked for two reasons: 1. to evoke a retro game feel to emphasise the meta nature of the narrative, and 2. because it’s faster and more forgiving to animate in than any of my other options.

At the very start I was into the idea of doing a painterly style—Hollow Knight was my first soulslike—but quickly realised that I’d either have to spend hundreds of hours animating the characters, or design them in a simplistic way that I deemed too cutesy for this particular game. (Hollow Knight style, one day I’d love to emulate you…)

I don’t use a dedicated program, just Photoshop for everything like a chump. Pixel art doesn’t need anything fancy, although I’m sure specialist programs will keep it nice and simple.

Pixel art’s funny; its limitations make it dependent on symbolism, shortcuts and viewer interpretation. You could search for some tutorials on basic principles (like avoiding “jaggies” or the importance of contrast), but ultimately you’ll simply want to get a start in it to find your own confidence in it. I began dabbling years ago by asking for character requests on Tumblr and doodling them in pixels in whatever way I could think of.

Regarding environment assets

The Queen’s throne room consists of two main sprites—one background and one separate bit of the door for the Hero disappear behind—and then about fifty more for the lighting setup. There’s six different candle animations, there’s lines on the floor that need to go on top of character reflections, all the candle circles and lit objects are separated so that the candles can be extinguished asynchronously; and then there’s purple phase 2 versions of all of the above.

This is all rather dumb. There’s simpler ways in Godot to do 2D lighting with shaders and a built-in system (I use those too), but I wanted control over the exact colours so I just drew everything in Photoshop the way I wanted it. Still, it highlights how mostly you only need a single background asset and separated foreground objects; except if you need animated objects or stuff that needs to change while the game’s running, you’ll get a whole bunch more.

I wholeheartedly applaud having a go at making your own game art, even if you don’t have any art background! The potential for cohesion in all aspects of design—art, game, narrative, sound—is at the heart of why video games are such an exciting medium!

Regarding writing

Finding the voices of the Queen and the Hero was the quick part of the process. They figured that out they are almost as soon as writing started. I’d been mulling this game over in my mind for so long, I had already a specific idea in mind of what the two of them stood for, conceptually and thematically. When they started bantering, I felt like all I really had to do was to guide it along the storyline, and then polish.

What ended up taking so long was that there was too much for them to say for how short the game needed to be to not feel overstretched. Since I’d decided to go with two dialogue options on my linear story, it at least gave me twice the amount of dialogue that I got to write, but it wasn’t enough!

The first large-scale rewrite was me going over the first draft and squeezing in more interesting things for the Queen and the Hero to discuss, more branching paths and booleans. There was this whole thing where the player’s their dialogue choices over multiple conversations would lead them to about four alternate interpretations of why the Queen is the way she is. This was around the time I happened to finally play Disco Elysium, so of course I also decided to also add a ton of microreactivity (ie. small changes in dialogue that acknowledge earlier player choices) to cram in even more alternate dialogue. I spent ages tinkering with the exact nuances till I was real proud of it.

Right until the playtesters of this convoluted contraption found the story to be unclear and confusing. For some reason. So for my final rewrite, I picked out my favourite bits and cut everything else. With the extra branching gone, there was more room to improve the pacing so the core of the story could breathe. The microreactivity got to stay, at least!

A sample of old dialogue from the overcomplicated version:

Regarding completion

The question was “what kept me going to actually finish the game, since that is a point many games never even get to meet?” and it’s a great one because I forgot that’s a thing. Difficulties finishing projects, that is—I used to think it was hard, but not for many years. Maybe I’ve completed so many small-scale games already that it hardly seems that unreasonable of an expectation? (Game jams. You should do game jams.)

I honestly never had any doubt I was going to finish Mortholme. When I started in late autumn last year, I was honestly expecting the concept to be too clunky to properly function; but I wished to indulge in silliness and make it exist anyways. That vision would’ve been easy to finish, a month or two of low stakes messing around, no biggie. (Like a game jam!)

