I need some direction and a push, so I'm giving With or Without You another try for some game jams that end in 25 days.

Premise: An intruder nearly kills your most trusted servant, then reveals your world isn't what you think it is.

[Mute #holdev to hide my game jam threads.]

There are three characters: Lachlan (servant), Mahir (mc), and Caden (intruder). The story takes place in an old manor on a hill... an illusion carefully crafted by Lachlan. In reality, the manor is truly decrepit and in hell itself.

Lachlan has brainwashed Mahir into believing that they'd lived together his whole life. But Lachlan doesn't know that Mahir is an adrenaline junky who intentionally allowed himself to get brainwashed, trusting his /real/ servant to come drag him out when the time was right.

Caden and Lachlan have a checkered past, and Mahir was targeted specifically because of it. Caden knows how Lachlan and his annoying illusions work but could never fight him head on; he needed a sneak attack to get in the blow he gets at the start of the game.

So basically, it's a short mindfuck-y visual novel / rpg. The mechanics are really simple and the story doesn't branch much except towards the end (as a result of earlier choices).

Caden is trying to get you to trust him and escape with him before Lachlan awakens and attacks.

You're travelling around the manor gathering supplies as Caden clears out the escape route. You're looking for either proof of what he's said or a way to fight back and probably finding both. If you have just the right items to escape, you can choose to leave with or without him.

After escaping the illusion, you have to get through the forest and back to the city, which is also affected by who is with you and the supplies you have. If you reach the city, it's revealed that Mahir's memory has returned and he's very amused by what has happened.

I've had trouble with this game in the past because designing the environment was like... super intimidating. Looking back on my other projects, that seems to be a prevailing theme. The characters were easy (even if not technically accurate) but the backgrounds were scary.

I even tried to make a legit dollhouse of the manor last time. Carving wood in 3D was easier than drawing a 3D space!

I think bgs will be much easier now. I know how perspective works (even started a tutorial for others) and am more familiar with this interior design style.

I also had trouble drawing characters on the same plane in fullbody interacting with each other. Despite my procrastination on that samurai freeb, I've gotten a lot better at this and can produce sketches of three characters pretty quickly now.

A major worldbuilding problem I had was that I didn't actually know how "injuries" and "death" worked in the afterlife. Despite having a ton of stories that take place in hell with these things occurring in them, I somehow managed to matrix dodge that issue for years.

I now know how that system works.

(tl;dr: Soul energy can shatter and eventually reform or reshape itself. Weaker shards can be absorbed by stronger ones.

If you're shattered and absorbed before you can reform, your consciousness is permanently merged with whatever eats you.)

This also helps to explain the Hansel/Gretel vibe the game has and why Lachlan is a literal fuckin' cannibal lol

Another issue: this game was designed right at the cusp of me realizing how important RNG techniques are in plotting, so I still spent too much time making decisions.

With all that in mind. Let's start to work out the concept and to-dos.

I'd like to make this a tradigital project, since I've been focusing on using graphite lately. (Also, my graphics card is going, don't want to tax it any more than I have to.)

Some of what needs to get done:

- Figuring out the visual composition of the game. I'd like to incorporate a square canvas if I can. Or a storybook look.
- Updating the character designs for my current style and the traditional tools I'm using.
- Designing the floorplan/etc

- Updating the outline / sequence of events, or at least getting refreshed about them.
- Thumbnailing the scenes, figuring out how I'm going to place the camera, etc.
- Designing the props and clutter.
- Illustrating, scanning, editing.
- Making the title page and UI.
- crying

- taking breaks inbetween (don't burnout, messy me)
- writing the actual content
- coding the title page & ui
- coding the story and visuals
- recording something for the title track
- recording sound effects and ambiance
- possibly recording voices?
- coding the audio

IIRC, recording the audio effects also got me hung up last time. I got super shy and couldn't do it even when I was totally alone in my home. Hopefully I'm embarrassed enough by that fact to push through it this time

And as much as I'd like to do 3D audio, I know I'll use building the binaural head as an excuse to procrastinate, so let's save that for the next project lol

Other things to do...
- testing, bug fixing, crying, testing, bug fixing
- coding save state (optional, it's very short)

My cts is acting up, so this will probably start in a few days. That's if I can stop myself from trying to push through it.

