So since it's quarantine season and all, I had a lot of time on my hands since I don't have classes yet in college. I was getting tired of not being able to do anything productive and I kept juggling between practicing programming, drawing and story writing but I easily get distracted which ends up me not being able to hone any of my skills well. My boyfriend helped me out and suggested I should set a 2 weeks goal for myself and decide which are the skills I should improve on. Then that's when I saw #MyFirstGameJam which I read lasts for 2 weeks, then I thought "I should join this!", that's when my journey began!

❅Day 1

I tried hard thinking of a concept for a game I should make then since I like drawing cute anime girls, I decided to go with a visual novel dating simulation kind of game and use RenPy since I was familiar with that game engine but never made a real actual playable game with it. I wrote a really rough draft of how the setup should be and I sketched character designs of the 3 heroines I have in mind. Here is a really rough sketch of them.

❅Day 2

I finished making Sylvia's character art and I'm really quite proud of how cute she turned out to be. Apparently a lot of my friends relates Sylvia to Yuri from DDLC, one of them even told me she looks like a younger Yuri. I didn't want to redo the whole thing so I decided to just go with it. I did some story writing too afterwards.

❅Day 3

Tauri took me quite a while to finish. Originally her hair was reddish pink but a lot of my friends told me that she looked a lot like Natsuki from DDLC. I don't know if my friends are just DDLC fans that's why they relate my characters to DDLC or my character designs looks like a DDLC ripoff, but then in the end I just changed the hair color which took me a while to decide on. Thanks to my little sister's suggestion, I settled for a bluish gray kind of hair color.

❅Day 4

This is my first time creating an original character with twin tails so it took me a while to figure out how should I color her hair. I was glad that this time nobody related Lyrae to any DDLC characters like my other past 2 creations (cause if they did I'll really think that they must've been just messing with me). I was told that she seems kinda chubby but I like her this way.

❅Day 5

I was able to make a cover art for the game in which I took a long time drawing the backgrounds and it was my first time drawing a cherry tree which I'm glad turned out to look quite decent. I also started on the actual coding of the game by working on the stats, calendar and customizing the DSE scheduling system from RenPy (which apparently I didn't even used so I wasted a lot of time T_T ).

❅Day 6

I made a main menu art for the game and customized the UI a bit. I wrote some scripts for the game but since it took me quite a while, I moved on to designing layouts for in game navigations.

❅Day 7

I found some free to use and no strings attached backgrounds for my game which I saw on Lemma Forums from Uncle Mugen. I made a navigation screen for traveling to other areas, I also fixed the menu for showing stats and relationship percentage. I did a lot of thinking and reflection regarding how I want the game mechanics to be.

❅Day 8

I was able to completely write the game's main story line but I wasn't all that much confidence in my work. I had friends who are amazing writers and I was worried that what I make might not even impress them or even keep them interested. Luckily my boyfriend was very supportive and helped me brainstorm ideas and pointed out stuff that is just too much since I have this weird habit of adding crazy plot twists that doesn't even make sense. 

❅Day 9

I coded the character interactions in the game and gave them actions such as chat, gift, confess and leave. I even made the replies of the characters randomized depending on what is the player's love percentage with them. I did some script writing too regarding each character's replies.

❅Day 10

I saw a new forum post in #MyFirstGameJam about sharing a demo of our games. At first I was hesitant because I am not that confident with the game's current progress but then I thought to myself "If I keep hesitating and holding back, how will I even improve?" and so I pushed through with it and posted the game's demo. I was glad that the other members of the community were really nice, they played my game, reported bugs they found, and even encouraged me! I didn't regretted what I did and continue working on my game's story and scripts.

❅Day 11

I am not a composer, really, It's not being humble it's just the truth. I composed some tunes way way back and shared it to my friends which they said was horrible and I absolutely agree with them. I was about to download some royalty free music but then I realized that I really want to make everything by myself as much as possible. That is why I tried composing some melodies and fortunately I was able to make some decent ones.

Here is a compilation of the OST for the game I made: https://www.facebook.com/iamchrystarin/videos/285350345913759/

My boyfriend was finally done with the previous project he was working on so he offered to pitch in and help me in making my game hooray! (He is such a sweetheart!) He designed the game's user interface and icons and I absolutely love it!

Visit and like his page on Facebook to see his other amazing works!

❅Day 12

I was working on the game when I received a message in twitter from browntulstar saying that he is live streaming my game on twitch! I immediately told my friends about it and we all watched it together. I was really embarrassed seeing him play the game demo because I don't even think that it is even worthy of being called a game yet. Luckily he was very encouraging and motivating, he gave feedback and insights about my game which really helped me realize stuff that I should work on. He also shared some of his experience from his previous game jams and it was really inspiring that's why me and my friend were amazed!  After that I was very motivated and was able to have a lot of progress working on my game. 

Follow this amazing guy on Twitter and Twitch!

❅Day 13

I saw some code for a qte minigame from Lemma Soft Forums and I checked it out. It was really nice but it seems a little too rough and so I customized the code and added fun effects and so voila! I made a firefly catching minigame!

❅Day 14

I am absolutely devastated. There I was in the middle of coding during a rainy night when the power suddenly went off. I wasn't even able to save my work! And that isn't the worst part. When I opened my computer and was about to start working on it again, the file that contains all the code for all the in game action was corrupted! I really wanted to cry... okay maybe I did a little for a while... All my hard work was all gone and I tried fixing the corrupted file and asking other game devs but I couldn't find a way to repair my file.

I thought that time "Maybe I  should give up? Maybe game dev isn't really for me? I should've just watched anime and played video games, that way I didn't have to pressure and stress myself out" I had a lot of horrible thoughts that moment. Funny thing is out of all the times it could've happened to me, it was the day before the game jam's submission!

After being consoled by my mom, my boyfriend and my fellow game jammers, I decided to continue with what I have. I downloaded the file from last week's demo and I started working from there. I had to cram one week's worth of coding progress in the remaining time I have. It was hell.

Here's what my corrupted file looked like:

❅Day 15

After staying on the computer for god knows how long, I was able to recode most of the progress I lost. I am thankful that I have quite a good memory and that I have a code from the demo I uploaded last week. I was able to submit my game to #MyFirstGameJam but sadly, I wasn't able to finish it and i'm pretty sure it still has a few bugs here and there. It is quite playable and it does already have an ending point for each character after the player confesses to them but I wasn't able to add the other character events and CG that will reveal the character's background story. I planned to do them on the remaining days but after what happened the previous day I didn't even had time to do it.

It was a long 2 weeks and I worked a lot in this game. It may not have turned out the way I wanted it to be but this game jam was a really great experience for me. This is my first game that I can consider a game that is actually playable that is made by me and it is the most progress I have done in the span of 2 weeks!

My first game jam experience is a blast despite having it's ups and downs. I had fun sharing stuff with my fellow game jammers and I really learnt a lot. I may not be able to completely finish My Arcadia in time for the game jam's submission but I will continue to work on it until I can say "Yes! I have finally completed developing a game!"

With that, thank you so much for reading and I hope you guys will follow me in my journey to becoming a game developer! Thanks for dropping by and Stay Awesome!