Those months ran out quickly as I had too much fun making the art to stop. It must’ve been around the time I made this recording that it occurred to me that even if the game was going to be clunky, it could still genuinely work on the back of good enough storytelling technique—not just writing, but also the animation and the Hero’s evolving behaviour during the gameplay segments which I’d been worried about. The reaction to my early blogging was also heartening. Other people could also imagine how this narrative could be interesting!

A few weeks after that I started planning out the narrative beats I wanted the dialogue to reach, and came to the conclusion that I really, really wanted it to work. Other people had to see this shit, I thought. There’s got to be freaks out there who’d love to experience this tragedy, and I’m eager to deliver.

That’s why I was fine with the project’s timeline stretching out. If attention to detail and artistry was going to make this weird little story actually come to life, then great, because that’s exactly the part of development I love doing most. Projects taking longer than expected can be frustrating, but accepting that as a common part of game dev is what allows confidence in eventual their completion regardless.

Regarding release

Dear anonymous’s questions didn’t involve post-release concerns, but it seems fitting to wrap up the post-mortem by talking about the two things about Mortholme's launch that were firsts for me, and thus I was unprepared for.

1. This was the first action game I've coded. Well, sort of—I consider Mortholme to be a story first and foremost, with gameplay so purposefully obnoxious it benefits from not being thought of as a “normal” game. Still, the action elements are there. For someone who usually sticks to making puzzle games since they’re easier to code, this was my most mechanically fragile game yet. So despite all my attempts at playtesting and failsafes, it had a whole bunch of bugs on release.

Game-breaking bugs, really obvious bugs, weird and confusing bugs. It took me over a week to fix all that was reported (and I’m only hoping they indeed are fully fixed). That feels slow; I should’ve expected it was going to break so I could’ve been faster to respond. Ah well, next time I know what I’ll be booking my post-release week for.

2. This was my first game that I let players give me money for. Sure, it’s pay-what-you-want, but for someone as allergic to business decisions as I am, it was a big step. I guess I was worried of being shown that nobody would consider my art worth financial compensation. Well, uh, that fear has gone out of the window now. I’m blown away by how kind and generous the players of Mortholme have been with their donations.

I can’t imagine it's likely to earn a living wage from pouring hundreds of hours into pay-what-you-want passion projects, but the support has me heartened to seek out a future where I could make these weird stories and a living both.

Those were the unexpected parts. The part I must admit I was expecting—but still infinitely grateful for—was that Mortholme did in fact reach them freaks who’d find it interesting. The responses, comments, analyses, fan works (there’s fic and art!! the dream!!), inspiration, and questions (like the ones prompting me to write this post-mortem) people have shared with me thanks to Mortholme… They’ve all truly been what I was hoping for back when I first gave myself emotions thinking about a mean megalomaniac and stubborn dipshit.

Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for being around.

[foxglovegames]

DEV LOG: 2024 Recap

Helloooo everyone!

This year genuinely flew past us. As a studio, we had our ups-and-many-downs, but we're feeling more positive going into 2025. Let's start with what we got done this year before moving onto our plans for the future! :)

⭐Released Trouble Comes Twice: Bonus Stories!

Feels like we released this ages ago, but it hasn't even been a year yet! Back in April, we released the first (and only) public DLC for Trouble Comes Twice. For us, Bonus Stories was a satisfying goodbye to these characters after spending years with them; we hope that players who decided to give the DLC a chance feel the same.

It'll always be a bit bittersweet moving on from a project you've worked on for so long and dedicated so much towards. There's always going to be what-ifs, but we're mostly just proud of what we did achieve and kind of relieved we made it to the finish line haha. If you're interested in reading more about our experience working on Trouble Comes Twice and what we learned, do check out this post mortem we wrote! We hope it offers some insight for players who might be curious and other vn devs who'd like another dev's take.

⭐A tumultuous start for our next visual novel Burn the Midnight Oil

Since the end of 2023, we've worked on and off on our next visual novel Burn the Midnight Oil. The plan was to launch a Kickstarter campaign and demo before the end of 2024 - since it's now Dec and that never happened, you can imagine things did not go as planned ahah... Unfortunately, we experienced several setbacks, one of the biggest being that our lead artist had to leave the project some months ago due to health issues.

