HELLO, DEAR SNOWFLAKES!

I thought I’d write a postmortem now that the full-game is finally out. But first, let me just…

THE GAME IS OUT, THE GAME IS ACTUALLY OUT!!!! IS THIS THE REAL LIFE??? IS THIS JUST FANTASY??? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reali-

EHEM! Okay, back to the topic at hand…

Disclaimer: the following postmortem is VERY LONG and has a lot of emotional parts and rambling.

Whew, where do I even begin? 

As I mentioned in a few tweets here and there, this project was born a little more than a year ago. The reason why I chose to release it on November 14th is because that was the day I announced the name of the project: Where Winter Crows Go.

This game initially started out as a mere experiment to see if I could create something for the Winter VN Jam of 2022 completely by myself: with my writing, my programming and buying assets (music, backgrounds and even character sprites). When I first began writing it, I honestly wasn’t doing so well. I was still working at my previous job—an office job that had NOTHING to do with what I wanted to do for my career—and put a LOT of my frustrations and feelings into my MC, Aspen. I was overworked, I felt that I wasn’t appreciated and was constantly covering for a coworker who didn’t do their job properly (but, wouldn’t you know? That person eventually got fired). When I couldn’t take it anymore, I ended up changing jobs thanks to a friend of mine who recommended me! It’s my current job—a game designer at a mobile game company—and, while every job has its problems, it’s definitely a whole lot better than my last one.

But that’s not the only reason why I started working on this story. Truth is… I really needed it. If you know me from Fable Novel, you’ll know I’ve written a few games in this little indie group during 2022. It was a lot of fun and gave me all sorts of experiences that I will never forget. Sadly, due to different life circumstances and different time zones, we weren’t really able to make games together so often. And this… made me want to make games even more. If there’s anything that I have to thank 2022 for is it giving me the energy and PASSION to write again. If it hadn’t been for Fable Novel, I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t want to say I would have quit game development but… it was very possible. So when our Fable Novel team started being more inactive, I thought to myself that I didn’t want this feeling to go away… I didn’t want to go back to 2021. I had an urge, a CRAVING for creating something new. I WANTED TO WRITE! 

And so… write I did! But BOY did this project go through changes!

When I began working for the Winter VN Jam of 2022, one of the pleasant surprises I had was that Reece Bridger contacted me to be a voice actor for Crowe! I was honestly really lucky cause, at the time, I didn’t have much of a budget, but he was very understanding and supportive! If it wasn’t for him, this project most probably wouldn’t have been voiced, so I’m really grateful to him!!

And then, after I made a short DEMO for the Winter VN Jam of 2022… something unbelievable happened. It got over 1000 downloads in 3 DAYS!!! INSANE. COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY INSANE. This was the first time EVER something I’ve made received so much attention. I was over the moon, to say the least. 

Unfortunately, not much time passed until the first problem arose with this project… Thanks to a dear friend who let me know, I realized the backgrounds and food art assets I had initially bought for the first DEMO were made with AI. AI is something that, sadly, is becoming more and more frequent these days. It’s something that hurts a lot of people in the creative industry. It’s a machine that uses art, voices and written material from others without their consent and to create something that has no soul. I DON’T support AI and never EVER want to support it. For this reason, once I realized the assets were made with AI, I started looking for alternatives as quickly as I could. 

This is when I met Vic Alen, a background artist from Argentina, and commissioned her to make several backgrounds for WWCG. I got lucky ‘cause, at the time, she was living in Argentina as well, so I could afford to pay her in pesos! Since I couldn’t afford to commission her for ALL the backgrounds, though, I bought the rest from Minikle, who’s a very well-known artist in the game-dev community. If you’ve played lots of indie visual novels, chances are you most probably came across some of Minikle’s backgrounds.

As for the food art itself, I asked Flor—my dear friend and fellow gamedev—if she was interested in making food art for WWCG! She was really on board with the idea so I ended up commissioning her for the food art mini CGs and the sprite of the mysterious crow with red eyes~

With the first crisis averted, I continued working on the game to see if I could, maybe, release the full version for the Yandere VN Jam from 2023. During this time, another friend and fellow gamedev, Antares, offered to be the CG artist for WWCG! She even offered to do it for free since I didn’t have much of a budget. I was overjoyed and really touched by her help! I think it was also around this time when I became good friends with Carrot, the developer from Our Wonderland, since I’ve become obsessed really smitten with their game!! 

