Falling for Al: Postmortem

Did You Fall for Al?

For all of my projects, I try to learn something new and try something different during each game jam I participate in.  Several months ago, while brainstorming with my friend Azunite on our respective stories for the NovemBEAR jam, I had an idea about a visual novel with visual gags that progressed throughout the story, subtle at first, before eventually beating the reader over the head with how obvious they were.  All of this was to indicate how unobservant and inept the MC was at perceiving that something was amiss, content to live in their constructed, false reality.

Neither of our stories ended up going in that direction, but I still liked the concept and wanted to try and work with it somehow in the future.  

I love a mystery, where things slowly are unveiled and become more apparent during the story.  I also like when I can logically follow what's happening and make my own deductions.  It's a difficult balance to try to work with.  If I let it go on for too long, I felt I would risk the reader becoming thoroughly confused; not long enough, and the story would be boring.  Part of the fun of seeing feedback is discovering at what point people realized who Al actually is, and it was surprisingly varied, which is what I hoped for.  I  still wanted it to be blatantly obvious to the player before the MC, though that decision may be questionable.  

Writing is certainly not my strength, but I am trying to learn and improve, and part of that is going outside of my comfort zone and trying something different.  When I first started actually planning this project on May 1st, I remembered my unused idea from NovemBEAR. I thought it may be an interesting angle to go with... the jam theme was the light in the dark, and my first thought was a character who appeared real, but wasn't, a hologram, a 3d projection of light.  A walking, talking hologram that could fool people would be difficult to explain though, and I liked the idea of the MC appearing delusional, seeing what no one else could.  But of course, if I'm going to base him off A. I., I can't have him be the good guy, can I?

And, of course, this was a May Wolf jam project, so it was reasonable that this imaginary character should be a wolf boyfriend of sorts.  I wanted to make something lighthearted.  My next thought was I didn't want my character to be delusional, just to appear so to everyone around him.  Hence the concept of an A.I. boyfriend.  And of course, you will notice that in many font faces , A.I. looks the same as the name Al, which also sounds like it would be short for algorithm.  Easy name!  (In fact, this was why I stuck with the default Ren'Py text for the text boxes... it has this particular quirk already).  I wanted Al's dialogue and mannerisms to offer hints as well, becoming more blatantly obvious as the story progressed.

Part of my struggle with writing is in using narration, so I decided to try and use it to my advantage.  I wanted to portray my MC as an unobservant airhead who paid no attention to what was going on around him.  You will notice he offers little to no commentary on what's actually going on around him, and only occasional internal monologue.  Also, when Al is visibly glitching, he conveniently has his phone out, or a pamphlet, or paper, blissfully unaware of what's happening right in front of his face.  (It was also much faster to only have to code in one sprite on the screen at a time instead of two, with less than six hours before deadline).  I'll just claim that's why I wanted it to be from a first person perspective for the majority of the game.  

I focused on keeping everything fast-paced, focused, and somewhat comical, as I tend to meander a lot when I write.  I may have went a bit overboard, with some scenes having quick transitions with little room to breathe, but I felt it was better than the alternative, putting the focus on the humor more so than the convoluted story.

I've touched on a couple of aspects already, but art-wise, I wanted to make sure the work of my fellow sprite artists didn't go to waste. I like the community aspect of May Wolf, and even though I love drawing sprites as well, I felt it would be better to concentrate on other areas and let their hard work shine.  I did several alterations, though, trying my best to match their art styles as best I could, and tried to add a few lighting and animation effects along the way.  I also focused on creating a more customized UI for the first time!  

For music, I wanted to create a custom score, but was severely lacking in the time department.  I originally wanted to go more techno to further tie in with the theme, but... I couldn't handle all the beeps and boops with my sonophobia.  I settled for using basic rhythms to create songs with a jazzy/funk type of sound to create something quickly the last two days of the jam.  While I would have preferred to go fully custom, I do like that all the music (minus the first car scene) had a consistent theme throughout at least, and I felt had a unique sound as a result.  

Why did I run out of time?  I wrote the script within the first few days.  Without going into detail, I had a very rocky month of May.  I was mostly unable to touch my project from the time I wrote it until the last three days of the jam.  Everything other than the initial draft of the story and an initial sketch of the title screen wasn't even started until then.  No backgrounds, no music, no programming... nothing.  I wasn't entirely sure if I would be able to finish, but I was determined to try.  I didn't quite have the same energy burst I did last year to do an entire VN in the last two days of the jam, but I wanted to get something out... a complete story, even if a bit unpolished.  I started adding the coding for the sprites, the backgrounds, the music and animations less than 6 hours before the deadline, and submitted it with 10 minutes to spare.  I have to live up to my little Sega-style intro theme, after all.  (I hope I sang my name with the right harmony!) 

As for other regrets I've not addressed yet, I do feel I could have handled the ending better.  I did cut off the original epilogue (thanks, Rag!), but think I still went to heavily into unnecessary explanation, killing the humor and making the pace slow way down.  I'll be the first to admit, endings and narration seem to be my kryptonite when writing.

Going back to the jam theme, I wanted to play with the idea of light in darkness a few different ways.  The first instance was the phone screen literally lighting up in the darkness.  A. I. takes things literally to the extreme, so I felt that the introduction of Al was a good place to put the most literal interpretation.  Al was originally thought of as a light projection, but going the A. I. angle, I feel that aspect was somewhat lost in translation, minus perhaps the glitchy shimmering effects I used with his sprite.  On a deeper level, I wanted to turn the concept of light always being good on its head... after all, Lucifer means light or light-bearer, but has an evil connotation, much like A. I. does in our community... it's often portrayed as something good and positive, but it is ruining careers, suppressing true artistry, and dumbing people down.  And lastly, the other intended interpretation is that our true friend, Nate, was always there, but sometimes we don't see our light in the darkness.  The ending credit sequence shows Max and Alex next to each other in the shadows, lightly illuminated while standing in the darkness.  Perhaps it was mostly too subtle, but I much prefer that approach to announcing it boldly in the text.  Plus, I wasn't worried about ratings, so I decided I could just do what I wanted! 

So on that note, why did I withdraw for ratings?  I had a few reasons.  First and foremost, as one of the sprite artists, I was aware of the theme a few months in advance.  I intentionally did not start thinking about what I would do until the first day of the game jam.  I was allowed to participate if I wanted to.  Personally, I still felt it best to step aside anyway, as I would have probably felt guilty if I had managed to win anything, even if I didn't expect to.  Secondly, I'm more drawn to May Wolf for the community coming together aspect... I have no issue with ratings or awards; they're quite fun, but my primary motivation is seeing others challenge themselves, creating something, telling their own stories, refining their skills, and growing, and doing the same myself.  When I make a vn, I'm personally not competing with others... I'm competing with myself.  I'm only in it for the fun and the challenge, though it is nice when others can enjoy my work, too!  It was nice to read comments that someone would have voted it for best animation or best comedy, but my sincere hope it simply that it was generally fun and didn't overstay its welcome.

As a final note, if you only experienced the original jam version, and have a chance, I would encourage you to check out the most recent iteration of this game.  It can still, without a doubt, be improved upon, but what is currently posted is my original plan for the project.  I've considered adding route divergence and expanding the story a bit in the future, but am satisfied enough at this point to consider it finished, and just trying to take what I've learned and apply it to future projects.  For the first time, I feel like I've actually accomplished what I set out to do with my vn, and hope that means I can do even better going forward!

Thanks for reading!

- Jerbear🐾