It took us a minute to find the right person to step in and take over the character art, but we recently welcomed a new lead artist whom we're incredibly excited to be working with!

So, where does the project stand right now?

Our new character artist is chipping away at the sprites and CGs for the game, which are the main assets we're still missing to finish the demo.

Script is written, edited and coded in

BGs are completed and the UI is close to completed

We're planning to tackle the soundtrack in the coming months, but our composer BellKallengar has already finished an amazing main menu theme! We can't wait for you to hear it.

For our own sanity and the expectations of our players, we're not making any promises or guesses on when you can expect the demo, Kickstarter, or official announcement until we know for certain. The only thing we can confidently confirm is that it's coming in 2025 (unless we're struck by the worst bad luck ever).

We're going to resume regular monthly updates when the game has been announced, but until then, we're sticking o quarterly updates instead so the next one would be in March. (Unless we manage to announce the game before that! A dev can dream.)

⭐PLANS FOR 2025

There's only one concrete plan - officially announcing Burn the Midnight Oil, releasing the Kickstarter demo, and launching our crowdfunding campaign! Melli and I already finished the demo script earlier this year, so we've been working on outlining (and writing) the routes for the full game. We hope to make as much progress as possible on that before the Kickstarter launches. Hopefully, that should save us a lot of time in the long run.

We hope everyone's having a fantastic holiday season! See you all in the new year! 🥂

[feverdreamjohnny]

Orbo's Odyssey - Post Mortem

My Feelings About The Game

It's an odd thing to try and pull together your thoughts about something so chaotic.

I guess it'd be easier to just catalogue how my emotions evolved as the project went on, and then wrap it up by trying to pull apart how I feel now, as arcane as that is.

I've been a part of a private developer community for a bit now, and during a majority of my time there I felt sort of like a fish out of water. I guess it was just weird seeing people at the top of their craft while my work sort of paled in comparison. A majority of them had a background in developing character action games or platformers with intricate movement systems, and that was absolutely outside the range of what I understood.

Late 2022 I decided to try and make a movement system with a really strong focus on momentum so I could feel "at home" with the other devs. So I made a small tech demo where most of Orbo's moveset was formed.

In the end it didn't really make me feel more confident in my work, but at least I proved to myself that I could tackle unfamiliar waters and make headway. Regardless, I left the tech demo where it was and continued to work on Nowhere, MI for the next few months.

I made a lot of progress on Nowhere, and around late November a publisher reached out to me to offer help. I was desperate, after all. I didn't have a lot of money to my name and this was the kind of lifeline I needed to secure so I could finish the game.

To cut a long story short, they kept delaying talks about the game over and over and it became increasingly clear to me that my dream of being funded wasn't going to happen.

I was sort of in a bad spot now. It was early 2023 at this point, and I was going to have to make a tough decision: delay Nowhere and get a retail job to make money (potentially losing sight of the project in the process), or find some other solution to secure funding. No other publishers were going to pick me up (and I really didn't trust a majority of them so I only had my sights set on a handful I felt I could trust), so I came to a new conclusion:

What if I just made something short, say in the span of a month or two, and sell it? Surely that would be easy.

Surely.

The Game

In March of 2023, I began working on the game. I wasn't sure what sort of format I wanted for the game at first, and I had initially considered a rogue-like arena combat game where you'd use the game's momentum mechanics to fight enemies, collect upgrades to improve your abilities, rinse and repeat.

The idea ended up feeling sort of strange when I began pre-production, so I ended up scrapping it.

I thought about the movement system some more and realized that it had a strange kinship to a game I had played just a month earlier: Super Kiwi 64.

Then I thought about Siactro's other games, how they were similarly small-scope platformers that seemed to perform well on Steam and Switch, and I realized that if there was something that would suit my own development style (focused around exploration and secrets), it was a 3D platformer.

The first month was fairly strong. I moved at lightning-speed, hammering systems into the game piece by piece. Collectables were done. Time trials (and their records) were done. Movement had been refined further and felt better than in the initial tech demo. There was also a lot of underlying structuring that I won't get into because it's boring (but important).

