Lately, I have been thinking about the possibilities of what could of been. This is mainly with the various relationships that I had (not specifically romantic thought I should point that out). There’s been a lot of people in my life and many of which were or could of developed into genuine friendships. We both just sort of… drifted apart though, whether due to anxiety, choice, or something other thing. It makes me lonely.

That’s not to dismiss my current friends by the way, including my current irl friends, Rose and her friends, some of the IGM devs whom I am friends with, and possibly the very few Neo-Interactive folks who already consider me a friend. They all feel genuine in their way and there’s also a lot that would of never happened had I not met them. Notably, half of my itch releases would not exist at all or exist in a different form for different reasons! That includes this!

So… one way

The idea originally came from, out of all places, Manonamora’s REALLY BAD IF review thread on the intfiction forums. She pointed out her hatred towards timed text which there was a lot of. I thought that I should make a purposely long twine where the reader had to wait possibly around 12 hours to finish it, and it was just a guy trying to confess their feelings to someone over text.

That’s where Words Are Hard was born.

Yeah, one way wasn’t the title used for development, which is odd considering ever other release I have done up to this point usually had very similar names throughout with the sole exception of Ice Cream Fusions (originally named Ice Cream Clicker Rebirth). The final title came later when it was near completion. Words Are Hard was meant to express how hard it is to write words, especially for something really important like confessing your love to someone. It took advantage of the fact that text can be delayed in Twine and made it a core part of the story. I ended up not doing this for reasons to be revealed later.

The Two Ideas

As the title of this section suggests, there were two ideas.

The Boys Love Idea

This originated alongside Words Are Hard. The gist is that a trans-man (unnamed, so I’ll call him Red) has a crush on someone (unnamed too so I’ll call him Blue), but he’s doubts himself hard and ends up taking (possibly) 11 hours through text to confess his feelings. The game would of been timed, meaning it actually would need to be open for 11 hours to be fully read.

This was kind of an odd setup for something, so I had also considered possibly writing it more as regular, in-person conversations throughout the week that the reader would need to open daily to read fully.

I wasn’t able to wrap my head around making it work properly, so I ended up not doing this. Also, twine game code is easy to look at, especially if it is downloadable, which would of made it very easy to for someone to cheat and read the entire thing in 30 minutes instead of the intended 1 or several days. The cheating thing though wasn’t much of issue.

I guess in a way, it was meant to represent the sort of longing of some sort of connection. I haven’t had quite a group since so I have had this sort of feeling more recently. It is kind of hard to have any relationship when your relationships previously we just there. The next idea kind of has that too, but not really in the same way.

Lilyana Idea

The Lilyana idea came shortly after I started the first draft. The idea came from an assignment in my psychology class where I had to create a character with a mental disability and talk about their life. The base of Lily’s character was created here.

So, Lilyana has a mental disability. This isn’t the first time I have written a character with one. However, Lily is an odd case though where I happen to have no personal real life experience with, so discussing it here casually might not be the best decision. It should be noted that I did receive good positive feedback (and grade) on that assignment, so I handled it as accurately as I could for that. For those curious, you’ll have to wait for a more developed work later on (or just ask me directly haha).

Syn on the other hand had no significant details and only existed as a non-descriptive partner to move the plot. She didn’t even have a name because Lily was talking to Syn directly having not needed to name drop.

Shortly after finishing it, I wanted to the revisit them. I was invested in these characters. I can’t just leave them in a college assignment! I wanted to use them more!

A novel expansion on Lily’s life was my first idea, and I still want to do that. My second idea though came when I was stuck on my draft for Words Are Hard since I didn’t know how to wrap the ideas around my head. I thought “yeah, I should switch ideas” and did.

Neo-Twiny

Another year, another 500 word IF game jam for trans fundraiser, another trans representation game jam. I had no fun ideas for the Trans Rep Jam yet, but the former I had 4. One being a sequel to goodnight, another being a collab with a friend, another being a personal journal thing, and this. The collab was dropped first due to time (finals happened in June) and the goodnight sequel and the personal journal thing I decided to reserve for another jam (although I did try to finish the journal thing alongside one way).

This was the only game to be finished out of the 4, and it was only barely finished. There was a lot of work I had to do in June, and when I had 1 week free between college semesters, I decided to spend almost all of it on actually relaxing because I really needed it. Even when I was working on it, I was constantly stuck on how to move the plot. I tried working on other projects too to help with my creative ideas flow, but this didn’t work out too well.

