Hello! This is Altila, the project's leader.

Finally, the game is out as the submission of Otome Jam 2023! This is my first time having a personal project with more than one person helping me. So, I want to share a little about the game's development. If you haven't played the game, please play it first because this might contain spoilers. First of all, please forgive my messy English. This is going to be long.

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1. Planning

Actually, I already thought of the concept before the game jam. However, at that time, I was working on another game for another game jam. I didn't plan to join two consecutive jams at first, but in the end, I did. When I decided to join the jam which was like a few days before the jam started, I started to plan it out on a piece of paper. I think I posted it on my Twitter. The original plan had more variations on the endings, but the gameplay was basically you click the same button over and over again. At this point, I was also still busy with my other game jam.

As I mentioned before, I was participating in another jam. That game jam finished in the middle of the otome jam's starting month. I started around the fourth week of May. In the earlier weeks, I tried to brainstorm more with Yui. This project was originally only by me and Yui. Since Yui also planned to release her game which I also helped out with, we didn't want to make something that needs many assets. 

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2. GUI

We decided that she would be making the BG and GUI and I did the rest. But there was a problem. None of us knew how to do things with GUI. I never touched the GUI before. While I participate in game jam several times already, I usually focused on sprites, CGs, and stories (I wouldn't make it in time if I cared about too many things). I tried to read the documentation and the renpy files so at least I know which assets that should be replaced for custom GUI. It turned out, many can be replaced with our own assets, but some need extra programming which I wanted to avoid. So, I rejected every idea that might need extra effort on my part. Sorry, Yui, and thanks for your understanding. Still, I had to edit some things myself because I didn't know I need those and I felt bad for asking Yui.

Let me be honest here. GUI is such a pain.

Fortunately, Mad Scientist was willing to help with the main menu. Thank God, like... seriously,

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3. Arts

The original plan only had one BG which is the bedroom. But, since there is no character sprite and the MC is self-insert, I thought it might be boring to just stare at the same screen over and over again. That was why the desktop existed. Then, another idea emerged. 

Why don't we use it to promote our other games?

The theme select feature was both advertisement and something like a form of thanks from me to the other two.

About Charon, the laptop assistant... he was the tricky one. I wasn't sure whether I should show his face or not. I decided not to. The ending CGs were basically the same drawing with different outfits, expressions, and accessories. Gotta say it was pretty fun to make those eight. Here is the picture I made as a reference for the personalities (the actual art is a little different, though):

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4. Gameplay

The original gameplay was as I mentioned before, you select among one or two sets of choices about what you wanted to do for the day. But, during the implementation, I felt like it was too....boring unless there was a timer or something. So, I decided to just custom (almost) every single of the daily events and added a few lines of story there. 

You can name your own protagonist, select the desktop theme, use the laptop, and based on your choices there will be 8 different endings!

It's slice-of-life with nonsense spice. 

But, isn't it for the submission of otome jam? Where is the romance?

W-well... I have no excuse. At least the MC is a girl trying to find a BF and Charon is a dude.

The biggest challenge on this part was... debugging. Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs and errors everywhere. Every time I tested the game, I found an error. Even after the release, someone found an error. What a mess. But, it's mostly working properly.

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5. Voice Acting

Honestly, I wasn't sure whether I should include it or not. Here was the problem: I know nothing about VA. I ask some people I know about VA and I was still hesitating. Although, I made the casting call form just in case. 

I was thinking about contacting a casting studio, but I feel like the time frame might be too short since I started out late. At that time, it was almost June and I haven't written a single thing or a single line for the character. I was too busy preparing assets and programming some features. And I felt that my idea was too abstract, so I kinda had an overthinking moment here. 

Yeah, I know there are a lot of VAs on DevTalk and some even followed me on Twitter. But, I'm an introverted person and I tend to be unsure about contacting other people I barely know. I didn't have any close acquaintances VA. On top of that, I don't know whether I can ask for free or not (since this is a game jam project) because in my mind VA is I dunno... a luxurious thing? If any VA read this, maybe they can help me with the answer.

Another issue with VA is... I rarely play English VN with English dubs. English is not my first language either, so I don't have any voice that I have in mind. This is also why I make the with or without VA feature.

In the end, I just ask someone I know from the local forum to help me out with the VA. Just for the experience. Still, I'm grateful to ChrisD for helping me out because I probably wouldn't add VA to my game. I sure got a lesson from here: I had to edit the volume myself so it wouldn't be too quiet compared to the BGM.

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6. Conclusions

Rather than a game, I feel like this one is more like my experimental ground.  I learned a few things about GUI. I made that screen for name input which I never tried before. I tried having VA. I gained many experiences, in exchange for getting burned out real fast. Two consecutive game jams, many things to learn and implement, editing assets, looking for BGMs, bugfixes, posting things on social media, and IRL stuffs. Those things really took a lot of energy and time which led me to put the story (and the game itself as a whole) to second. 

To be honest, I'm not quite satisfied with the result. Then again, it's due to my own lack of experience and knowledge. I feel a little bad to the three people who helped me with this game because the result is...like this. In the future, I think it's better to prioritize what I think matter the most instead of doing a lot of things but ended up forgetting the important thing.

Thanks for reading!

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PS: I won't be participating in game jam for the time being.