About a week in I even started working with my friend Tim (who's a professional environment artist), and we began working together on the hub environment (we brainstormed the layout, I designed the greybox, and he wrapped it up with the environment art).

It was going great, but as March was nearing its end I began to realize what I was dealing with.

"Oh, well yeah I mean I knew it wasn't going to be possible in a month! I'm sure if I grit my teeth it'll be done by the end of April!"

So April came along. Tim and I finished the hub area, I got the world portals set up, and eventually we moved to the first level of the game, Shlarp City.

Tim managed to get a decent chunk of the decorative props done, but circumstances were changing and he had a fulltime job in the industry to attend to, so he had to leave the project.

I reasoned "well, I sort of know how to do environment art and I guess I can just go on without help."

Shlarp's greybox was done, and I was sort of happy about the layout. Some friends playtested the game and liked the movement, so I felt a bit more optimistic about the project.

Despite the boost in optimism, I was starting to feel some kind of dread leaking in. My nights were becoming more frantic and troubled, more than they already had been.

I moved onto the next level, reasoning that it'd be best to get the greyboxes for all of the levels finished first, then return for an art pass afterwards. It was the sensible thing to do, after all.

So I began work on Dunbarrow Mines, and this time I was alone. I finished the greybox, and while I wasn't a huge fan of the level, at least it was done. I moved onto Sleepytime Manor and similarly got the greybox finished. Even since the beginning of the month, something was starting to grow inside of me. April was coming to a close, and I still had another level to greybox, a boss fight, secret areas to add, and an art pass on the entire thing. I hadn't really developed much of a game at that point, just 3 barren levels.

And so May came along.

And this was where it all went to hell.

I had been suffering from a lot of issues in my personal life for a while. The year prior had been particularly traumatic and the waves coming from it weren't done passing over yet. If anything the terror was that the major event from the last year hadn't even finished coming to fruition. The stress from everything had caused me to develop a disorder that made my blood acidic, melting away at my nerves. I fought hard and managed to improve my health, but the damage was done and the occasional return of the neuropathy was just a reminder that my life was spiraling downward.

I entered a period of intense stress and depression as waves of terrible memories came over me. I became neurotic. Started having trouble designing levels. It was already an issue for me, but as my mental state deteriorated I was hitting brick walls over and over.

I had my back against the wall. Game development was my only purpose in life, after all. I had been built for it, sacrificed so many hours to it, put everything else aside for it. The only thought going through my head was that I was dying, and that this stupid game was going to be my graveyard.

So roughly two months came by, with sparing work on the game. I finished Monolith station, but it had to be redesigned 3 times to reach the version you currently see in the game today.

The neurosis made me insane. Constantly seeing my peers succeeding while I flailed desperately in a pit was definitely not helping matters.

But something changed in June.

The Garden

I always had an on-and-off again relationship with plants. I had a sort of preternatural skill with growing things, but my interest waxed and waned a lot. The main thing that stuck through this on-and-off relationship were herbs, since they were easy to cultivate and they needed very little maintenance during the periods where I was losing interest.

As I began to take game development more seriously around halfway into 2021, I stopped gardening entirely.

But something very strange happened in the June of 2023. I was frantically compelled to return to it. I raked, toiled and weeded until I had a plot. Then I started buying seeds and began cultivating vegetables again for the first time in 2 years.

And for the first time in this nightmare I was finally happy about something. I don't know what compelled me to start cultivating plants again, but whatever it was, it rescued me from a very long, dark road.

After 2 weeks, I finally finished the final boss of Orbo's Odyssey.

The game needed a lot more work, but I was finally getting a foothold after months of misery.

Eventually my friend Ben was able to help me with the project, and we made a lot of headway. We brainstormed new ideas for how the player could get gear parts. He modeled a load of props. I scripted a load of systems. Finally, the game actually began to look like a game.

Ben was really important. He was optimistic about the project and wasn't suffering from burnout the way I did, and he helped me get out of my fugue. I can't thank him enough for his help.

After around half a year of hammering, we finished the game.

3 weeks after that, we released it to steam.

