I haven't submitted to a game jam since late 2023. Several times between then and now I've tried to do another game jam, but it always fell apart. This time, however, I have the power of NEW ANTIDEPRESSANT MEDICATION on my side; it's drastically improved my overall mood and motivation, I actually get inspired to do and make things again. I've been on it for around two months now and it's been working well for me, so I decided to give another game jam a shot. My last game jam entry was Terror Twilight, a short but somewhat replayable game I made in RPG Maker 2003 in 3 days. I'm still proud of that game, but it's kind of lacking in its current state. It's fine for being the product of a 3-day game jam, but there was so much more I wanted to add to it that I still want to incorporate at some point. I really want to expand upon it, basically as soon as I published it on Itch, I added the caveat that it was the "game jam version" and that there would be a full version "eventually". 1.5 years later and I still haven't touched it since then. I do genuinely want to work on it, but it is very low priority. I like it, but not that much. Really the only reason I haven't just dropped it completely is because I know I would regret all of the wasted potential that would come from that, and also the fact that I barely have completed any game projects (public or private) makes me want to finish it just to break the cycle. But like I said, that's on the backburner. This is a new game jam, with new opportunities.
The game jam in question is Mana's 2D Horror Game Jam #2. It's hosted by a small indie horror Youtuber, and each game submitted will get a full playthrough (within reason) on their channel. They have a few hundred shy of 1k subscribers and usually get between 50-200 views on their videos, so it's not like crazy exposure or anything, but I don't care, that's not really why I joined this jam. I joined it because it was a month long (a deadline I feel comfortable I can work with), had an interesting theme, and no mandatory challenges. The playthrough is honestly just a cool bonus, like I said it's not about the exposure I get from it, it's more the feedback I get from someone who plays a lot of these kinds of games. They play a lot of indie horror games (and not the big Youtuber bait horror slop that plagues Gamejolt and Itch like a landfill), so I trust they have a lot of experience with what works and what doesn't with indie horror games. Admittedly, I've never seen or even heard of this Youtuber before, they do only have 850ish subscribers and I'm not really in those kinds of circles anyways, but the fact that they not only are going out of their way to host a game jam (and a dedicated Discord server for it to), but the fact they're going to commit to a full playthrough of each entry shows to me that they genuinely care about indie horror.
I'll get to what the project is actually about in a minute, but first, you might be asking yourself why I'm doing this in the first place. If you've been following me for some time, you should know I have a lot of projects in the works. This is especially apparent with the advent of this website and the fact that my projects page has more than 2 entries. Wouldn't it make more sense to work on one of those instead of starting an entirely new project? Honestly, yeah it would, but my brain doesn't make sense either. I tend to be very impulsive when it comes to creativity, I will randomly get inspired to work on one thing, burn out that energy after a few days, lie dormant in a hibernation state for a few more days until inspiration strikes me again, then work on a different thing. I have a plethora of overlapping mental illnesses that kind of all contribute to this kind of behavioral pattern so I don't know exactly what's causing it, but it's safe to say my ADHD plays a big part in it. I am a lot better about this now that I'm in a good place medication-wise, but this behavior hasn't been completely erased (I'm not even sure medication can do that, or at least that it should do that). My focus has been improved overall, and I've even been able to narrow my focus to be more specific and less random. I'd been mostly focusing on working on Chroma War and Star Crossin, which begs another question, why aren't I working on those instead? Well, Chroma War progress has been kind of slow. It's certainly picked up pace with my increased motivation and focus, but it's still a collaborative project. Fin (said collaborator) is very busy, he's going to a pretty fancy art school, so he has to deal with a lot more work than me and my single class at the community college, not to mention all of the attention his family and health issues demand. I don't want to just leave him in the dust, especially since I asked him to help me with the project well into its development in the first place. As for Star Crossin, that's still in the conceptual stage, and it's honestly kind of hard to come up with ideas for, regardless of increased motivation/inspiration. So, rather than just kind of wait on the edge of my seat for these projects to make any movements, I've chosen to work on a new project. Besides, I enjoy working from a prompt and with a deadline, limitation breeds creativity and all that. I also could use the practice and feedback.
Ok enough pussyfooting, what the hell is even this project? Well, to nobody's surprise, it's another surreal RPG Maker horror(?) game. I might change the title, but right now I'm calling it "Lucid Julia." It's about a girl named Julia encountering a girl in her dreams named Annelise who grants her lucidity. Every night during her dreams, at some point Annelise appears, and takes Julia to her house, where they talk and spend time together. This becomes the thing in her days she looks forward to the most, as she has socially and emotionally been in a slump lately, and Annelise is the only person she's really been able to call a friend recently. However, she starts having sleeping problems, sleeping in, not being able to fall asleep easily, etc., so she starts taking melatonin to help her sleep better, which it does. Unfortunately, this has the unintended side effect of giving her weird and unsettling dreams. Instead of her dreams being a pleasant reward at the end of the day, they are now a labyrinth she has to traverse to get to the sanctuary of Annelise's house. It becomes harder for Annelise to find Julia, and vice versa, and the effects of the melatonin threaten Annelise's house as well. I don't want to spoil the game for you, so I'll stop the synopsis here.
This is what Julia and Annelise look like, and I'm honestly really proud of their designs. Julia's visually kind of simple, but you can tell she has a personality. I don't have much graphics, I only have Julia's walking sprites and half of Annelise's walking sprites. What I do have figured out is a lot of behind the scenes stuff with RPG Maker. I've always struggled with making RPG Maker games pixel perfect and not being too small, but I've found the perfect happy medium to make work with this game. Its resolution allows it to be played windowed, or pixel-perfect fullscreen without sacrificing too much screen real estate. I also have the windows and fonts all exactly how I want them, so basically once the graphics are done, I can just neatly put everything together. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do for the music and sounds, obviously I'm going to make them myself, but I just don't know what direction to go. I'm torn between using real instruments like I did on Terror Twilight and leaning full into the ethereal shoegaze sound (which I think would compliment the dream aesthetic very well), or using programmed chiptune music (which I think would better compliment the graphical style). Who knows, maybe I'll do a mix of both. I still have 20ish days to work on this, so I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In the meantime, I probably won't dedicate an entire blog post to this until after the jam ends, so you can keep up with my progress on my Twitter or Bluesky.
