Hello! For those who are new to my stupid internet content, I usually reserve my thoughts on my recent works to a series of blog posts on my website call “Creative Progress Report” and save post mortems for older works. However, the develop process for this is something I felt like I needed to share as this game is very, very different from what I did prior. Anyway, let’s just start.

Literally Watch Paint Dry

This is basically a recap of what I said in the Creative Progress Report for April 2022. The idea for the game that this is based off came from a joke by a friend of mine on how there isn’t any games where you watched paint dry (there actually is, but I didn’t know any at the time). I then proceeded to make a game in Orteil’s IGM about watching paint dry which was appropriately named “Literally Watch Paint Dry”. Remember that sentence, because that’ll be important later. It was also my first release to mention a character being trans (I had some trans characters prior but no work at that point where those characters appeared actually mentioned it).

After making that game and writing my thoughts for it, I had plans for further entries in the series because me and my friend also joked about possible titles for sequels. I actually did start one of them during a game jam. It was call “Literally Watch Grass Grow” and would of been a different genre completely. Ultimately, the jam attempt of that sequel was cancelled due to my confidence. Remember that sentence as well for the same reasons.

So after that, not only did I not try to do another game jam until December (in which I never started development), I also stayed a bit away from the series because I honestly didn’t want to do more of it.

Where Listen to the Phone Ring Started

Twine was one of the obvious next steps for me as a developer and more importantly, a writer. Twine is a great engine for interactive fiction, and I’ve been trying to make something for it for 2-3 years now. For these Twine attempts, I was quite a hypocrite when it came to my own advice, as most of these stories were somewhat large in scale (For context, I sometimes gave advice to not start with a big idea). Neo-Twiny Jam was probably the first time though I actually considered to not do that (that and a project that is unrelated to this). Although with these attempts at Twine games, I am gaining more and more knowledge of the engine and it’s quirks.

Now let’s talk game jams since I mentioned one. I wasn’t always intending to make a Literally Watch Paint Dry half-sequel for Neo-Twiny and GAMES MADE QVIICK. I saw Neo-Twiny on the Itch Jams page and thought “That’s pretty cool” and went to look at other jams. GMQ though was something I was intending to do though and since I was using Twine for my next release, I thought I might do something in the Twine engine for that jam.

My first idea was to revive an old idea I had for the same game jam that the “Literally Watch Grass Grow” originated from. I was going to be about living alone for the first time. After some thought… actually too much thought where I lost a few days, I decided to instead make something else for both Neo-Twiny and GMQ. That only meant that I will have a bad game compared to what people were doing in terms of GMQ. Regardless of that and my own opinion, I started thinking of ideas.

There were several ideas I’ve thought of. Some original, some revived, and some sequels/spin offs. The Jam attempt of “Literally Watch Grass Grow” featured an introduction cutscene where Jay was trying to call someone. This scene was intended to be related to it’s previous entry, but became the last idea I thought of to do for the jams, and the one that I chose to do.

Calling…

The atmosphere was already in place in Grass Grow, at least in my head, so I started work on the game. I still wanted to have the game be interactive in a sense, so I split the story into two paths. With that though came Neo-Twiny’s 500 word limit. I used Twine’s built-in word count, which was probably a terrible decision bacause it counted code, but I can’t really go back on that now. So with the challenge of 500 words and a weird word count, I tried my best to have a decent mildly interactive story while still meeting the requirement.

I used several tricks to make that Twine word count below 500. These tricks were using variables, using header (for the restart function), reusing passage content between both paths, and CSS so I could have a background other than black (and later different link text colors). The end result looked like this on the editing screen.

The story itself picks up where the last game left off. I have given a name Lia for Other Friend a long time ago for Grass Grow, but Friend never had a name until now. I chose William for Friend because I liked the meaning. These two were the options for the player to pick from and each path followed the relationship between the protagonist and the chosen character. I had already established the characters back with Paint Dry so it wasn’t difficult to write any of it.

I also thought of several titles for the game. It was called Listen to the Phone Ring in development as a temporary title. It ended up being the actual title. Other titles include…

• Literally Listen to the Phone Ring
• The Phone Ringing
• A Call
• Call
• Call Your Friends
• and “i don’t think this is good why am i releasing this?”

And that was it for the game’s actual development, other than setting up the Itch page and making the required art for both Itch and my own site. I would of added more detail if it wasn’t for word limit but once again, I can’t really go back on that now.

Please Try Again Later

Uploading the game was pretty trivial (I had to rename the html but that wasn’t much of a bother) and so was the testing process, which only really included the friend I mentioned earlier (quite different from the 4 testers from Paint Dry). The reason for this section though, and why I am writing this in the first place is because I don’t think it’s good.

Now, I had issues with this previously, but not to the point where I almost cancelled the game. What’s different now is that I’m basically attracting a new audience who definitely never played Literally Watch Paint Dry (let alone, know who I am) who will be alienated. IGM isn’t a big engine and is restrictive which is why none of my IGM games are here. Basically asking a new audience to understand this wouldn’t be the best idea. I would also be asking my old audience to try out something completely different from what they are used to (that wouldn’t actually have been difficult since I said several times I was using Twine so they were likely expecting it). And with the other games for both jams, I thought Listen to the Phone Ring would be bound for failure.

I also just didn’t like the game due the strangeness of it all.

How did I get over something like this though? It’s simple. Considering that it was already done, I just released it regardless of my feelings. I just did it. It might be simple, but believe me most of my stress from whether or not to release it went when I just did. Probably because I knew I can’t really undo releasing it… I learned that with my fanfiction from a long time ago. With that, I did also get small feedback from my friend who was given access to the game early which helped with the feelings I had.

What happens next is the release of this game and this post mortem.

Pro/Cons of Calling you Friends (that isn’t what this section is about, it’s just the title)

Listen to the Phone Ring was short and sweet, but quite spicy as well… Actually I’ll just get to the meat and potatoes of this.

Pros

• A lot of firsts: First Successful Game Jam (and I submitted to TWO jams), First Twine Game, First Game on Itch, First Sequel, and the first work of mine to have a logo of some sort.
• This was a great way to learn Twine as well as incorporate some of my pervious knowledge in a different context.
• I would actually play something like this if I played this after Literally Watch Paint Dry (for context, it was an issue with my oldest available game).

Cons

• Confusing for new audiences who never played Literally Watch Paint Dry. That’s kind of the nature of doing a half-sequel as your first playable game on a site you barely used for your own works.
• Twine’s word count is kind of weird, but I think it made development a bit interesting.
• I also just didn’t like it at the time of writing this.

It’s too early in the game’s life to think of more pros and cons, but those should give you an idea of what I thought benefited me or not.

Conclusion

Listen to the Phone Ring was a game that I never thought of making until I was put in a situation where it came naturally. It was a game filled with pride and regret. Most importantly, it was a game to break the IGM shell I have confined myself in since 2019 (.. I actually only alluded to that oops).

Despite the hatred I have with this particular entry, there’s still a future for this series, whether you wanted it or not. I still have ideas for it. I still have titles for 5 other possible entries in the series and the basic plot of each should I ever do them. It will just be a matter of time before we see more of Jay and Lia.

Anyway, it’s late, I should be sleeping. See you all.

Edit (6/5/2023): I specified that I hate this entry. I did that already, but I added more words to correct the error that was there in that sentence. I also added a forgotten title that I considered (Call you Friends) and added link text changes through CSS to tricks I used because that wasn’t applicable when I wrote this (it was using the default colors until I changed it thanks to feedback).