And about 2 weeks after the release, we're here now.

The Takeaway

Typically in post-mortems you talk about what you would've done differently, but I think this ending might be a bit different.

I'm not really proud of the level design. I think I also could've done better with my share of the environment art in some levels. I think there could've been more details. I think there could've been more content.

But there's no use kicking myself for what could've been. Of course the next game will be better. The mental state I was in during the development of this game was dire and it had a major impact on the quality of my work. I had to break out of a really bad mindset and try to find a better way of engaging with my life. That wasn't easy.

I think some gamers like to imagine that something that's fun to play was fun to make. It's true that sometimes there are moments where you get excited during game development, but at the end of the day the majority of it is just pure work and toil.

In the end, the reviews on Orbo were very kind. Even the negative reviews were at bare minimum sorta funny.

Hilariously the reviews that bothered me the most were actually positive. The perspective of these reviews was that the game was really the story of some little kid taking his thumb out of his mouth and naively making something he thought was fun. It mainly felt like a way for the reviewers to excuse the weaker elements of the game.

These are the reviews I hate the most. I don't care that they were positive. They're infantilizing. It makes it come across as though the shoddier elements of the game weren't a product of a person having a mental breakdown, but of a child smacking blocks together and making mistakes because he didn't know better.

If you really view art like that, I want you to lean in very closely and listen: Most of the time, people suffered to make something you could enjoy. You're welcome to praise or shun the art by itself, but don't patronize the creator for their effort. I didn't have fun making Orbo. I hated it. And even though I hated it I still tried to put passion into it, because I care about my work.

Anyway I'm glad it's over with. If I attempted to develop the game now it would probably be significantly better, but that's mostly because I've found better methods of managing my mental health.

I have to get back to work on Nowhere, and eventually I have to work on Peeb Adventures. For now, though, I'm taking a break. I'm tired.

Before I go I just want to thank some people.

Thank you Ben for being supportive and helping me make this game happen. I couldn't have done it without you, and I mean it.

Thank you Socpens and Grayfruit for streaming the game and for your kind words. It really means a lot to me, and it gave me a lot more confidence about Orbo's Odyssey post-release.

Thank you Tim for helping early on. I know it was a brief period between us, but I do appreciate the work you did.

Thank you (in no particular order) Bryce, Simone, Jett, Aaron, Quinn, Drew, Ian, and Cosme for being supportive of my work.

Thank you for the folks in the private dev server who were particularly supportive as well.

Thanks for reading.

[crescencestudio]

Intertwine Post-Mortem

i lied. i don’t know if this qualifies as a post mortem. i don’t even know what a post mortem is LMFAOkxkak

but this is my post intertwine release “devlog” chock full of dev experiences, behind the scenes looks, and more for those who want to know more about the process of creating intertwine and thoughts i’ve had in reflection of release/experiencing otojam!

it’s long bc in usual crescence fashion, a bitch loves to talk. so buckle in gamers!

my thank u offering for all the downloads and reviews

Committing to OtoJam

for those who didn’t know, i entered otojam on a sort of Whim. because i am deep in the alaris trenches, i didn’t want to distract myself for too long from my main game, especially when there are people who have paid to support development. after talking to some friends, i thought otojam would actually be good for me. i’d been struggling with burnout and was in a creative rut. on top of that, i’d been doing this dev thing for almost 2 years with no full game to show for it (cries). even if otojam would take time away from alaris, perhaps it would give me what i needed—a kick of Motivation, a dash of Creativity, and some GD Fun.

so i decided about two days into otojam to officially enter it! And thus Intertwine made its appearance

the graphic that started it all

Oh, we are Otojamming

the intertwine editing team assembled and we got to work. because i already had a pretty solid idea of the game (it had been an idea i was sitting on for a while), there was less time spent on brainstorming and more time spent on writing and editing the script. for playtesters, i already have a group for alaris, and a couple of them kindly offered to playtest intertwine for otojam. i spontaneously decided to cast a va after some discussions with the editing team, and max joined. then, with One Week left of otojam, faefield productions entered the scene!