Slowly but surely the Yandere VN Jam date was approaching. I even opened up a Patreon and could, for the first time ever, commission artists from around the world—Ari, for the logo, and Kyle, for the cover image of the game! Apart from that, I had also written most—if not all—of the outline and wanted to see how far I could reach with the writing. But that’s when I noticed that the stock sprite I had bought for Crowe didn’t quite suit the scenes outside the cabin. No matter what excuse I made for the story, it would look very jarring if he didn’t have a coat… so I contacted Ant again to see if I could commission her to add a jacket to the stock sprite. She agreed, but we needed to make sure the stock sprite’s TOS allowed this, first. Oh, it was allowed, all right, but this was, unfortunately, when the 2nd crisis arose.

What wasn’t allowed was making new illustrations from the likeness of the sprite.

God, I did NOT have a good time when I realized this. Another mistake? Seriously?! IN THE SAME PROJECT?! Why did I have to misunderstand the TOS this badly?

Carrot helped me A LOT during this time. They helped me send a message to the Japanese artist and… well, unfortunately, it turned out that I had indeed gone against their TOS. The artist did, however, make an exception and told me that, since the illustrations had already been made, I could still use them in my game… but to not do this again.

I was devastated. 

I don’t remember when was the last time I bawled my eyes out quite like that. I’d been working so hard on the project and now THIS happened? I had even been considering making a DLC because of how much support I was starting to receive; but all of this just made me so heartbroken. So… SAD. 

By this point, this game had already created a scar. Could I really continue writing this story when I was feeling like this…? I wasn’t sure… Nonetheless, I kept working on the project, but definitely NOT with the same energy as before.

NaNoRenO then came around and I thought I’d take a little break from the project to work on something different. So, while I still kept making progress with WWCG, I dedicated most of March to my newest creation: Killer Trait. 

And then, once NaNoRenO 2023 came to a close, a long period of burnout followed. While working on more than one project definitely didn’t help, I came to realize that this burnout period was mostly a combination of stuff: personal issues, full-time job-related stuff, learning to manage patreon and, of course, working on my own games. This was a difficult period for me since I was not having a good time in my personal life; which, unfortunately, affected a lot of my progress for WWCG. There was only so much stress I could handle, so I had to take it easy with several things. And even when things started getting better on all accounts… my body still suffered the repercussions of it. It took me several months to feel fully recovered but, thankfully, I did!!

When I started to feel better, things began going smoothly once again: all the food art had been finished, most of the backgrounds were done… even another awesome VA, Bryce Buckley, was going to be part of the project! And the writing was progressing really well too, only the endings were left to be written! I also managed to release quite a few Beta Builds on my Patreon and this was helping me stay motivated to finish the story. 

But then… Why was I still unhappy?

I tried to ignore it for quite a while but, truth be told, the stock-sprite incident was still weighing on me. Yes, I had indeed created the story. Yes, I had indeed created the character called Crowe, with all his associations to the bird, winter and living in a cabin. But… I couldn’t quite call him my character 100%, could I? When people thought about Crowe, they associated him with the stock sprite. When people created fanart of Crowe, they created fanart of the stock sprite. It was my character but, at the same time, it wasn’t my character either.

Then there was the matter of Aspen. As I mentioned at the beginning of the postmortem, WWCG started as an experiment. I had never written a “self-insert” type of character before but, since I didn’t have much budget at that time, I thought it was a good way of creating a story without the need of adding much art to it. But Aspen… isn’t a self-insert character. They didn’t have a face associated with them, but they still had a personality and a past. They weren’t a blank slate. And I didn’t WANT to make them a blank slate. I ended up realizing I’m just not the type of writer who can write a character that everyone puts their personality into. 

But the script was almost finished! Only the endings were missing to be written! Could I really find the courage to redesign Crowe AND design Aspen for them BOTH to appear in the game in the way I truly wanted? 

I gave it a lot of thought. I REALLY gave it a lot of thought. And, finally, after mulling it over for MONTHS, and thanks to the encouragement of dear friends and fellow gamedevs, I went through with it. I MADE THE DECISION TO REDESIGN CROWE AND MAKE ASPEN A VISIBLE MAIN CHARACTER.

THIS WAS IT. This was what I was missing. I had spent so much time thinking about what others would think, about how disappointed it would make people… that I forgot to think about MYSELF. I forgot to think about WHAT I WANTED. Which is CRAZY!! I mean, it’s MY project, shouldn’t what I want to do with it be the most important? And yet… It’s more common than you think. Sometimes, content creators lose themselves. They’re not sure about what to do, they try to fit the mold of what others expect of them and their passion for their craft slowly starts to die. I’ve seen so many people in the creative industry fall into a limbo of not knowing whether to change something about their craft or not because they were afraid people might not like it. 

