Please note: I didn't mean for this post to be so long! I just wanted to explain my game and the emotions I was going through! (╥﹏╥)

Evelyn's Home

Evelyn's Home follows Evelyn learning more about her new neighbors. She has been in town for a couple of weeks and she will be celebrating her first New Years in Clover Town. Townsfolk range from the sassy Bernie to the nerdy Claire to the sweet Samson. Evelyn comes to realize that she really has found a place in the diversity of people and that Clover Town is really home.

Why GB Studio?

The main reason was that I didn't want to make a visual novel. I already had three visual novel projects and while a fourth isn't necessarily bad, I didn't want to have Ren'Py be the sole game engine that I could use. I wanted to be more versatile, touch other game engines. I wanted to try a different art style. I wanted to dabble in a different genre of gameplay other than the introspective pieces that I've already created. I wanted to be able to move a character around and talk to NPC's whenever I wanted. I believed that at this point, although I don't have extensive knowledge of Ren'Py, that learning only one game engine holds me back from other experiences I otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

Another reason for the game engine switch was because I wanted to learn GB Studio for the longest time. Before starting game development, my biggest fear was programming. If I'm being honest, it's still a fear of mine. Whenever I think of programming, I get overwhelmed.  I find programming scary and believe that I won't understand what I'm doing. Luckily, I didn't find that problem so much when learning GB Studio since it has a drag-and-drop script feature. After a day of using the program, I realized that maybe I could program after all. Maybe  I could even make a game. And I did! There were many areas of development that I had to do in such a time period, but to talk about them one by one...

Art

I have adored pixel art ever since I picked up Pokémon Pearl. The cute sprites, the animations, even furniture was amazing! There are many talented artists out there who are able to use pixel art to elevate their art and while their work is amazing, I prefer the simplicity and aesthetics of a simple Pokemon-like sprite: chibi-sized, a distinguishable color palette, and accessories that tell the story of their characters.

With very basic knowledge of the foundations of art, I was a bit worried about how the aesthetics of my game was going to look. I started my art task by completing the environmental pieces and the interactable objects. I pushed programming far away in my mind. I only had a map and the interior at this point and even though there were no characters on the screen I felt extremely motivated to keep going. The map itself is very simple, but this... This was the type of game that I played when I was little.

The characters were a bit of a challenge. GB studio only allows 3 colors for characters compared to the 4 that are allowed for background scenes: light green, white, and black. That was it. I tried to make the characters as different as possible despite the fact that the population size was a small number to begin with. Still, I attempted to put as much effort as I did towards the background to my characters. If you have played the game, you can see that all of the sprites with the exception of Evelyn do not have walking animations. The truth was.... I was lazy. I was stressed because I felt like I was putting too much time into the art when I still had other areas of game development to pick up.

I think with the project being as basic as it can be, that I like the fact that Evelyn is the only one walking around town. The game experience is very short and because of that I didn't feel the need to make walking animations for the other characters.

So with the art being done, this leads to....

Programming

Sigh. It came too soon. But I still had around five or six days to get everything working and published. With that in mind... let's watch some YouTube tutorials.

I've heard of Pixel Pete from inquiring about the game engine and also from a friend of mine. I watched a couple of his videos before I started to feel flustered that maybe I wasn't cut out for this. The self doubt was coming in again and before it consumed me, I heard an interesting thing from him. He said to look at the example projects that GB Studio already had in their engine to look at scripting examples and play with the engine. I didn't tamper with anything in the example projects, but I thoroughly read through all the scripts in the example town project. I clicked on everything: variables, actors (characters), triggers, etc. I realized how simple the program actually was. I've taken programming classes in the past but this was programming at such a simple level. It was all about where the pieces fit and with me being a visual learner, I got to understanding things right away. And I actually had fun doing it!

It took me around two or three days to finish the programming (mainly because I slept in lol). After seeing Evelyn move and the logic actually logic-ing and working I was so proud. I was halfway there!! 

And that left me with...

Music & SFX

(A quick mention of the UI. GB Studio has a UI png that creators can edit. I wanted to spice things up with the UI and make it my own so I edited the frame a tiny bit. Because the game is a slice-of-life/narrative experience, I didn't have any other UI that I needed to touch. I like how it turned out though ^^)

Of all the areas of game development so far, I dreaded this part. Beepbox senpai wouldn't be available for use for this project because it is unable to export .ugg files (I don't know what ugg means). In Beepbox, there are so many instruments available (my favorite being the ocarina, harp, and fiddle). GB Studio's music tracker made me feel like there was a real wall this time. It didn't feel similar to the programming wall that I'm used to, this was different. I was frustrated not only because I had limited time left and didn't know how the music tracker worked, but because I was limited in music theory knowledge. I know some of you reading this (and sorry this postmortem is so long) might be thinking, "But you got over programming? Just do the same thing with music." And I tried. I did. If the music track was something I was happy with, then I did get over it. And if it was decent or okay... then I tried. This made me realize how much video game music has an affect on me. I love The Legend of Zelda's: Breath of the Wild soundtrack. Like a lot. It's been my Spotify wrapped for the past two years. My addiction is that bad and I have no shame in that. I looovveee it. I also have a love for Omori's soundtrack and Life is Strange's. Music is such a visceral part of being human and it especially makes people remember things that they probably didn't realize they had remembered. I want my music to affect people the same way and even though I didn't hit that mark (and I know I didn't hit that mark), I am going to try to make the best tracks that I can make.

So What Now?

I know I am getting pretty winded so this will be my last section. What happens now that I know how to make games out of two engines now? Well, I have a whole list of ideas. Literally. I have a Google doc for game ideas and story lines for every game engine that I want to use from Ren'Py to GB Studio to Godot to RPG Maker. The answer to what now is that I keep making more games! Possibly even starting on the dream story ideas that I have had for years and finally start working on them.

There aren't enough Game Boy games! At least, there aren't enough Game Boy games of the genre that I would like to play. And I want to make those games. If I could paint a picture for you, my story ideas (specifically for GB Studio) are ones that have you playing them on the bus ride home and you help your little pixel friends and, I don't know, clean or cook; go on an small adventure; staying home and taking care of your house plants. I don't know. I'm just brainstorming.

As for this game? I have no idea if this is the end of the road for Evelyn or if maybe there is more to explore with these characters. I'm going to spend time figuring that out. As for minor things, I may add a save feature though the game is very short.

If you have read this far, I appreciate you taking the time to read this post and playing my game. I didn't mean to talk this much, but it feels good to share my thoughts on my project and to get everything about it out of my head. I'm reminded of that meme where the girl is trying to explain to her mom what memes are and the mom gives her a blank stare lol. But again, I really appreciate the time that people have taken to play my little game.

Thank you!~

Joos.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