regarding development, the first month was largely dedicated to the script. weeks 1-2 were writing and fleshing out. weeks 3-4 were dedicated to editing and fine tuning. when my editors were reviewing the script, i was creating all the art assets. after the first month, i would say we had most of the gui, one cg, and the base sprite done!

at that time i felt pretty good. we were making good progress! i even was productive on alaris and irl work!

then the Second Month happened lmao.

i always forget the Horrors of fine tuning a build. i’m projecting right now, but i’d argue a lot of developers forget or underestimate the fine tuning/ quality testing stage. during the 4th-6th weeks of otojam, i wrapped up all the assets needed for the beta build. i finished the remaining cgs, all sprite expressions, and the rest of the gui. then i coded all the features into a beta version: learning how to create a messaging system for the first time, nailing the multiple iteration mechanic, cutting and editing the voice acting audio, and other Horrors that i’m sure i’ve since blacked out from my memory all happened during the sixth week of otojam. i was truly in the Coding Trenches.

BUT i got the build done and was able to send it out to playtesters for a week of quality testing. spoiler alert: the build wasn’t perfect and there were many bugs that needed fixing. the seventh week—the second to last week of otojam—was dedicated to this as well as my own tinkering so that the build felt completely Perfect (making sure expressions r exactly how i want them, transitions and audio fade perfectly, animations are perfect, that godforsaken clickable string to get to the next iterations that No One was clicking. all of the tiny aspects that make a game feel really polished). I am Not good with grinding. Suffice to say this was probably the most miserable week.

me every hour: DID U CLICK THE STRING

But once again WE MADE IT! Near the end of the seventh week, orpheo of faefield productions reached out to me and after gushing to each other about how big of a fan we are of one another, we spontaneously collaborated for a custom OST. Enter the eighth week, and we were ALL grinding. playtesters trying out a second build within only two days. editing team making fine tuning edits for the best script. coding. voiced lines that needed the slightest bit of tinkering.

Come 3PM on june 30th (otojam ends 6pm june 30th) and i’m coding the new music room, adding and double checking the new ost, and more. Two hours pass and it’s 5PM. We have less than an hour to submit. 5:30something comes by and with shaky hands, i release the game page and submit to otojam.

flashbacks to college 11:59 deadlines fr

On top of last week crunching, i was also dealing with extreme prerelease stress. i’ve never released a full game before. a demo, i can change. i can still tinker. this isn’t the final product. But a Full Game? My god. what if ppl hate it? or worse, what if ppl are so apathetic, they don’t even look at it and it gets sent to the void? after all, this year’s entries are stunning. they are Bold and Creative and Fun and intertwine is so….

Boring?

Some Lessons—Take Them or Leave Them

lesson 1. don’t listen to prerelease anxiety. that is the devil talking to you. if u have friends at least they will play and be nice to u. if u don’t have friends and no one plays, well it’s not the end of the world!!!! there’s always the next game. and u fckn know what? at least u Made that shit. keep ur head high, icon.

lesson 2. have fun and take care of yourself. the reception to intertwine has been amazing. i couldn’t be happier with it. but at the end of the day, the reason i look back on otojam fondly is because of the very dear friends i had to support me and have fun with me thru it all. life is meant to be enjoyed. it’s meant to be about memories, not metrics! never forget what’s truly important in life (cheesy, everyone boos me, but i’m right idgaf)

where would i be without them

lesson 3. plan. there is room for spontaneity and flexibility. after all, u can’t guarantee everything will go to plan. but with otojam being a crunch, plan as much as you can beforehand to not stress urself out during it. with intertwine, i had a somewhat outline and at least a pretty good idea of the concept, game mechanics, narrative design, mood board, etc. i had character concept art of van. if i had to do all of this during otojam we wouldn’t have made it i’m so srs. i also think when u plan as much as u can before, u have more room and time to have fun during! more polished build and more loving memories it’s a win win.

early concept art tbh i never thought it’d see the light of day

Typical Brand of Crescence Cheesiness

if you’ve made it this far ur a real one. all i have left to say is thank you for the support. while i was proud of intertwine (until the last week of otojam lol), i didn’t know what the response would be. to receive so many kind words has been unbelievably heartwarming.

