My first completed game. Feels weird to say that. I've helped others complete their games for many years now, but I've never had one to call my own. Not for a lack of trying, mind you, but my ideas never get past the planning/ conceptual stage.

What this game in particular is for O2A2 is one of many endings for the large "White Room" visual novel idea I had years ago. Will it ever become a large visual novel? I don't know. But if a 1k word VN is all that results from that "big" idea, I'm okay with that.

Writing

To be honest, I didn't think I'd be writing this story for the game jam! I was originally attempting to join a team for art since I knew the scope was small enough for me to manage. The jam was starting sooner than I realized, however, and I couldn't bring myself to join a team.

So I decided to try and make my own.

I was originally going to have a romance-business merger-blind date to marriage-story thing for this jam because I wanted to give players the ability to ask many questions and control the conversation. I started planning out the idea, but I didn't get very far. Writing to completion has always been a challenge for me, and I got bored rather quickly. I almost gave up on trying to participate, when I noticed a document amongst my other files.

"Revisiting the White Room"

This game was another old concept I didn't do much with. A few months ago, for fun, I revisited the idea to really think about how the story would play. It'd be a multi-ending story of survival. All of them could escape, or none of them will.

I decided to play on that newer concept, and make this game the 'epilogue' of one of those many endings. I spent the first 2-3 days of the jam writing up the script. I definitely used a lot of thinking power because my brain was hurting the whole time, haha.

When I was almost done, I realized I was doing way more story building than I should within the scope and went past 1k words. Not that any of it was bad, but I was wasting the story's time with what I was writing. I cut down as much as I could, trying to keep it all as efficient as possible. After completion, I still felt like I could make it more efficient, but I let it go. "If the script wasn't good, let it not be good."

After finally playing the game the day after launch, I think I can tell myself I did an alright job.

Character Design

While I did write the concept years ago, I'm a character artist before I'm a writer! So I drew some concepts.

Amusingly called this group of fellas "The PAC".
Noah used to have a different name, but NAC didn't hit as hard.
So I ended up dropping the group name schtick.

Not exactly sci-fi~y as one would think the game would be. I didn't really have a strong idea for the setting at the time. World-building isn't a particularly strong forte of mine. Unless I'm actively trying to write out a story with one of my concepts, I don't really touch setting. I don't really know why I gave them these outfits in particular. 

Before drawing up the updated designs, I was already trying to draw in an anime/ manwha style. It's something I've wanted to try getting better at for a while. This occasion seemed like a good time to show off my improvements in that front.  

While I could have drawn in my typical art style, I didn't think my game would have as big of a reach as it did without a more anime leaning style. I like how I usually draw, and many others do, but I've never felt my style had an immediate appeal. If you saw both thumbnails of the game with the difference being the sprite concept above and the little chibi on the right, which one would you click first? I'd be happy to be proven wrong, of course.

Going back on topic, drawing these characters in a more anime style was pretty fun! The first thing I did was simply translate Noah into that anime style as you can see on the left. I didn't want to put too much energy into a redesign since all folks will be seeing is just a bust portrait.

I looked up a reference for the collar shirt so I could draw it a bit better and changed the placement of the bow. Why did I change the placement you may ask? You could probably guess cx

On the other side of things. While I couldn't have the other two be present due to the restrictions of the jam, I wanted to try drawing them in an anime style too! I did these at work on a little sticky note. My biggest struggle is still jaw lines, haha. Good thing I'm drawing a bunch of dudes for practice. Forced myself to get better at jaws and necks.

I tried drawing August the first time digitally, but it just. Would. Not. Come. Out... Pause.

As you can see in the older drawings above, he has a rather fluffy but slicked back hairstyle. I was struggling quite a bit to find good refs and stopped for that evening so I wouldn't frustrate myself further.

I had a second wind during my work break the next day when I was reading "The Villainess Flips the Script!" I found a really good reference and the sketch above is what came out. Thank you, Ruediger~! Kinda sucks I couldn't find a way to put his second set of hair tufts but oh well.

Caleb was not a struggle lol. Gave him suspenders by accident tho. (Wait, right, I had to change how is hair was parted cuz it felt goofy when I was drawing it in the sticky note. )

Game Development

Tbh I have MegaPig9001 to thank for offering his initial assistance with the game. I was originally just going to do everything myself, but I got lucky. I didn't think to ask for help from the others within the Fantasy Mechanics group, but they were fine jumping on in xD

I don’t have too much else to say in regards to the rest of the team’s work. They all did an amazing job with their parts! Zzzz, you did a really good job with the change of perspective in the room. JaCoder, I can’t thank you enough for implementing all the stuff I requested and working with me in finding alternatives when it wasn’t feasible!

Megapig also submitted a game like the crazy little rascal he is. You can play it here. He was able to finish in much less time since his game was a smaller scope. I definitely recommend playing it if you want some laughs after playing my game ^^;

I think I’m about to pass how much I wrote for the VN so I’ll leave it off here xD

If you actually read everything here, thank you! I don't usually do stuff like this so I probably rambled quite a bit.

If you haven't yet checked out the game, you can do so here: