Hey, Ley here. In this post I wanted to discuss my feelings about making this game for O2A2. I originally planned to add a breakdown on how I made the game, especially designing the background (Yes! It’s only one static .png! And 350 lines of programming tricks). But this ended up long enough so I think I’ll make a separate post for the visuals.

Goals and satisfaction

Audience is a weird thing. It’s easy for me to say things that are obvious for other game developers (in particular of Visual Novel’s), but may be incomprehensible for players. Here’s one: We make games for many reasons, and sometimes, those things gets contradictory, and you have to find a compromise. Make the best game that satisfies those different parts of ‘you’. But you can’t really satisfy ‘everyone’, or rather, all of your different intents and goals. You may think I should be able to “just make a game I like”, but it’s not easy when you disagree with yourself on what you like.

I have a love/hate relationship with the O2A2 (“Only One of Any Asset”) game jam. Or rather, the very specific set of rules that you have to abide by to make a game. I am very happy that this O2A2 was the trigger that helped me publicly release one of my projects. (I have worked on personal projects for many years). But at the same time, you’re bound by the rules in what you make.

Yes, limitations help creativity, and the word limit is good for project management. (ie, prevents over-scoping). But now, the different “you”s are competing for the real estate available. And you need to make harsh decisions. You can’t just cut the baby in half, can you?

I am personally very unsatisfied by the game’s ending. Or, rather, “Writer Ley” is unhappy. However, that’s not why I started this project. My main drive was to see how well I could create “ambience” in a short POV game. I got inspired by minimalist games like Iron Lung or Voyager-19, and wanted to see what I could recreate in a VN format. This leads to my background - How much could I distort it “in engine” to make a cool looking scene? Colour effects? Animations? Shaders? And oh boy, “Programmer Ley” is really proud of how it turned out!

Writing Meaning

So, to start: I needed a story. I just so happened to be working on my Yuri Jam project, and I had an issue. One of my characters (Camille, duh) needed a better backstory. It’s a game centred around morals and (not) tolerating evil. So she (*see note) started as pretty innocent and naive, and was influenced by the plot. However, they missed something. They lacked depth. I wanted them to have a sin. I jokingly said something like “The accident was ten years ago Camille! It wasn’t your fault.”, and then I got the plot idea. Now they have something to feel guilt about, to reflect on. The events of that night.

Which leads to the ending: It could only end one way. This part I can’t/won’t change, but I’m not satisfied with how I presented it. I think it’s abrupt, odd, and doesn’t seem related to the plot. What did he do to deserve it? What signs were there that it would happen? Does it make narrative sense? I don’t think so.

Some may say, the point is the absurdism: It was an unpredictable event. It isn’t meant to be fair. Because life isn’t fair. That’s good character development right there. However… I want to reflect on that unfairness. I like story with messages, with something to take from, especially philosophically. But 983, 984, 985, I got close to the 1000 words limit.

It didn’t surprise me: The “discussion” was never part of my outline. It wasn’t planned. I know I couldn’t do both the ambient exploration part AND the philosophy of the story in a thousand words. So, in my great wisdom, I gave the baby to “Programmer Ley”. The game is about the technique, the visual show. How well I could play on a single background asset. Story had to come second. (Eh, I’ll do it the other way around for Yuri Jam.)

Or maybe there’s a message: Don’t use your phone while driving, kids.

Next steps

There’s two main updates I want to do on the game:

The first is an “accessibility” update. Big word, but I have a few things that need fixes.

• I want to make sure the game is playable on touchscreens, or with mouse OR keyboard only.
• I also want to add a few GUI settings, including the ability to change the font, opacity of the textbox, and stop background shakes or all animations.
• I didn’t test self-voicing, or other features. In general, it lacks accessibility-oriented testing.
• I may also do a desktop release, even if I think the web version is still the most meaningful.

Everything would still fit in O2A2 rules. (If there’s any other issue, please let me know!).

The second is that I want to make a ‘director’s cut’ of the game. Ignoring the O2A2 rules, I want to flesh out the story a bit to make it stand on it’s own merit. The game currently works incredibly well as a side-story/prequel for my (currently unreleased) project, which is a bit of a tough sell. With a few more hundreds words, maybe a second background or asset, I can make it work a bit better. (ie, by itself, or as a first entry)

Footnote on pronouns: For different reasons, I chose to write Camille as using they/them pronouns in Out of Nowhere. In my future game, which is around ~10 years later, by then she uses she/they pronouns. Outside of the game’s writing, I just use them interchangeably.

Oh this postmortem is longer than the actual game - lol