Fear paralyzes you. Fear takes away your freedom. But also… fear makes you aware. It makes you aware that, perhaps, you WANT to try to make things a little different than what others expect of you. That, perhaps, you WANT to follow your heart and see where it leads you. Sure, maybe not everyone will like the answer you’ve reached. But, then again, when is that ever the case? There will always be people who don’t like the stuff we do, for whatever reason. It’s impossible to please everyone. Absolutely impossible. However, be that as it may, there is ALWAYS going to be someone who loves what you do. Because a negative can’t exist without a positive. And it’s for those people who give you positive feelings that it’s worth being a content creator; in my case, a game developer and a writer. 

So then, how did the rest of the WWCG development follow?

While, as any project, it had its issues, the rest went much more smoothly. Seriously. Making this decision for WWCG was THE BEST DECISION I ever made for it. I mean, it made me feel MOTIVATED and HAPPY and PASSIONATE about my project again! That’s got to count for something, right? And it certainly did!! 

I am SO thankful to Ant for being so amazing and helpful with the art she did for this project. I jokingly call her Sonic because SHE’S SO FAST at making art!! She did the designs, sprites and CGs in RECORD TIME—NO, I AM NOT KIDDING—and was so, SO patient with my fucking dumb nitpicks! Forever grateful to you, Ant, and I’m looking forward to working with you again sometime!

Then Kristi and Seven! Kristi—aka HusbandoGoddess—is a fellow gamedev and dear friend of mine who I commissioned to help me with some programming features; specifically the gallery, making the endings appear in the extras, adding a skip button to the credits, adding zooms and blurs and some programming tips here and there for future Pri to learn. Seven—aka the programmer for 2023 Spooktober’s 3rd winner, Reaplaced—is another dear friend of mine who I also commissioned to help me with ‘the Aspen feature’; which is essentially the feature that makes Aspen’s sprite show up if you choose to play the game as them—not to mention the functions and tweaks he added to the overall code as well! Like Kristi, he also gave me a few programming pointers for future Pri to learn. I am immensely grateful to you for all the support and help you’ve given me. I hope we work on another project together!

The game wouldn’t have been possible either without the HUGE help from all my proofreaders and beta testers. Some I’ve already mentioned above, like Flor, Carrot, Kristi and Seven. But there’s also Snakkz, Vivi and Ty!! I’m really grateful to them all for the IMMENSE help they gave me—not only as proofreaders and/or beta testers, but also as moral support and being awesome friends—with this project. Testing might come last, but it’s certainly not the least!

Of course, I couldn’t leave out my patrons and Ko-Fi donators! I can’t thank them enough for all the great support I’ve received from everyone there! Every little penny means the world to me as it helps me a great deal with game dev funds. It was thanks to that support that I was able to commission so many wonderful people in the first place!! Thank you so much!!

This game might have gone through a lot of hardships but the people I met, the people who supported me, the friends I made along the way... you guys are amazing. One of the themes in this story is lonelyness and forming connections... so it warms my heart that I started the development of this game feeling very lonely but ended it with a lot of meaningful connections. I'm really grateful and happy to have made it this far; it was truly a journey I'll never forget. I'm excited for the next one already!

Alrighty, this postmortem is already getting long enough so I just wanted to finish with a few bits of info:

• If you’d like to see a walkthrough of the game, remember you can do so over HERE. The game has 3 endings~
  
  
• While I don’t know if there’ll be a DLC for this game, I know for sure that I’d like Crowe and Aspen to at least make a cameo in another of my Cedariaverse projects. You’ll have to wait and see which of them!
  
  
• I’m currently working on a WWCG artbook with Flor! While most of it will be art, it will have some commentary as well and also a bit of lore about the world! 
  
  
• The game doesn’t really answer ALL of the questions you might have (I just find that leaving some things a little more open ended makes them more interesting and gives you the potential to explore them further in other stories).
  
  
• Now that WWCG has been released, the next project I’ll be working on—after a good rest, that is—is Potion Pleasing! While I’ll still be working on Killer Trait, the main focus will be Potion Pleasing, since I want to work on one of my games from the other fictional universe I created as well (Essentiaverse).
  
  
• If you have any more questions, PLEASE, remember to read the FAQ first. I plan to open Asks on my Tumblr—not anonymous asks, though, sorry—at some point but keep in mind I won’t be answering things that have already been answered or that I specifically said I wouldn’t answer. 

Thank you so much for reading until the end!! I hope you enjoy the game, snowflakes!!