What Happened?

Hello! I’m not too sure how to start this post. Usually, I would make a joke or explain the post like I did on my own blog, but I don’t any of those are necessary for this post. I guess for those that wanted this game… I’m sorry.

So, what did happen?

Issue one was that the idea was not the same throughout the game’s development. Before the game jam, it was simply going to be a game about someone venting about their life and had the amazing title of “How to Feel Miserable”. Pizza later got involved, then what was on the idea document was formed.

This later changed. I wanted to shift the focus from the main character (Jade) to their sibling (Vian). I got rid of the pizza working stuff, so the involvement of pizza was reduced to maybe a end game thing that I considered after the idea change. Issue though was the plot didn’t work now, and I couldn’t try to make the plot work without feeling odd. And yes, I could probably get away with a bland plot for my first visual novel with bland sprites (another issue, but I won’t cover it), but there were other issues too.

Another big issue was that I still haven’t learn how to do time management. This happened with my experimental novel attempt, Seven, and my recent release, Literally Watch Paint Dry (it had 2 months of me not working on it). I have an actual life outside of writing a random thing of the week, and it’s been draining me quite a bit. It is kind of my fault though for doing a game jam during a very time sensitive time of my life.

But that’s not why I decided to quit. In a recent blog post that outlined my creative progress in general, I said this regarding this game.

“I will stay til the end, regardless of what happens.”

What I didn’t know was that the entire project was going to be questioned by me. What I questioned was if I was committed to making this, or it was just a lie?

I decided to compile a list of things I made in the past 3/4 years in order of how much I liked them. This gave me an idea of what kind of content works best for my interests. In the list of 15 things, only 6 are what I consider “worked well without too big or many of issues” (and 5 of them were released during or after 2021, so this isn’t much of a bias or anything). Then I looked at this game. I did seem like something that I could have made work to that standard, but then there was everything else.

The top six in the list I mentioned were all stuff I was devoted to, mainly thanks to their characters, good enough executed idea, or general stupidness that had a working plot. For the Pizza concept (one posted here), it didn’t exactly have those things, although I did like the idea. The first vision (before Pizza concept) had the stupidness and the idea, while the third (after Pizza concept) didn’t have any. Between all three, the characters of Jade, Ray, and Alti were always good, but that’s really it.

So, I wasn’t enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, and it was obvious since I not only updated Milk Game during the jam period, but also made a complicated community thing. I decided that if I’m not enjoying it, it probably isn’t worth it to finish the project.

It is a bit disappointing. The idea would have worked too if I had a different mindset. But it is what it is.

This isn’t the end of my visual novel attempts though, nor is it any non-Orteil Idle Game Maker game attempts. I’ll take this failure and learn from it to prevent repeats of this.

As for the Greenlight Jam, it did no harm. I actually see the benefits of its format, and I plan on using an altered version of that on future game jams. And I will check out a few other’s games once it’s all over.

As for me… no clue. I guess I can start working on that one cool project again. See you all.