Important: This post is about the creating process of my game and doesn't actually reveal much what my game is about. This post is for both giving an insight on my process especially for people wanting to make a game but don't know how to start or developers who are having trouble creating their game.

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In July 2021, I told myself "fuck it, I want to create a game". I've always loved video games ever since I was a kid and loved the idea of making my own. Even though I wanted it to be a 2D platformer I decided it to be a Visual Novel. Creater of Doki Doki Literature Club, Dan Salvato, mentions in one of his streams that creating a game takes a ton of time and motivation, which is why you should settle for something definitely in the range of your capabilities. I have past experiences with Ren'Py, an engine for creating Visual Novels, and some more knowledge of Python. That's why I chose to create a VN since I knew I would be able to do it and could keep the motivation to do so.

To compensate for the relatively simple coding part, I put a lot of focus on the story. I love stories which are well thought out and touching. Stories which left you with a new point of view on a certain subject. That's why I decided on making a more emotional and deep story for this game with some horror elements. Most of the time I've spent on this game the last months has been on creating the story. I first created a vague script covering the most important plot points before writing the actual monologue and dialogue. By today, I'm finally done with writing the story (not considering potentially endless rewriting and reworking of smaller details).

Additionally, I wanted to create the character art. Partially because of financial reasons, but more importantly to challenge myself. I've picked up drawing in January 2019 and I've improved a lot ever since. Sure, I still make a lot of mistakes and repeatedly question if my art is good enough. But that is part of why I'm challenging myself: So I can improve. Publicly, I've only showed this artwork of the main character Jinko so far. Yet, I'm honestly very contempt with how she turned out and it gives me courage to continue creating the character art.

The last job I gave myself was to do the coding. Of course, most of it is very simple. It's a Visual Novel after all. However, I decided that I would code more than just a few special effects. Again, I did so to challenge myself. That's also why I decided on having horror elements. This way, I could create various different effects which I could still use in the end. So far, only the basic coding (like making characters appear and play music) has been done. I thought it would make more sense to concentrate on the more complex effects in one, shorter phase than over the period of several months. Soon, I'll be starting with this phase and I'm honestly very excited!

All that's left are the backgrounds and music. I'm aware that there are a ton of free resources. Yet, because the experience of my game is so important, I decided early on to hire people for the job. I want the backgrounds and the music to add their weight to the story. I haven't hired anybody so far. Mostly because it more sense to me to hire said people at the end of the creation process. While the bgs and music are being made, I can finish the character art. At this point, I've only been using placeholders for the characters, bgs and music. While creating the story the past view months, I created black and white sketches of the characters and coded them into the game. That way, I'd only need to replace the sketch files in the future, since the coding has already been done and I know exactly how many images I need to make.

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Visualisation

As you can see in the graph above, I'm mostly done making the sketches, writing the story and coding the basics. The graph isn't taking into account things such as smaller edits etc. Before continuing to the complex coding, I will spellcheck the dialogue first (= copy paste it into a program with actual spell checking since the coding language doesn't do that). Once I'm done coding, I plan on hiring the artists while making the colored character art. This last segment will probably take about 8 months as well, but I'm not really bothered by that. I have no reason to rush myself or the other artists.

As I was going through the game today while making some last adjustments to the text, I was really surprised how happy it made me. I've never done any project on a scale like this before. So when I booted up the game and noticed how much effort I've put into this, it brings me incredibly joy. I know it's not done yet. But still, I laugh at the jokes I've built in, I feel awful when something bad happens to a character, I get scared by disturbing moments, I feel the exact experiences I wanted to this game to give. I'm sure I sound a little narcissistic, but being proud of your work is a very important part for any artist, not just game developers.

Did my first game need to be something this complex and time consuming? Not really. If I wanted, I could have done something much smaller that wouldn't cost me several months. But after my experiences with modding, I wanted my first own game to be something I'd put a lot of effort into. It's also worth adding that I haven't been working on it 5 hours every day for the past eight months. Sometimes, I had to take breaks because of university or mental health issues. Taking those breaks was very important to me since it not only helped me recover, but I would also come back with a different point of view once I started working on the game again.

Like I said in the beginning, I won't share anything new about my game today. But I'm planning to so in the near future (most likely after the coding has been done).

I hope these insights can help some of you out. It's easy getting stuck in the creation process, especially at the start. Switching between different tasks to get some variety, taking a longer break, planning things in advance, enjoying what you've already done etc. are all very important aspects that can help you create your game.