as i said before, i’ve been in this game dev thing for 2 years with nothing to rly show for it. but during otojam, i could really feel the skills and experiences i’ve gained shine thru. i had a better handle on narrative design, coding things, integrating gui, and even more dev friends to talk to (thank u to all my friends who have played and messaged me U DONT KNOW HOW MUCH I LUV U). it was rewarding in a different sense compared to releasing a game, and i really am glad i did otojam to give me that perspective <3

a lot of things seemed to cockblock otojam this year (or so i’ve heard) between the sheer amount of entries (go us tho), the release of a lot of aaa otome games, and then twitter literally breaking less than 24 hours after otojam ended. even with all that, i’ve been so humbled and honored to see ppl enjoy intertwine. the comments i’ve gotten have honestly made me emotional, with many of you comparing it to games that i heavily admire and or expressing emotions i never would’ve dreamed to have been able to instill.

the otojam experience has been incredible, from the memories to the game to the reception. and i’m very grateful for all the people who made it that way! thank you for enjoying our silly little game made with our grubby little fingies. i hope you all continue to enjoy intertwine (and the other otojam entries from this year) and van!

i luv u all!

[ophanimkei]

Goodbye My Love

warning for mental illness

​Hey! Ommatophilia is out and released! Imagine telling past me I'd be horrible sick releasing Ommatophilia, then right after I'd get the flu then a killer sinus infection. Pretty awesome. And cool. Right? Right. Yeah. Haha.

I guess I'm pretty happy with how Ommatophilia turned out. Part of me wants to do more to it and the other part of me never wants to look at it again. Spending such a long amount of time on a game is pretty exhausting haha, then getting sick and being unable to advertise the way you want to sucks as well. It is unfortunate but what can you do really? It feels weird now that it's done. I don't know if this will sound normal, but.. Ommatophilia for the past 4 years has honestly been my… everything? When I had my shitty roommates, I was still working on Omma. When I had my shitty job at PF Chang's, I doodled the characters' in my notebook and wrote down notes for the story while I worked. I'd stay up late after my shift getting game dev done because I knew I needed to make some progress or the story would never be done.

I took breaks from it, sure, but it never really left my mind. I was always rotating it around- talking about it with friends, writing about it in my notebook, thinking about things I didn't like in it, problems I'd fix, if I'd ever finish, if I'd abandon it.. The fact that I couldn't allow myself to commit suicide until Ommatophilia was finished. Honestly that's the really big one.

I've finished Ommatophilia, and like, I had all of these projects I told myself I'd tackle afterwards, but I just feel weird. It's like I can't start any of them. Usually I view smaller projects as a break from Ommatophilia or some random thing I may not finish- then I go back to Ommatophilia to fill my time, but now I'm just floating in space.

I know I can still make projects. It's fine. Meat Girl released and it's the most successful thing I've released in probably ever? I'm kinda sitting here wondering if it'll be the most successful thing I ever release? I mean, it doesn't matter, I'm so happy people resonated with Meat Girl! I literally just made that because I was miserable and needed to take a break from Ommatophilia and just had some concepts kicking around in my head.

I actually had a feeling it'd garner popularity because of the aesthetics and game jams it was in though it still exceeded my expectations. I thought I was hyping myself up a bit. It's hard having one thing be popular because you're just kinda tempted to keep doing the same stuff over and over, but logically I know that wouldn't work and also I'd rather die than let the other stories in my head die in hopes of holding on to the smallest bit of popularity Meat Girl had.. It would be shameful, and if I did that, I hope I'd wake up in some kind of hell where my characters torture me forever.

That is to say I never really expected Ommatophilia to have a fraction of the popularity of Meat Girl and the fact that I got any feedback at all is shocking. I'm very happy I could make a few people cry. That's really all I wanted. For some reason though, I think about my time with Ommatophilia and I find myself crying too.

I'm crying now actually. I hadn't realized it. When I was 17 or 18 I think.. I don't know, sometime during Covid, Adventure Time ended, and I cried so much. I didn't even like the finale that much, but I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Like I'm sobbing now. I don't know.