Apparently, non-story words no longer counted in this edition (or was never counted in the first place). My previous two Neo-Twiny games did count all words, but because it wasn’t a requirement for non-story words, I decided to include credits and a title screen in this entry. The story word count is 384 words by the way.

Now onto the actual development of one way.

Texting

The first draft with the Lily idea was focused on their relationship, with Syn (still unnamed) wanting to confess their love to Lily (through text for some reason). This still used the Boys Love idea in title only, except instead of boys, they are girls. There’s not much to say outside of what I already said.

Draft two focused more on the story Syn was writing (still unnamed). This draft is very similar to the release, except Lily spoke more here giving advice to Syn.

Draft three (which is basically the same as the final) shifts the plot onto Syn completely, with Lily having very little speaking, while also leaning more into the messaging aspect. It ended up becoming a one way conversation, which is how I ended up with the final title.

It started finally having the longing of connection again, in a more literal sense. On the internet at least, me and my friends don’t tend to talk a lot. Sometimes, we don’t have much of a response either when we do talk. That kind of made a sort of loneliness for me. I kind of hate how after leaving most of my friend groups, I had a varying number and quality of friends who came and went before all of them just ended up on the internet only for a while. It made me lonely in the end and wanting to get the old groups back. The old groups just felt genuine.

Once again, it is not to dismiss my current friends. It is more of an issue with me. Because I was just given my friends, when they were taken away, I had no idea where to begin on restoring that connection. This is how one way came to be. Had I stayed with them, one way would of not existed at all because I would still be with them. I don’t know if it would of been fully true though.

Yes, I know one way focuses on romance which didn’t matter to me a lot until after losing (most of) them, but I still think it is close to how I actually feel.

… eh. No worth in thinking of possibilities.

The ending to one way is probably now the best thing I have written, topping Get a Glass of Milk somehow. It was just something I came up with, knowing that several itch developers that I follow all come from a non-game development background. Lily too also came from a non-game development background. With Lily’s mental disability (and some minor knowledge from psychology), I used that to make powerful closing words.

I also made Syn transgender at this point. I was deciding on whether or not to do that, since it didn’t seem to work with the plot of the novel nor one way. In the end, I did it because it felt right with her somehow, even if it didn’t for the plot. This led to this being submitted to Trans Rep Jam as well as Neo-Twiny, similar to what happened with goodnight. Perhaps I could make it work in the novel too since it is still in the early stages.

When I was preparing to release this, I also needed a name for Syn, the protagonist and Lily’s girlfriend! As you can see, her name ended up being Syn. The pages are the only places where her name is said. I guess this is better than goodnight where I ended up not saying Abigail’s name outside of the post mortem.

The Best and the Worst! (just pros/cons again)

I have seen two others make post mortems in the 2nd Neo-Twiny Jam. One didn’t include this discussion point while the other focused more on impact. There was also other post mortems throughout both iterations that lacked something like this. Perhaps this is because when I wrote my first post mortem (Pancake Maker (link is updated version)), I partially based mine off Flipline’s post mortems (example) rather than any IF focused post mortems, which carried over to my IF games. It doesn’t matter too much but it is fun to compare.

Anyway, this.

Pros

• Lilyana and her gf!!!
• Has my best writing so far.
• i liked it

Cons

• Only Neo-Twiny entry this time.
• I didn’t mention this, but I wanted to make it more texting like using CSS. I ended up not doing that due to time. I did use it to change the font, text placement, and background, the latter of which is a standard for me at this point (all of my twine games so far except for Why? use backgrounds other than the default).
• I didn’t get to bother Manonamora with timed text (maybe this is a good thing actually idk)

A major take away is that I need to better my time and skills, because those two seem to have held this back more than anything else.

A Story

To quote Syn (who paraphrased Lily), “anyone can create a good story with effort.” I have played several games in both Neo-Twiny jams and can very much agree. Similarly, if you liked one way, this proves that too.

I live my life, and end up with a lot of ideas for games and more importantly, stories. That’s why I started all of this. It was the ideas. I can’t call myself an “average everyday person” as I specifically want do this as my work, but it does give me purpose, even when I do struggle with loneliness and such.

I will end on this: play the other games in this jam and perhaps make your own stories! Below are the links to both jams. I encourage you check some out.

Neo-Twiny 2023 / 2024

Trans Representation Jam 2022 / 2023 / 2024