I’d love to come in here and tell y’all that March was great, and I got everything done that I wanted…. but that is definitely not what happened.

I’m proud that I’ve released something, and I’m really pleased with the story and the characters in Accidental Necromancy (I love Ollie so much), but I wanted it to be more.

I’ll try not to be hard on myself because my full-time job has been tough this month- just so many issues and for the last 2 weeks we’ve been short a person in a department of only 4 people. It’s difficult being creative when all you want to do when leaving work is decompress. By the time I was in a good headspace to do creative stuff or learn new things, I didn’t have long before I needed to be in bed to do it all again the next day. And I stayed up way too late many nights trying to take advantage when the creative juices were flowing which made it worse the next day…

Anyways- I had to cut wayyyyy back on what I wanted to have finished by the end of the jam.

The good news-

• I have about 90% of the story fully written (about 30k words right now) and a good portion of that is programmed into renpy already.
• All the endings I want to include for sure are outlined.
• I learned a bunch of new stuff!
  • I was especially happy with the cell phone system by Nighten. As I was writing my story I really wanted to include texting and was nervous I wouldn’t be able to implement it. Between their code and the video from Vimi though, I got it working!
  • Layered Images – I just did static sprites on my previous game which worked for that story, but I really wanted to bring the LI’s to life and after using the Layered Image Tutorial by Tofurocks it clicked for me. It’s been so satisfying going through these first two days in the demo and changing expressions/clothes/poses as I go.
  • In relation to the layered images, I ended up using a premade pack of sprites because I was so paralyzed with indecision on where to start with my own. I learned a lot about the layers used, a great way to set them up, and did a bunch of customizing to help me get used to that. I switched to Procreate from Krita recently and working with an existing project helped me better understand Procreate as well.
  • Variables/Conditionals- Feniks’s tutorials have been a lifesaver for me, and I’ve been recommending them to anyone who needs a grasp of the basics. I had used a couple of variables in my prior game, but no big changes and it was only the one ending. Accidental Necromancy has an affection system, and a few other variables that will change how conversations go, and at least 8 endings (I may add more bc I have ideas!).

The bad news-

• I really want to redo all the art. I used photos for the backgrounds, but I, personally, prefer the aesthetic of hand drawn. I love the spritesI used by Fungii, they turned out soo good, but I want them to be my own. And I have multiple ideas for CG’s I’d like to include in the final game. I'm still a beginner art-wise, but the only way I'll get better is to practice, and it's easier for me to do that when I have a concrete goal.
• Music- I ended up not including any bc I simply ran out of time to do it. I am attempting to persuade my husband to make some music for me. He hasn’t written any music in years, but I think once he gets back into the hang of it, I could have some awesome custom music that’s just for me! (and my players)
• Still need to learn how to make custom galleries- I want to include one for the endings and one for the CG’s.
• I will likely rewrite a good portion of the interactions with the 2nd LI (our masked man) and I’ve been toying with the idea of adding extra scenes for him.
• UI- I have multiple tutorials bookmarked, it's just having the time to go through them. And narrowing down what I want my game to look like.
• I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment, but I just want to soak in all the ren'py knowledge!

At the end of it, I’m still glad I decided to participate in NaNoRenO, it definitely gave me something to shoot for and pushed me to learn the things I did. I’m now aspiring to finish the game in time for Otome Jam 2024, so I’m taking a day or two break, then it’s back to it!