As always with my postmortems (and most things I type out really >.<), this is gonna be quite a ramble, so if you plan on reading all of this, you should probably grab yourself a coffee or something first x3 Oh, and this is basically just my personal ramble here, if you want to check out Lazy Polar Bear's experience with the art side of things, head here to read a post she's written about it :3

Firstly, have some random jam stats :D

[Rough work timeline]

• Jam work (concepts & notes) commenced: 31st January
• Initial idea scrapped, notes redone, new outline written: 4th February
• First draft completed: 6th February
• Committed to making it into a VN (coding began): 7th February
• First completed original music track: 8th February
• Voice actors cast & scripts sent out: 10th February
• More original music tracks completed: 11th February
• Finished adding sprite expression changes & most of the code: 19th February
• Testing nightmare begins: 23rd February
• Released: 28th February

[Jam playlist/bands & songs that got me through February]

Poets of the Fall - Fire, Sorry Go Round, Choice Millionaire, Drama for Life, Daze, Psychosis, Requiem for My Harlequin

Starset - Tunnelvision, Infected, Icarus, Monster, Carnivore

Normandie - Holy Water, Renegade, Awakening, Loop Hole

Vukovi - I Exist, Hades, Quench, SLO, Run/Hide

Set It Off - Skeleton, Cut Off, The Magic 8

Blue Stahli - The Mountain

[Other random stats of things that occurred during the jam]

Average working hours:
10am - 4am
(with breaks for food & exercise... yes, I know that's awful >.< my plan to work healthier only lasted about a week and then I went into crazy jam mode again T_T averaged about 13-15ish hours of work per day middle-end of the jam)

Average number of sleep hours: 4-5
(again, I know it's bad >.<)

Titles for the game scrapped:
2
How to be Happy + Bunnie & Blythe
(I was thinking the Bunnie & Blythe one could be like a play on Bonnie and Clyde, but I didn't really like it all that much, haha)

Birthday!
+1 to my age
(Birthday dinner = Pizza Express pizza -half tikka paneer/half pollo forza- & Krispy Kreme doughnuts for dessert x3)

Shows seen:
The Burnt City, An Inspector Calls

Favourite film watched:
Filth

Favourite animal/s seen:
Some very fine lapwings

Pancake day:
Made Korean green tea pancakes and they were amazing x3

Times cried:
2
(1 when listening to Phonobabble's delivery of certain lines during testing of a particular ending cos it was an unexpected gut punch xD 2 while listening to Starset's song 'Monster' I dunno why I was so emotional, haha, good song though! A lot of lyrics that really resonate with me x3)

Days spent hyper:
At least 10 (probably more x3)

Average exercise session:
20 mins

Headaches endured:
Lost count ">.>

Favourite energy drink consumed:
Lewis Hamilton zero sugar Monster (how have they made it taste like a delicious tropical cocktail?! x3

What went right \^0^/

Well, for starters, getting to team up with Lazy Polar Bear ^-^ When she said she was free to work together on the jam, I could've jumped into space with glee xD We always work so well together! And I prefer working with others to working solo in general. It goes without saying that any time I get to work with amazing artists, the game is going to look a billion times better than when it's just me editing assets! This time was no exception. Every single sketch and finished piece of art that LPB produced sent my heart soaring and made me want to work even harder :3

I thought I would end up having to put comments about the soundtrack in the what went wrong section of this because I thought there wouldn't be time to make any original tracks, which I was quite frustrated about. BUT, while I didn't manage to make a full OST, I'm genuinely over the moon that I managed to create the 10 original tracks that I did cos it's 10 more than I was expecting to be able to get done, haha. I don't even have the words for how much I legitimately love the vocal tracks too. Nomeli has such a beautiful voice, so it feels like a real privilege to have some of her vocal samples to play with :3 The fact that some of them match with the game's title just pleases me beyond belief xD

The voice acting situation is always one that makes me a little anxious because I fear that if I can't find people fast enough or get scripts out quickly to those that have been cast, then there won't be enough time to record. Thankfully, it wasn't an issue for this jam, as everyone cast was amazing :3 Getting to work with Dom again was pretty awesome since working together on The Graveyard Shift was great, and then working with everyone else for the first time was wonderful too ^-^ Everyone blew me away with their performances, and it was a lot of fun getting to see the characters come to life with their voices and LPB's beautiful art <3

What went wrong T_T

Starting the jam late wasn't exactly ideal >.< If it hadn't been for LPB pulling me out of my funk after being ill for so long, I probably wouldn't have even been able to make anything for it this year! Add to that the fact that I knew I had a whole bunch of appointments and stuff to go to, and time was much more limited than other jams I've participated in recently. 

Coming up with an idea that wasn't too convoluted and could be made in around 2 weeks to meet the jam deadline was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. I went through a dozen iterations of a vague concept and wound up scrapping all of them because I knew I wouldn't be able to complete them in a satisfying way within the jam's timeframe. It got so bad that I almost gave up because it seemed like nothing was going to work. If not for LPB being so patient listening to all my crazed rambling and being supportive of my ideas and draft, it's quite likely I would've just given up and sunk into despair x3 so I owe her a lot :3

By the time I finished the first draft, I liked parts of it, but I was extremely unsure about the thing as a whole. I thought Blythe was kind of boring, and that, well, the entire thing wasn't all that interesting >.< So with me having such a warped opinion of my writing, I was reliant on LPB's opinion to decide if it was decent enough to actually go ahead and commit to making it into a game. Had it been left to me alone, it probably would've stayed as a draft forever and never seen the light of day >.< haha.

I have a very love/hate relationship with writing. Sometimes, when I'm in the right mood, I absolutely adore it and everything flows out of me with ease, a bit like being in a weird writing trance, haha. But other times, I really struggle to actually put words to the ideas that I can visualise in my head, and it can become both mentally and physically painful for me to try and yank them out. This was one of the bad times >.< I spent so long staring into space, seeing the entire thing play out in my head but paralysed to actually put it on a page. It's beyond frustrating when that happens and I hate it!

On the technical side of things, I had to change Unity versions during testing because I found a weird bug that when I looked it up, had been reported late last year by another dev using Unity/Naninovel. The suggestion was to try using a different version of Unity, but sadly, it didn't fix the issue (incorrect backgrounds sometimes loading when a save is loaded), so it was a bit of a waste of time + the cause of further confusion. In the new version of Unity, export options are different from what I'm used to seeing. Previously, for Mac exports, I was only given 1 option, now it presents me with 3. Intel 64, Apple Silicon, or Intel 64 + Apple Silicon combined... These things mean nothing to me >.< Even when I tried to look into it, I couldn't really find out which option I should be using. I went with the combined on in the end since that's the default one it was on. I have no idea if the Mac build actually functions though.

Signing off

So yeah, it was an unexpected project that just kinda came out of nowhere, but I had an absolute blast making it :3 It went from something that I struggled to write and thought was a bit poo, with a character that I didn't find particularly interesting, to a project that really grew on me, became surprisingly personal, and with a character I now count as one that means a heck of a lot to me. I feel kinda bad for initially thinking Blythe was boring now x3 I'm so sorry, Blythe T_T I was wrong! You wormed your way into my heart and you'll always have a place there ^-^

I don't know if I had my best-ever birthday during this jam, but it was a pretty bloomin' good one :3