OMG I finally write a postmortem and release v1.1! ＼(≧▽≦)／

I have fever right now, but Allie's gift made me realized I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally need to post something about this and update the game quickly, like now before I forgot wwww

Soooo what should I talk about first? (草) There are so many things I want to talk about. Maybe I'll talk about how I impulsively joined Velox Fabula.

Well, it was on DevTalk, I'm joining Spooktober this year too, and somehow, I got too excited I couldn't think anything else but my idea for Spooktober. The tension this year was really built up crazily and I felt like I won't last the actual Spooktober if I kept this excitement, but I couldn't really do something about it. I tried the actual prep works (which is super new for someone as impulsive as me) but nah; I need to work my Spooktober now. I observed (me, the lurker) some people talked about Velox Fabula a lot, and it really intrigued me because the theme was one of my favorites. But at the time, I was undecided yet because I doubted myself so much, until the second day Velox Fabula had started, I just like, "Okay, how about recycling my past short story so I don't really need to think so much about the plot," and finally I chose "Dua Satu" for it.

"Dua Satu" or literally translate to "Two-One" or just "Twenty-One" was written back in 2015-ish, I think, when I just graduated from high school and homebound-bored-to-death because I had three months until I went to uni (man, I'm old ...). It's simple, very straight forward horror story, but I adore it so much. And yes, it was written after binge watching anime "Another" and the movie "The Sixth Sense". Those two really impacted me so much, I wanted to make something similar. "What if your class have an extra person, but it turns out you are the extra because you're dead?"  and so "Twenty-One" was crated ( ﾟ^∀^ﾟ)

It wasn't a groundbreaking story for me (I mean it's just two stories I like from two different media mashed together). Nonetheless I still adore "Dua Satu", though as I made this game I realized, 21 students in a class are too few wwww My class in high school had the fewest students, but there were still 32 of us wwww That's why I changed it to "Thirty-One". I don't remember why I chose 21 to be exact; maybe I like the rhyme in Indonesian, "Dua-Satu" but then again "Tiga-Satu"(31) and "Empat-Satu" (41) have nice ring to them too www Now, don't get me wrong, I might choose 21 when I draw the "full-class photo" you see on the page banner. For that I personally pulled up a photo of my friends which has the exact number of 31 person in it and as I drew over them, I felt like, "yeah, should have made them 21." www But in the end, I felt 30 students are the most reasonable.

That's for the why thirty students, now I'm going to talk about the boy. In my short story, the boy has name, and the narrator/MC commented about the boy's name always comes up in the absent list even though he isn't a student from their class (which isn't true (´･з･)). His name is a very Javanese name, Among Gema Buana or translated as "Keeper/Protector (of) Echo World" and I felt that's very fitting for him. Oh, please note that Indonesian generally don't have last name/family name, so that three words are his personal name wwww So in Javanese belief, the spirit world is identical to our world; they have their own races, government, marketplace, religion, etc. just like ours except they're spirit realm, and I always thought about it as an "echo" to our world. And my mom (a Javanese) has this believe about "among"/protector spirit who protect us on daily basis and resides on our bed where we sleep; so whenever we need to go away from home and sleep somewhere else, my mom will come to our bed, pat on it, and asks them to follow us wwww The words Among mouthed to narrator is "Jangan ganggu/Don't disturb" because sometimes there are spirits who like to mess around with humans just because, and so we say to them, "Don't disturb; you have your own things to do and I have my own things to do," or in simple term it is a polite way to say "Leave me alone" or "F*ck off" wwwww And yeah, Among being the boy who can see the spirits and making sure none of the spirit or the human harm each other sounded like a very fitting for me; even now I still think he really fits that.

Making Among's sprite is another story. In my short story, he is kinda much more mysterious and ... mature? Kinda like well put together? I don't know the word (/you're writer!!!!!!!/) But I felt I can't make him like that because I'm suck at drawing cool characters (ಠ⌣ಠ), so I changed how I potray him. I tried to make him looks extremely like innocent child, with big eyes, carefree smile, and generally have softer/rounder features, but still when you see him your brain will scream, "something isn't right with this boy!"

