Postmortem +Thank you!!

Thank you very much for playing one last time. !!

Thank you so very much for 900 plays/downloads on this game 🤯🙇‍♂️I'm so glad it's well received! I am still in the middle of returning comments and ratings, but I've been reading every one! 😭 Thank you so much everyone!

About the Game

I first found out about Velox Fabula game jam the day it started so I went into this project with no prep time :') It turned out quite well, albeit a bit stressful since for once I didn't have any scope limiting rules so I went about all out as I could with the art. On the first night, I came up with a short outline, then went hunting through my list of 400+ OCs for who the story could fit. Lo and behold-- I found Mercury and Tune from the depths of my memory. 

I hope someday, I can redo the full story with the whole cast in a VN/KN format. But that'll be a long time to come, if ever.

Post Mortem

Writing: Once I picked Mercury and Tune to use for the story, writing per the outline came pretty naturally. I only deviated near the end. Originally, I had planned for the MC to be thankful his best friend asked him to take the final trip. But, alas, Mercury is a much more stubborn and self centered guy. Even though he is more grown up in one last time, he still has a difficult time processing grief. And Tune probably blames himself for the sadness he caused Mercury, which is why he thanks him for agreeing to take the trip for him.

I was actually really surprised at the word count I ended up with. I tend to be wordy with my writing so I was expecting myself to go into the 3-5k range. Upon writing, I was afraid it would end up less than 1k words (which would annoy me since I finally had the freedom to make a short game outside of O2A2). The final result of being a little under 2k was a good medium.

Art: When I finished the script and started listing out the number of BGs and CGs I needed, I wondered if I was crazy. It's a less than 2k word game! Why would I need 2 sprites, 3 BGs and 3 CGs?? I looked to myself in horror, and then sketched out some thumbnails.

I also had to spend some time redesigning the two main characters since their original designs were from... 2015? My design sense was a little outdated and they needed to be colored anyways. (When they were finally colored, I knew I had to finish this project for them.)

Despite how much art I put in for this project, I actually wanted to do more! I wanted to have additional facial expressions for Mercury and Tune in the CGs, but even I told myself that would be too much for a 10 day project. Also regrettably, I prepared this expression for Tune, but never used it. I really liked it!

Finally, regarding the artstyle itself...! I wanted to try something new, wanted to experiment... so I looked to a story that's captivated me for years: Toilet Bound Hanako-kun! I've always admired AidaIro's colorful style and struggled to understand how they pick colors... And given the way they're able to write a dark and serious story despite the bright and cheerful style... I wanted to try it too! So resulted the art style for this game haha! I still need a lot more practice, but it was nice to step out of my comfort zone.

Programming: I also stepped out of my comfort zone for this one...! I used the camera function and the action editor, which despite all my anxiety for the past few projects... was incredibly easy to use! I still need to learn a lot about staging and effectively using the panning to portray certain moods. But baby steps, I suppose! 

Music: I also tried something new in the music... I combined the music with ambient noise! In retrospect, I should've tried to control the volume a bit more. I wanted the background noise to come through subtly and not compete with the main tracks. 

Thank you, once again, for playing this game. Nearly everything in this project was experimental and I was really nervous about how it'd be received. So I'm really glad that folks have found it enjoyable!