I'll try to knock out the easy stuff first.

It'll be interesting to test what I've learned since my previous attempts and see how far I can get this time.

I missed a to-do.

- coding the choices / gameplay

I guess that's technically part of coding the story in this case, but I meant to list it separately. I'd hate to forget it when scheduling things out later.

Their designs from last year:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGEpfvEW4AIJdS0?format=png&name=900x900

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGTBoZGUcAUWjVN?format=jpg&name=medium

I'll be doing photography for the UI. It's a technique I've wanted to experiment with for a while & frankly, it should be faster for me than painting or 3D would be.

On the left page will be an illustration & on the right, text. Page flipping'll be a stop motion animation.

Surrounding the book will be objects that act like menu buttons when clicked. You can see your notes, open the settings, restart. Flip fwd/bk.

I don't have any books with a square aspect ratio, unfortunately. There'll have to be uneven margins around the art, maybe w/ a caption.

Feeling much better now, though it'll be a few weeks for my wrists to get back to normal (the other is acting up now that I've been favoring it lmao). It's good enough to resume work without causing needless nerve damage.

In the interim, I've worked out a more clear MVP.

I've heard of the idea of a minimum viable product and tried to use it in previous jams. However, I never really handled it correctly.

One attempt at this game involved me trying to sequentially make standalone versions starting from the simplest option to the fullest.

That sounds great in theory and like how MVP is described in a lot of educational videos. But it's not quite right. Creating a standalone version I didn't like whose assets (writing, art, etc.) wouldn't carry over to the next version felt (and was) useless.

That approach is more akin to sketching or outlining or storyboarding. It can be used in conjunction with an MVP but probably shouldn't be treated as the MVP itself.

So I dove into the topic again and have a more clear understanding of it. You want your MVP to have the essence of what makes your game your game. And you want it to still appeal to the same audience. It's not about cutting corners or making things shorter.

Of course, you do want to keep your scope in check in general, but that's a whole other issue. With an MVP, it should have its base functionality, its intended aesthetics (even if not 100% polished), the full story (or a contained demo), and sufficient appeal.

In this case, my intention for WOWY is that it appeals to adults and older teens who enjoy BL, horror, supernatural romance. The game is short, easy, won't require a download. It can be replayed several times for different endings, or not. It's kind on those with limited time.

We'd want to prioritize a restart option over other interface features in this case. To know how much art we should include and where to focus our pre-dev time, we'd think of what the audience is meant to do with the story -- enjoy the spooky vibe and character relationships.

The character designs and setting layout are pretty important, then, to make sure we nail the spooky haunted house and spicy gays who look good together issues. As a bare minimum, we want enough art to see all the characters' designs and to set the stage it's happening on.

We'd also want to get the bare bones UI worked out. None of the bells and whistles, just the basic aesthetic w/ clickable areas. + The ability to progress and make choices.

UI tells us how much text fits & the art's scale. The designs will let us use descriptions in the writing.

(I have some other project ideas where the storytelling is split evenly between the art and writing, but in this case, I want to put most of the plot weight on the written word.)

We then identify where the bare minimum art should go. Fill gaps w/ audio, add mute button to UI.

Then we can go back and add other key (but more than bare minimum) art where it's needed to really nail the twists and whatnot.

That'd be the basic MVP, then it's just testing, bugfixing, setting up the itch-io page, sharing, etc.

(It doesn't necessarily have to be in this order. I may jump into writing without doing all the design-y bits, it'd just need less editing if I was more patient about it.)

I want to prioritize keeping my code flexible so I can add more visuals and audio, UI improvements, accessibility tools, progress tracking, etc. at a later date, w/ feedback in mind.

That's the meat of an MVP, being open to future improvements w/o totally reinventing the concept

I have already roughed out Caden's new face, plus the notan of all three's costumes (Caden's stayed the same). Lachlan's and Mahir's faces need more work.

I'm still just brainstorming on tiny scrap paper, don't mind the technical errors lol There'll be clean references later on.

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