I'm listening to the Ommatophilia playlist and there's a song my abuser put on it for me. And this song is really important to me despite the worst person in my life showing it to me. It's the Reeling by Passion Pit. I don't know. I never really told anyone who showed it to me. I just always told people I really liked the song. Listening to it while writing Ommatophilia's post mortem hurts. It really feels like I'm leaving so much in my life behind you know.

And I mean like, I know these characters can appear in my stories forever and they will. It's just.. Ommatophilia itself.. With its character sheets I always felt frustrated with, my constant anxieties about the writing, waking up at night feeling so anxious and thinking “I guess I'll develop Ommatophilia since I can't sleep..”

What do I do now? I mean I know what I do? But. This was it. All my childhood dogs have died. My childhood best friends aren't in my life anymore. Music doesn't sound the same. Food doesn't taste the same. Adventure Time is over. I always had Omma. I could always go back to it. But now it's over. I didn't realize what Ommatophilia being over would be like. I always knew relief would come but.. I've just been lying in bed. I crave to open my laptop and write the characters interacting. I want to see Black and Mercy banter. I want to watch Blue struggle to speak. I want to think about Angel's inner thoughts. I want to think about the snow and the decaying small town.

It's like my old home that I can't go back to.

I have new stories. I'll be making new things forever. It just feels weird. I miss everyone. I miss the past. I miss when everything was easier. It'll be fine. The future will be fun. It's just hard right now. I didn't really realize how I felt.

But we're good. We keep going. It's fine. We've got milfs, murderers, dykes, and various other women to write now. I mean I made a story about a meat fungus in October and Ommatophilia was basically finished by then, so clearly my brain still has stuff going on. The pity part has to end. We roll.

I love everyone who plays Ommatophilia, even if you dislike it. I love Ommatophilia, and I'm happy I spent my last four years working on it, even with all of its jank. It's dear to me. I'll miss everyone. I'm so happy I could tell the story I wanted to tell, no matter how badly it hurts. I've never finished a story and had it hurt this bad. It must've really been worth it in the end.

I love you! I love you! You were my everything! Goodbye!

[agonycrossbow]

Translation Discussion: Did the RE2make devs say that they were building up to a more realistic romance between Leon and Ada in an eventual RE6make?

To put it simply: No. They didn't.

The line of dialogue in question is:

原作に急にお互いを好きになりすぎてておかしいって話しになったんですよね。もうちょっと順番があるだろうってね

which has commonly been interpreted as:

"It wasn't realistic that Leon and Ada fell in love immediately. So, we wanted to make sure they had more interactions first."

Which... is close. But implies something about a long-term vision that was never actually said. @godtier was nice enough to go through the translation of this quote piece by piece.

At the time that I asked for this translation and we were talking about it, I didn't say anything about what I know personally about the remakes' development.

But in addition to this translation, here's some context that a lot of people in this fandom seem to be missing.

This was said in an interview specifically about RE2make just after the game went gold. And at that time, there were no plans to develop RE4make in-house. RE4make was originally going to get outsourced to M-Two. Capcom only pulled it back in after RE3make drew heavy criticism, because M-Two were the devs on RE3make.

To be specific, the quote from the RE2make devs happened in 2019. RE4make got pulled back in-house in 2021.

So at the time this interview was given, there's no possible way that the devs could have been talking about an eventual RE6make, because they did not expect to be the ones working on an RE6make, if one was even ever going to be made at all -- because they didn't even expect to end up working on RE4make.

Which is interesting when you see that the quote in question "seems like a post-mortem."

In fact, the RE2make devs very coyly omitted any confirmation or denial of Leon and Ada's romance still existing at all in the remake-verse.

This is why it's so important to look at the original Japanese before actually throwing around "the devs said." That's how games of telephone happen, misinformation gets spread, and really nasty fights break out.

This is something that RE fandom is guilty of a lot, as seen in the other huge misunderstanding with regards to Leon and Ashley's relationship in RE4make.

So be careful out there.

Just something to keep in mind.