Hi! I'm the developer, Altila.

The Witch's Name is another one of my solo works. As you can see in the credits section, I did almost everything myself. In this post, I want to share some of my experiences while making this game. I recommend anyone who reads this to try the game first because of possible spoilers.

Why did I decide to join?

Well, no particular reason. At first, I was just a little interested in the SpooktoberVNJam. But, it looked like a big game jam, so I was a little hesitant. Also, I had no team. I'm a bit of a shy person who tends to overthink a lot. I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to ask others to make whatever was inside my head come true. Moreover, I didn't have a clear idea of what to make. So, I thought if I wanted to join, I would just do everything myself. As for why didn't I join someone else's team, I had no intention to. 

Brainstorming

Actually, when I was still thinking about what to make, the game jam already started. The concept I thought about was a sacrificed girl playing a game with a demon. However, at that time I still couldn't think of what game should they play. If possible, I didn't want anything that was hard to code. I had a chat with a friend who recommended point-and-click or puzzles. Then, I thought about guessing name. At first, I thought about selecting card or question answering for clues, but in the end, I decided to just stick with clues spread out over the story.

I posted on Twitter on September 7th, implying that I wanted to join SpooktoberVNJam.

Arts

The first one I did was making the sprite arts. Actually, I made the sketch for Joan during class. For her clothes, I browsed some mourning dresses for references. For the demon, I didn't quite know what should he wear, but I wanted him to wear a black cape. Since it will be about a witch, I made him a black cat demon. I intentionally made the three characters wear something black. As for the overall colors, I decreased the saturation quite a lot and made the shade darker to match the spooky theme. For the expression, I only planned three for each of them. Around this time, I hadn't thought about the stories or their personalities at all. The script was still blank. But really, I should at least have thought about their personalities and planned more for the expression. When I was doing the script later, I felt like I needed more expression.

Background, oh, background. One thing that I just couldn't draw, but I tried. I usually used blurred pictures as BG, but this time I wanted to draw the BG myself. I felt like drawing with lines would make me confused more, so I just did the sketches and the actual drawing lineless. I drew the two BGs in black and white because I swear it would be a mess if I colored them. With the help of reference pictures and helpful brushes, I managed to finish them. I tried to apply some gradient to the black and white one and it looked quite okay, so I decided to keep both versions. If anyone noticed, I used to colored and monochrome in different situations. Lastly, I put the sprites on the BG to adjust the brightness and saturation.

About the scribbles, yes, scribbles. I actually didn't plan to make any CG. I kinda wanted to make something like a picture book, but to be honest, I felt like it would be a lot of work. There were still so many things to do and I didn't want to use up my time and energy on drawing. I tried to do some sketches on black BG and it looked kinda good, so I decided to use it. While the game arts were the first ones I did, the scribbles were actually added while I wrote the stories. Wouldn't know what to draw without the context, right?

As for GUI... I didn't touch any of them except for adding the drawing to the main menu and lowering the transparency of the menu box in the main menu.

Story Writing

The trickiest about writing the story was writing the first part of the story. I couldn't remember how many times I changed the first part. In addition, at that time, I hadn't properly read the submission rules (which probably I should read first). I had to tone some things down, such as Joan's suicidal thoughts (It's not like she wanted to die, but it's just out of despair) and the villagers who were too obvious about wanting her to die or to kill herself. I had to remove those things. Well, I was glad I did. 

At first, I wanted Joan to be a stronger and aloof character. But, when I thought about it again, the story would probably not work if she was like that. In the end, she was like the one you saw in the game. For the demon, that evil grin on his face was something that existed even on his draft. I felt like he should be a crazy character, but somehow he felt like a decent character instead. But, seriously, nobody said a fictional demon should act like a crazy evil spawn of Satan, right? I like him quite a lot because of how loyal he is to the witch despite sometimes calling her dumb. By the way, his nails could get longer and shorter as he pleased. As for the witch, yeah, she was designed to act like that, someone kind with low self-esteem who made questionable decisions because she was getting carried away with her feelings. 

As I said before, I didn't plan anything beforehand for the story. I even wrote the story on the renpy's script directly.  That was why I give precise word counts. Even I had no idea that it would be this long. This is probably the longest solo game I created on jam. When I had the inspiration, my fingers just moved on their own. Then, I found some places that need a little more explanation, so I added one or two sentences about them. For example, about the father and the mother. I had no plan to mention them, but it was just weird to me that her parents were suddenly gone like that.

The game has choices, but to be honest, I didn't know what should I do with the endings. I actually got stuck for a while on the last part of the story. Some things just didn't make sense, so I had to put another twist. I'm really sorry, but about the ending, I really didn't know what to do, so I just wrote whatever inside my head at that time.

By the way, friendly reminder, this is not a romance game.

The Name

Searching for the name of the witch was actually quite troublesome. I thought about names like Gertrude, but it was hard to make the hints and I thought that name will be a bit hard to guess. On the other hand, names based on colors will be too easy to guess. 

Since the clues were spread in the texts, so if you missed them, you wouldn't get the clues. When I asked a friend to test the game (at that time, I just finished the name-guessing part), my friend looked confused. That friend of mine didn't even catch any of the clues. So, I decided to make the option to show the hint page. 

Before Release

I finished the game on the 27th, so basically, I finished this game in around 20 days despite my suddenly busy IRL schedule.  A day before, I had a friend proofread this (I'm really sorry for my messy English and thank you) game. About whether I wanted to make it voiced or not, I hate to say that I didn't plan on doing so. To be honest, the number one reason being I had no time and energy left to think and code about this game. I was satisfied with the game and I wanted to finish this up as soon as possible so I could return to my RL responsibilities.

Afterwords

If you want to create VN by yourself, please do! It's not impossible. However, you need to manage your time properly and not forget about RL responsibilities. You can also consider using free resources, but be sure to check the license.

 With the release of this game, I will now go on VN-making hiatus.

Thank you for reading.