I didn't put much color on him and just gave him the palest color I use for skin and then put a flat shadow on top of it wwww And then I made the world in simple grayscale style because 1. I don't have to color them meticulously (◔ д◔) 2. I want to show that even in a grayscale world, his monochromatic color still won't fit anywhere. But of course, the reason is mostly the former wwww 

Now about the bloody scene. If you noticed, the part from where Among appeared in front of the narrator to the last scene were colored, not grayscale. That's simply because I wanted to show the color of blood in the end (¯▿¯) When I showed that to my sister (my unwilling tester /eldest sibling privilege mwahahaha/) she commented, "wow, that's gruesome" and I couldn't stop overthinking about it. I thought it was pretty mild, but then again, my view might be skewed because I have a certificate as EMT so I have seen worse than that. In the end I just cut it abruptly (not that I didn't plan to cut it abruptly though) because I want to respect the rules. But now the rules don't apply anymore, so enjoy the ver. 1.1! ♡＼(￣▽￣)／♡

That's for the creative part of making this game, now the obstacles I faced during the process. First, I joined Velox Fabula late wwww I just dove down on impulse, I didn't even know what and how to present the story. I vaguely had idea to make it more cinematic, so I simply made as many pictures as possible I could. But then I didn't really plan anything beyond that. I completely forgot about the UI. Of course I can always use the default UI, but ... somehow I didn't want default UI. So I made it from scratch, still simple as possible, but then it changed how everything looks in my game, especially the textbox. To be fair my backgrounds were small, I simply forgot to make them in bigger canvas, and then when I assembly them together, the textbox covered almost everything www I didn't have time anymore, it was almost the last day of jam, so I just copied a layer under the BG and smoothed the heck of it so it looks like a single, continuous picture wwww I didn;t change the BGs in ver. 1.1, so you can check it yourself wwwww

And then I wanted to use Ren'Py Action Editor because I have images that need to move around. I watched the tutorial on Vimi's channel, and I wanted to use it since making "Angel In My House" demo but hmmmm I couldn't do it right (--_--) I have to manually define the x and y position of the images, specifically for the bloody hands and last background movement. If only I can use the Action Editor ... maybe it will be easier. And didn't I say I forgot how to devving? Yeah, because I forgot and struggled at how to make a simple button. Man, I forgot how to build web version in Ren'Py even though my last games are web built wwwww

The last obstacle I faced isn't something that come from outside, it's personally came from me. Since the O2A2 ~Queer Edition~ ended, I faced a big emotional block. Anxiety attacked me hard whenever I want to upload something, resulting in me never publish my O2A2 entry. It's already finished and only needs to be set as public, but I can't change it, until now that game still sets as draft in my dashboard. This game too almost has the same fate as that.

When I set up everything for this game, I hesitated to make it public and submit it to the jam. I know my game is wacky as heck and I'm not really embarrassed about that, but something still held me back. Like what if people find it too wacky and think it's not appropriate for the jam, or if this game isn't fun at all and can't be called a game; just small trivial things like that.  I worried so much I kept hesitating. But I know I can't be like that, I still want to publish the game I made, so I pushed myself completing everything this game needed until it's ready to be published. I was fumbling around the itch page, trying to test everything thinking it was still a draft. But then, email notification from itch said that my game is now live, I realized I accidentally clicked the "set page as public" button and that's it! That's how this game was published! It was a pure mistake wwww At that point I was like, "yea, whatever <(￣ ﹌ ￣)>" and submitted it to the jam wwww I mean, what could I do?! It was live now! I made the About page to have "made for Velox Fabula Jam" of course I can only submit it! wwwww

Now it's up there with many, many amazing games and even have an update, which is thing I never thought about. In the end I think this game is a happy mistake. Still mistake though wwwww but I can say I'm proud of it.