Acceptance is the tentative title for a game I made last August 2020 for a game jam on itch.io (Brackeys Jam 2020.2). The theme given was “Rewind”.
As I said, Acceptance is just the tentative title. This is because the game is still a work-in-progress… or maybe a project that’s meant to be forever incomplete. I’ll give more details below as to what happened in the project and why I didn’t complete it, and why I’m uncertain about completing it.
My interpretation of the theme was to merge “time loop” and “moving on”. I guess at first sight, the two ideas seem contradicting. But for those who haven’t understood, the concept is that moving on feels like a time loop.
My interpretation is heavily influenced by the jam being held on August. Maybe it’s because August is the start of classes every year, so August (and September) are heavy for me. A lot of my worst experiences happened on September (and February/March, but let’s ignore that). So whenever August comes, I start preparing to be affected by my September memories. Like the theme, it feels like I am rewinding every time. I have moved on, but sometimes, when I remember, the pain is still there and, perhaps, will always be there.
Back to the game, it’s a visual novel which I made it to center about the main character (very well inspired from me) and how they grieve for a lost loved one. Now, let me just clarify that there are 3 segments in the game, all inspired by my different experiences, and only the last segment is the real heavy one. The game, of course, is only inspired by my experiences and is in no way a (100%) replication of what happened irl. Though I did include important parts… parts that highlighted the event for me.
Click here to skip the game details which has a TW.
TW: Death and suicide (I won’t disclose much, but yeah, stop reading if you don’t like the TW).
The game starts with how I personally got the news about my friend’s death – through a message in an organization’s group chat (an organization I was applying to). It was from a gossip, and it hurt like sh*t. Not only did my friend die, but the way I had to learn about it was from a gossip and not an official statement of some sort. Not only did my friend die, but some people I know treated his death like gossip. (PS: Yes, that made me leave that group chat and defer from the organization).
Note that the game’s start and ending are the only ones that are inspired by that particular experience, the other two segments. The first scene (after the start, I mean) and the second are inspired by entirely different experience – so yeah, no deaths there, just emotional experiences.
The game then moves on to the first scene where the main character reminisces about the past and how their friend confided in them before. It’s about how the main character’s friend failed the exam and how the main character blindly and frantically tried to reassure the friend how an exam failure doesn’t make them a failure etc., etc. The choices I put into the game were all… not exactly bullshit, but had that sense of the main character being insensitive. Because that’s how the main character remembers the scene, they don’t remember what exactly happened (I mean, yeah, as the person I inspired the story from, I don’t remember either).
Then that’s the part where the game gets tricky, the game will loop a few times (iirc, 3 times), each time with different choices, with the choices getting better instead of just insensitive comments. At the last iteration, you need to get the correct set of choices (the best choices) or else it will loop forever. This just ends with how the main character wishes they had thought of the best choices at the time and if that would’ve made a difference.
The next scene is about the friend’s failing love life and how they’re contemplating suicide. This part is admittedly, very unpolished compared to the first scene. For this part, the choices are timed as the goal is to help the friend to calm down while calling for help. Honestly, I wanted to add a puzzle part to this, but I didn’t get to do so due to time constraints (I crammed the game jam and honestly didn’t put my heart into it because it made me remember bad things – which is of my own stupid volition).
The last scene is, again, another time loop of the main character remembering the series of events that happened which transpired and cause their friend’s death. I didn’t finish this part at all as it made me feel horrible remembering the series of events that happened in real life.
Well, that’s that and I ended up not finishing the game.
So… As to evaluate the game and my process of doing it:
What went wrong?
- Whilst I have put a trigger warning (both on the post and the game), it was only effective for the players/readers. I could not avoid the trigger warning despite putting that myself. I couldn’t finish the game because it became too personal.
- I am a dum-dum. I didn’t know how to properly upload a game on itch.io, so I ended up not submitting my game. I guess that’s for the best though, since the game was very incomplete.
- The art aspect of the game is half-baked. Most of the background I used were free stock photos (maybe 80% of the backgrounds I used), and I didn’t even bother editing them to fit the theme of the game.
- I also didn’t make a character sprite for the main character because I wanted the player to feel as if they were the main character (hence no main character sprite). It ended up very awkward since most of the script were just monologues, so everything turned out to be all background (an unedited one at that).
What went well?
- I must admit, nothing really went well in this project aside from me learning how to work by myself and handling all aspects of developing a game (scriptwriting, programming and art).
What did I learn?
- Initially, having the story based on my own experience gave me tons of creative juices. Maybe if the experience I based the story on wasn’t that horrible, I would’ve finished the game. I would love to write another story/game based on my own experience again.
- Art editing isn’t something you can cram in a day. I know how to edit art and know that it takes long, but I overestimated my cramming skills to believe I can edit multiple background pictures (and ended up using the unedited ones since there were more unedited photos than edited ones).
- Working alone in a project is both liberating and restricting. It was liberating because I had the freedom to write anything I wanted and choose all photos I wanted for the background. But it was restricting due to the time limit. Lesson learned not to overdo solo projects and act as if it was a group project.
- This is my first project that I can accept (lol, the pun) that I’ll leave as a work-in-progress. I don’t really have the emotional capacity to continue it anymore.
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).
Wings-p O_O 