Well, I'm definitely late to the party, aren't I?

July ended up being a busier month than I had anticipated, so I've published my post-game jam fixes only now. Don't get too excited: this update won't progress the story, I'm just correcting some typos, rough edges, etc. However, the story will be continued, so expect a more substantial update some time in the future.

I'm taking this opportunity to share some thoughts about this project. I guess "postmortem" isn't quite the correct term, since the game isn't finished yet, but consider this my "post-game jam postmortem".

WHAT WERE MY EXPECTATIONS GOING INTO THE JAM?

Well, aside from the obvious (I love focusing on small projects with a looming deadline, and May Wolf was an unmissable opportunity to have some free sprites to use), I went into this year's May Wolf with a challenge to myself.

Even though you probably don't know me unless you hang out in some specific Discord servers and even though all my published projects so far have been game jam entries, I've started to learn and try to develop my own Furry Visual Novels all the way back in 2021. Lots of binned drafts and projects under my belt. And even though I don't have much to show for it, I've definitely been learning behind the scenes. When I published my first May Wolf entry last year, I already had some experience under my belt.

As someone who considers himself mainly a writer and a newbie programmer, I've come to share some pessimism not uncommon among my peers: the feeling that all readers value in the Furry Visual Novel community is nice art and visuals, something that is definitely a weakness of mine. I can't really draw and I don't plan to start learning to.

On the other hand, I do think I have a strong artistic vision when it comes to visuals: I know what I want to convey and I do believe in a visual medium like this, visuals are a key part of the experience.

So when I entered this May Wolf jam, I set a challenge to myself: I would do it alone. While in 2023 I had a partner and I would have probably found someone else willing to work with me if I had put my mind into it, in the back of my head I had this fear: if I partner up with an amazing artist, I will never know if the positive feedback I receive will be because of my skills or theirs.

As silly as it may sound, I wanted to measure my own worth, prove to myself that I can make a good Visual Novel, without relying on someone else's skills to salvage it. And I did not want to focus solely on writing either. My plan wasn't to write some nice story and then wallow in misery because nobody cared about it because of the poor visuals. I wanted to put my artistic skills at the forefront: this was going to be a visual novel, goddamnit, I was going to give it my all.

So what were the results?

On a personal level, I am happy and I feel like I succeeded. Feedback was generally very positive, and I was especially happy that people came out of my game thinking that presentation was one of its strongest suits. Even though I'm painfully aware that my visual assets will always have a strong amateurish quality to them, that I will never be able to shake off on my own, I feel like I've proved to myself I can use them effectively to tell a story.

GOING FORWARD

On a less positive note, the game jam did definitely confirm to me that visuals are the most important part of a VNs for most people. While feedback was overwhelmingly positive, engagement was scarce. By the end of the game jam, my game had been downloaded about 90 times, and the needle hasn't move much from there since. Downloads for some other entries, on the other hand, were in the thousands, and even most of my peers did manage to go into the triple digits.

I honestly do not mind that my game wasn't as played during the jam. It is, however, a consideration moving forward. It would be a pity to spend so much more energy into this project and have barely anyone playing it. So by the next update I feel like I need to address some of the visual shortcomings of my VN. And for that, I will need some help.

Which brings me to another point: now that I've won the challenge I set for myself, I'm kind of hoping that my work as a VN dev will be less lonely going forward. I'm craving for some more team efforts! I will be definitely be looking for someone to help me with Ugolino, and I also hope to be able to work on a VN where I'm not in charge for a change! 

THEME: E X P A N D I N G

Going back to the game jam for a moment, I feel like I need to address the elephant in the room: the voting. While I think my game performed decently well, placing either #9 or #10 with average ratings above 4 in three categories... I was absolutely pulverized in the fourth category, theme implementation, where I placed near to the bottom with an abysmal average of 2 and some change!

I definitely don't blame my readers for being brutally honest (even though I think I was punished a bit too harshly for not spelling out what the theme was like most of my competitors). The theme was definitely a weak spot of my entry: because I had to interrupt the story much earlier than I had planned, my implementation of the theme really didn't have time to establish its presence.

Now that voting is over, I do want to reassure everyone that the theme was not something that I forgot about or that I planned to awkwardly tack on: most of the story was indeed built around the game jam theme.

The mechanics of lycanthropy were mostly informed by the theme and they play a key role in the story. My main inspiration was the "20% larger wolf" meme, inspired by Baring Fangs: https://itch.io/queue/c/2947618/loudos-top-recommendations?game_id=1991488 Except you know, executed straight (I think you may have noticed my trend to take inspiration from silly concepts and play them not for laughs).

The idea is that, in my world, when werewolves fully transform, their body mass expands, which is extremely painful and has devastating effects on their bodies. As they grow older, werewolf bodies are no longer able to withstand such physical stress and they die because of it.

What I'm trying to say is that the theme implementation was really conveyed in two don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it moments: the flashback where we see the protagonist's mother's corpse (her ribcage bursting out of her chest and all) and the flashback where we get a glimpse of Ugo fully transformed into a large hulking beast.

Again, can't really blame anyone but me for burying the lead too deep!

THE MAKING OF UGOLINO

Well, I don't want to share too much, considering the story is not finished yet. However, I will say that, while the basic idea for the story was clear in my head, committing it the page proved difficult. I basically wasted half of the month of May trying to find a satisfying way to tell this story and failing.

In the end, the only thing that saved me was taking everything I had done so far, throw it out of the window, and start from scratch. In my first draft, the story begins with Anselmo and Nino as an established couple, already en route for Livigno. And we'd get some flashback of how they manage to retrieve information about Ugo's whereabouts by force from the Archivist, who was a much more antagonistic character in my initial plan.

And it didn't really work for two reasons. First is that my initial plan didn't really give me enough time to establish the rules of the setting, the characters, the conflict... We basically start with the protagonist confronting his brother before we even have time to establish why we should care or what they're fighting about. And the only way to compensate this was throwing a million flashbacks and exposition dumps that only made the story more confusing and less engaging to read. So I rolled the story way back, turning the first build into a long prologue. In this, I also tried to keep in mind some feedback I had received for the Flying General. 

Another change is that I was really dissatisfied with my initial plan for the Archivist. The protagonists' conflict with her had no thematic connection to the rest of the story, it was just a random obstacle I threw in their paths to justify how Anselmo had learned about his brother's whereabouts after so many years. But it had nothing to do with his conflict.

So I threw that idea way, and in the final version the Archivist is a much friendlier figure that shares her information willingly. Instead, I focused on the relationship between the two main leads. And as I wanted to make that relationship more connected with the main conflict, I turned it from an established relationship to a new one.

Speaking of which...

BREAKOUT CHARACTER ALERT

One of the most amazing experiences of people reading your story is them taking out of it something different than you had intended to put in. In my head, this was very much a story revolving around Anselmo and his brother: they were always intended to be the main characters in my head.

But most feedback I have received (at least, from people who weren't turned off by the petplay) is about how much people loved Nino! And it wasn't really planned on my part, I didn't intend for Nino to be the most memorable part about the story. In fact, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit afraid of making their relationship based in part around petplay.

But, like I said, I'm elated people enjoyed it! And I guess this is something to keep in mind as a writer: a quirky character will always stand out among the competition.

FINAL WORDS

So, I guess that's all I wanted to say... Again, expect an update to the story, even though I can't predict when it will happen.

And if you want to help me with my project, or you want me to help you with yours, feel free to reach out. Like I said, I'd love to create more, and working alone takes so much time and energy, I don't want it to be my only outlet anymore.

Ciao!