Devlog and Postmortem

Hi! This is Altila, the dev.

Welcome to the postmortem of Trace. This game is made for Spooktober VN Jam even though nothing is spooky about it. If you have played the game, thank you for playing! If you haven't, please play the game first to avoid spoilers. Important stuff will be underlined or just read the first sentence of each paragraph. This is going to be long. By the way, sorry for my weird English.

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[RAMBLINGS]

First and foremost, it is a miracle that I managed to finish this game! September was still holiday month in my uni, so I decided to come back to my country since it had been a year since I came home. On top of some traveling and jetlag, I also had leftover assignments that I hadn't finished yet due to procrastinating. Oh, not to mention, I got sick for like a whole week. I started sneezing the moment I landed due to the change of dunno... air quality? I heard from my doctor friend that it was quite a common thing. Thanks to those, I was legit writing the story with my head almost empty because it was so close to the submission deadline and I was so exhausted. The lacking storyline, other than because I was suck, was also caused by that. I wanted to work on it on the plane but it wasn't possible due to the turbulence (there was a typhoon). I got help from my friend, NasRhyie to select some of the tracks. But, I was so tired and stressed because I lost an important document that I ended up just slapping everything in. When I finished, submitted the game, and played it the other day (after some rest and sorting my lost document out), I realized that I messed up haha.

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[THE ORIGINAL IDEA]

-- "Your social media is cursed, literally!"

That original idea of Trace was about a young exorcist called N and a content creator girl who called for an exorcist after a series of weird things happening around her. So, N took a mission that was above his skill level to prove himself to his mentor. The idea was the same,  N the exorcist boy had to exorcise a curse cast by a shaman via the target's username. N would encounter the shaman and attempt to find out the shaman's identity (which he succeeded somehow). However, I scrapped this idea for various reasons, including:

• There are some elements that I wasn't sure. My problem with writing fantasy was sometimes my brain tried to rationalize everything. For example, how in the world, an apprentice was able to track down the shaman? Also, I couldn't think of the conclusion of this scenario.
• Around this time, my country had a huge problem that went viral overseas (clue: blue background). That problem resulted in even more problems came to light. Living overseas made me more aware of the issues in my home country than when I was living there. Lmao. Inspired by the outrage that day, I changed the setting to this Mr. Anthony thing. From the parasocial relationship story, this story turned into a bit political. But really, I think at some point people (including me) experienced anger and frustration towards the flawed system in our respective places but could do nothing about it. 

By the way here is the early design of N:

N had a similar hairstyle as Ivan but shorter.

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[STORY AND CHARACTERS]

I mentioned that this story is inspired by whatever happened in my country but yes, just inspired. The characters are fictional and different from the real world. For this project, I tried to write without narration. Guess what?  It was hard, especially because I had to keep the conversation going while providing the necessary information.

About the characters:

• The organizations
  • Artemis' website name, actually I also cannot spell it properly haha. The name is the backward version of Mount Cithaeron. The concept came from Artemis' curse on Actaeon. I didn't have the time to draw it but actually, the curses that Ivan defeated were in the shape of animals (cats to be precise), chasing down Anthony.  
  • The exorcist organization, Arkathos was originally called Katharos but I mistakenly drew the symbol A on Ivan's jacket. Instead of correcting the image, it was easier to change the text because I drew first and wrote later. Ivan and Pavel are from the West Branch (Branch 3). There are three levels: bronze (apprentice), silver (mid-class), and gold (elite). Upper silver and gold can take on students like Viktor with Pavel or Pavel with Ivan. The teacher is called 'Master'.
• Artemis
  Unlike the original draft, I made her to be completely mysterious here because talking about her identity will only result in overscoping (not like I planned something, though). She knew Ivan's father and his apprentices including Pavel. She was so easygoing to the point I felt like she was mostly just messing around with Ivan and Pavel in this story. Her specialization was long-ranged curses and had some supernatural working for her. Also, in case you are wondering, yes, she is evil.
• Ivan
  Personality-wise, not too different from the original draft. He was still a kid who had his hopes, dreams, and ideals. He admired his father and decided to follow in his footsteps as an exorcist. When he just entered middle school, his father passed away due to a supernatural-related thing or that was what Pavel and others told him. As his apprentice, Ivan respected Pavel. In the second draft, Ivan was this rigid, model student who often scolded Pavel for his Master's air-headed personality but I thought it would be better for Ivan to behave like an excited kid so I changed it.
• Pavel
  In the second draft, when Ivan was a model student, he was an air-headed laid-back master who often forgot things but I changed it to a proper adult haha. He was basically my voice of reason that kept me sane when I read IRL news. Maybe not now or soon, but believe that people who did bad things will be punished. You can think that he and I inhaled copium and hopium but yes, that's what I want to believe. Pavel had a senior under Viktor (the branch socmed admin) but he was the one who personally came to Ivan's house to deliver the news that Viktor had passed away. He tried to keep Ivan out of harm but also thought that Ivan had to know the truth about his father's death. That was he was a bit reluctant to deliver the news of Ivan's first mission. His family name was unknown and he was an orphan sponsored by Viktor.
• Anthony, Katerina, Cherry
  Anthony was designed to be a bad person. Katerina was playing fool the whole time on not knowing about the online curse.  His mistress' name was Pink Cherry. Weird? Cringe? Yes. That was the point. In reality, people like Anthony might or might not get caught by the police, but I wanted a hopeful conclusion here so he got caught. Actually, I was thinking about having Anthony on-screen during exorcism but I also think it would be better to have an ending where he died while traveling with his private jet with his side gal. More crimes to expose. So, I made him go away completely. The day I wrote about the plane crash news was the day of my flight by the way so I was a bit scared haha. Fortunately, nothing happened.
• Viktor
  Ivan's late father with a great sense of justice. A gold star rank exorcist. He just had to report that Anthony and his whole gold digger family. Without strong backers, what awaited him was death. Got two apprentices. What happened to him left scars on those two, especially the senior apprentice. Also the reason Pavel was being very careful with rules.

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[ARTS]

I actually started drawing CG first and drew sprites as I wrote. So, of all things, I finished the CGs first. But that time I hadn't decided what should I use those CGs for. Classic me. I mentioned it on my Twitter but the way they dressed, especially the way they wore that jacket was the result of my hyper fixation on a game called Ketsugou Danshi. The sprites were not shaded because I didn't have time. Actually, I planned to have Artemis and Katerina have sprites but there was no time for that. Just imagine this beautiful and cold lady dressed in expensive clothes and smelled like expensive perfume who looked like you like a pebble in the side road for Katerina. As for Artemis, I love seeing her as CG! :DDD

I actually like Pavel's design a lot (because green hair). His ponytail was once again, inspired by my favorite character in Ketsugou Danshi. He ended up having many sprites variations because of how the story went. His side images had two versions. His standing sprites had silver star variation for bad ending purposes. I also quite like the way Ivan had a black jacket and white shirt while Pavel had a white jacket and black shirt.

I had no energy left for the main menu so forgive me. Oh, by the way, this is what the first textbox looked like. 

I changed it because it didn't really suit but left the menu as it is.

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[CONCLUSION]

Thank you for playing! Sorry for everything you found lacking there.

 When I was writing this, I suddenly realized how I cut a lot of things. Getting sick was outside my prediction (like who can predict that). Stay safe, healthy, and sane, everyone!

Altila