Game On! The Mayor

Posted in Game, Game On!

AHA! I almost forgot about this, lmao. This game was made around April 2020, as a task for the applicants to DevelUP (I’m already a mem by this time). Like in I ♥ CRS (which I think I forgot to mention in that post), the game should be made by at least one app together with one mem to guide them.

For this game, I made it with my 2 close friends: one of them is an app, the other is also a member. We named our team “Double AnEl” based on our names… Don’t judge our team name, lol – even though the point was that it’s supposed to sound weird.

So, I’ll change up the format a bit to include basic deets:

Title: The Mayor
Developers: Double AnEl

So, the theme this time was Social interaction (or lack thereof). Well, timely theme because this was made during the pandemic lockdown.

For our game, we went over the political aspect of COVID. The game is pretty much a satire on how our government did nothing about it (no, rather than nothing, they made profit out of it. FFS).

It’s a visual novel revolves around main character – The Mayor (hence the title) – and his decisions as the mayor as to how to resolve a beginning zombie pandemic apocalypse. The advisors and the assistant (who always has the best decision) explains the current situation, then each of them suggests a possible solution. It is the mayor who has the last call on what to do. And of course, as a visual novel, there are multiple endings.

Honestly, at this point, I don’t exactly remember what the output of the game was (I have the copy of the game, I don’t want to play it because it sucks). I do remember our original roles though:

  • My artist friend was the programmer
    • Tbf, all of us in the team are in the same course/degree (Comp Engg), so we all know how to code. But she hasn’t experienced being the programmer for a game project, so we decided to give the role to her so she can experience being one (she’s always the artist in all her game projects as far as I know).
  • My other friend, the applicant, was the game designer and the supposed writer
    • She was the one who suggested the whole idea of the game, so of course, she was the game designer.
    • As for the “supposed” writer, she was the one who wrote the first few bits. But she became busy with school and all personal life, so she couldn’t continue it.
    • She ended up as the artist (ish).
  • Lastly, there’s me, the supposed artist, who then ended up being the writer
    • In contrast to my artist friend, I was always the writer/game designer of all the games I’ve made (with a team, I only have one solo project so far which I’ll talk about next time).
    • Aaaaand… I don’t know how to art. I mean, I know how to draw and a little bit of pixel art, but all at a noob level. So I kinda wanted this to be a new experience. But since my other friend got busy, I needed to take on the role of the writer and she took the role of the artist (ish).

I won’t dwell too much on the details of the game, since the game is just that – a visual novel satire about the lack of proper actions from our government.

So, what went wrong, what went well, and what did I learn?

What went wrong?

  • We didn’t have a concept paper or any prior planning before starting with the project. We just started with the game idea and went along with it.
  • The story/dialogue is really bad. My bad, yes. It’s filled with too much social science and politics and whatever, so those who are not interested in the field won’t appreciate the game. Plus, while I’m a little-versed in social sciences (coming from a social science major before shifting to engineering… plus being part of a political-ish organization), I only know the theory and not the practice. If you know the saying “Theory without Practice is blind”, that’s pretty much what happened, I wrote it blindly without knowing what I’m actually writing about.
  • Again, the dialogue is real real bad. It’s lengthy like a book, or even a novel, and there’s only a few interactive parts – the choices the mayor makes. Aside from that, there’s no interaction in the game, and barely some CGs inserted. Again, it’s my bad because I just crammed it (well, I took on the job the last minute). So the game ended up badly, it’s boring as hell.
  • Lastly about the story, it’s really bad. Yeah, three times the bad. I know how to write a comedy-ish (like in the I Dere U project I did (with a different team)), I don’t exactly know how to write a satire. I couldn’t mix comedy and politics properly (again, because “Theory without Practice is blind”).
  • Then… about the art. As I mentioned the artist (the supposed writer) was busy, so we ended up with no actual art at all. Instead, we used some Powerpuff girls (lol, I don’t remember why decided with PPG) assets – the backgrounds and characters. Since the writing isn’t a well-written satire, it looked like the only satire part was the art. And felt out of place, so there’s definitely that.
  • Again, about the art……………. It was stolen art. PPG assets are, of course, owned by Cartoon Network. So technically, what we did was illegal. Well, tbf, the game was just a personal project which we didn’t publish (and probably never will), so while it’s illegal, we can’t be sued for using assets we just took online.
  • Not related to the game per se, but none of us really learned anything outside of what we already know. I became the writer and I already knew how to (albeit this one being my worst ever – btw, I also write fanfics and original works sometimes, I just don’t post them. Maybe someday when I’m confident enough). My artist friend didn’t learn anything new about programming a game, it may be a new experience, but that’s that. Lastly, the applicant in the team didn’t learn anything about making a game. And it was a bad first gamedev experience for her, just like I did with my first gamedev experience. But unlike me, she ended up not continuing with the application process – partially due to her busy schedule, but also because of the bad experience (because it looked like the org was just a gamedev org by name (which is not the case, btw; we just did badly because of everything else that were happening at the same time (ugh, f*ck COVID) so we had the game development as last priority.

What went well?

  • Since it was a visual novel, we used Ren’py. It was easy to program the game. Especially given that our programmer in the team already knows how to use Ren’py and she already knows how to program in the first place.
  • The art being PPG was also funny. While it was out of place, it looked funny as hell. Well, it’s a double-edged sword.
  • Even though I was blindly writing the political parts, I do think I did the endings/set-up the endings well. There’s a good ending then multiple bad endings if the mayor doesn’t balance the problems the zombie apocalypse (*cough* the pandemic *cough) properly.
  • The game, while a bad satire, was funny at some parts. Especially the endings. My forte is writing shitty funny endings after all, lol – and tons of bad endings, I love bad endings. The featured image is actually the picture for one of the bad endings where the citizens end up surviving the zombie apocalypse but there was a resulting famine. (I hope I don’t get sued for using that photo in the blog post, lol).
  • And I guess, one more thing that went well was that the “art” was easy to finish because, well… we just took it from the internet.

What did I learn?

  • Well, it’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again, but I never actually put the lesson into practice. We should never cram a game. But honestly, I don’t think it was our fault at all. The sudden lockdown made everything difficult, and the game being an extracurricular activity, meant that we had to put it down the priority list.
  • I learned that… I want to learn more about creative writing to properly write a good story/script/etc instead of doing it as trial-by-fire where I just write using my instincts. Both because the script this time was crap (compared to my other works (like I Dere U or Amor’s Code (which I haven’t talked about yet…)) and the fact that I didn’t execute the satire well. So yeah, I need some crash course of some sort for creative writing.
  • I also kinda learned that I should learn how to actually draw so I don’t feel pressured to cram learning drawing for a game. Honestly, it was a huge weight off from me when I passed the artist role to my friend.
  • Not exactly a lesson just for me, but I learned that in the beginning part of the project planning, we should’ve had planned what we wanted to learn and do.
  • One last thing, unlike in my The Smaller, The Bigger??? experience, even if we were all close friends and shared the same single braincell (lol), the no-schedule system didn’t work for us. So yeah, project planning is important and better communication + coordination is needed instead of only doing everything last minute to passing tasks between each other and all.

All in all, the process of developing The Mayor was messy which led the game to end up badly. Lesson learned, won’t repeat the same mistakes again… maybe.

Game On! is a post series about my game development experience. I’ll be putting retrospectives on the experience, as sort of a tip to future game developers, especially to me, and to my other orgmates (in DevelUP).

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