Recently, I made my first ever game! It’s a visual novel, and I made it for the “Jame Gam” game jam (I’ve typed that so much that my autocorrect accepts it). You would probably think that joining a game jam despite never making a game before would be a bad idea…and you would be right. To be fair, I wanted to learn my program quickly rather than attempting to make a grandiose project I would never finish. Although this sounded decent enough on paper, I later came to regret my decisions because of one fatal oversight….I always overdo it anyways lol.

When the theme was announced, I was pretty happy. “Another World” is pretty vague and workable, and “a candle” sparked some ideas immediately. I honestly assumed that at least 50% of entries would be a horror game with a candle lighting the way, so I leaned away from that concept. After brainstorming like 8 visual novel ideas, I struck gold: candle people. 
…okay, that sounds really stupid out of context, but let me explain. A lit candle would always be melting, which would lead to a reasonable motivation (not melting away). It would also lead to some adorable character designs by my friend Cherry, which is a win-win on all accounts. One thing I didn’t account for, however, was scope. 

If you imagine a conversation on paper, it sounds simple enough to write. Topics, speech variation, natural flow, all of that doesn’t seem too difficult to achieve even with a short time frame. What gets complicated down the road is when you try to do three. Since I wanted the game to be fun and not too short (aka you beat it in a minute and then never play it again), I decided to do multiple characters. That sounds fine, right? Three characters doesn’t sound too bad…until you have to write all of the dialogue variations.

I’m going to be honest here, that was a nightmare. I wanted the game to have some challenge, where you could probably only beat it after a few runs and you figure out which option each character likes. Despite this, I feel the dialogue paths were all pretty obvious. For instance, which do you think a character would prefer more: commenting on what they’re reading or poking them? It isn’t exactly rocket science. To me, that’s where this game falls short a bit. Although, yes, there are many fun endings to explore, players won’t actually see them if they beat the game in like 3 minutes and instantly get the true ending. The whole point is for the player to explore and experiment. 

In spite of that, though, I believe the writing has some definite upsides. There are a multitude of fun and silly endings to go through, ones that you probably wouldn’t expect to even exist. Even if I didn’t get to tell the story exactly how I wanted to, I believe we still put together a good product.

…but scope-creep wiped the floor with me. I knew to look out for it, I even partnered up so that we could make sure we both didn’t. Despite that, I went way overboard with the endings and characters and everything. By the end of the jam’s 4 day run, I wasn’t even close to finishing. I even switched programs halfway through, going from an incredibly obscure and indie one to a popular and well-received paid one. But I was determined to finish. So much work had already put in, so why would I just give up?

Then, my friend and I learned that we could submit late. At the time, we were trying to pull an all-nighter (on a school night, mind you) to hurry up and complete it. As soon as we figured out we could be a little off the mark on our submission, we went straight to bed (it was 1am, can you blame us?). We felt pretty content, confident we could…probably finish in time.

I later found myself on Sunday morning, once again at 1am, scrambling to finish. And…I actually did! Since it was so late, though, I went to bed before receiving a late submission link (to add it to the game jam). Other entries got theirs 1-4 hours after they sent in a request, so I was doubtful mine would come any earlier. Cue me waking up at 12:30pm and realizing, “oh sh**, the voting’s probably ended.”

It had. By the time I added mine into the mix, the winner had already been announced. We got in at 0th place, since we didn’t even submit in time for a single voter to share their thoughts. I was honestly kind of upset, since I had worked my behind off trying to finish, but I understood. Even if most participants and viewers won’t see our entry, nor will it be in any rankings, I’m glad I was able to create what I did.

TL;DR? SCOPE-CREEP SUCKS AND CAN DIE /j