postmortem

Hi everyone~ Thanks to everyone who’s played {through death’s door} and supported it along the way. This was my first RPG maker project, not to mention my first game project ever, so there was a lot I learned from working on it! 

The very first being… maybe learn RPG maker before the gamejam actually starts… haha. 

Even with the shortened development time I managed to put out a game that I’m very happy with! Of course, there are always things that could have changed and could be improved… but that’s just how projects are. It just means the next one will be even more rewarding. 

But without any further delay, I’ll go into some notes about the characters, my intentions, the story, and whatever else I can think of while writing this up. 

A ONE ROOM GAME

There’s technically two maps in this game, the main apartment and the ending entrance, but the entirety of the playable part of the game consisted of one map. This was because… of scope. Since I had pretty much no frame of reference for how long it would take for me to get anything done, I figured (or was, convinced) that I should simplify as much as possible and make sure I could get something out by the deadline. Which ended up being a really good call because I had to edit and modify the map multiple times since I kept on figuring out new things I had to remove, add, crop, edit… yeah.

As a result, it was convenient because the entire story was mapped out in a single room. On the other hand, it was really difficult because it meant the entire story had to be coherent no matter what order people decided to look around. This led to a lot of text branching and conditions which I think made the entire apartment very interesting to explore, but also made it kind of difficult to write the narrative since some things would only make sense if you read other things first. In some cases, I think it led to a lot of repetitive text, so I worried a bit about reader fatigue… I can only hope that the snippets scattered around the room felt fun to read! There were also extra diary pieces scattered around the room, just in case there would be chances some people wouldn’t be able to find all ten easily, but still wanted to progress in the game. Those ten pieces would be enough to piece the general story and motivation together, but it did mean that if you missed certain clues, the narrative might not have felt as strong. It’s something I’ll have to consider in the future since after completing the game, I did think of different solutions, but the current ones meant that you’d miss out on other information most likely. 

I did try to aim for any text in the game to have one of two goals: further the game’s narrative or increase understanding into the nature of the characters themselves. I’ll go into more details later, but it was easy for Luka who is reacting to everything, but difficult for Irie, since the lens we’re looking at her is through… Luka, who doesn’t really, and can’t really understand Irie. (This too… is yuri.) I hope it felt worthwhile for anyone who likes to dig around for clues! 

LUKA

A very cute, deadpan, maid that’s technically more of a cleaner than a maid. She’s already been through a time-loop before (a story I’d like to explore and publish… someday!), so this day was just another strange incident in her already strange life. Since a large part of the game is her talking to herself, I wanted to make sure that players could get a feel for who she is through all of the dialogue. For what people managed to pick up… I’d love to know how she seems from another person’s point of view! Her priorities as a person are rather straightforward, but also very strange at times if you try to apply normal standards to them. I’d like to believe it’s part of her charm, but it’s really just likely a result of her dying a few too many times. 

IRIE

Irie… poor Irie. A lot of the things I wanted to do for her were eventually cut from the game due to time constraints and also… because I didn’t know if there was a smarter way to make two persistent sprites stay on the screen (if anyone knows how I can live out my visual novel dreams in MV… please reach out). She’s a sad character when you piece together the clues about who she is and how she’s ended up living this way. There was a lot more I wanted to write and draw for her that I think would have gone deeper into her own personality, but I’m also happy with how the way things ended. I did want to add a haunting mechanism… but with the one-room conundrum… it did mean more branching text, and considering that the game had to make sense without it as well, it was more vanity than necessary within what time was available and what I knew how to do at the time. But now that I’ve gone through making a game, there’s a ton of solutions that are coming to mind now that I don’t have a deadline hanging over me. I’ll use this knowledge for next time :3

EMIL

Everyone should hate this guy. I did want to flesh out his character, but I was pretty sleep-deprived when I got around to writing the finale that I’m worried he’s turned into a one-dimensional character. Irie doesn’t love him, but he loves Irie. To be specific, he loves the Irie that is an idol and loves the Irie that can make music. There’s an obsession that comes with parasocialism and entitlement, two traits of which he has to an absurdly negative degree. Combine that with connections and wealth and you have a very, very dangerous person. He seems kind of comedic near the finale, (part of which because I just wanted him gone!!) but from his perspective… he’s just killed his lover and performed some kind of supernatural ritual with her, reported her death as a suicide, and returned to her house so he can admire his trapped songbird… only to find out there’s some weird blonde girl who got into the locked room before him. They say the first murder is difficult, the second comes easy. 

WHO WANTED TO DO THE SOUL-TIE? 

Interesting question for me, because it was both of them, in a way. Irie is very into the occult, Emil is the one who latched onto the soul-tie and ordered the materials. Irie, aware of this, realizes this might be an opportunity to turn the tables and trap Emil because as much as she doesn’t like him, she does need his connections in the music industry to survive out there, unpopular of an idol that she is.  Their relationship is messy, and is built on the fact that it’s not one of love, but one of an obsessed fan and someone desperate to survive. The difficult part was that a lot of this information came through subtext in the objects scattered around, so in the future I’d like to work on incorporating this information into the main story and create branching paths and endings. 

THE STORY’S ENDING

Speaking of endings… while making the game, I actually wasn’t sure what an alternative ending looked like other than “you’re stuck in the loop forever,” which seemed narratively unsatisfying to me. Thinking of it now, it would be fun to incorporate alternative endings or branches where Emil gets stuck in a soul-tie, or maybe Irie ends up in Emil’s body in some kind of soul & body swap. Thinking of the possibilities is fun, but I don’t know how likely it is that I’ll add any additional endings to this story as I’d like to work on a new project soon! I do have a number of stories I’d like to tell in the future, so this definitely isn’t the end for Luka. 

THE SHAMAN, THE PRIEST, AND THE BOSS

Who are they!? More OCs, (the priest Jacob belongs to my friend, Crow!) that I hope will make an appearance again in the future. I don’t want to write about them too much, since they’re not the focus of this story, but I do wonder what people’s impressions of them are. I hope they’re just as interesting and add more to Luka’s personality in {through death’s door} and add an air of mystery that’ll make you excited to see them in the future! 

CLOSING THOUGHTS

There’s a lot of interesting things I want to try doing in RPG maker that aren’t very traditional for RPG maker games (such as the offset camera + frame in this game which… did take me a while to figure out, as simple as you would think it would be). A smarter person would find a different engine… but I want to see how else I can push the boundaries of this engine! Since… I did pay for it after all, haha. 

Last, but not least, a big thank you again to all of the friends who helped and supported me along the way!

Twen for help on the sprite base, Crow & Teddie for game-testing, Crow again for Jacob’s dialogue and character, and Spica for RPG maker help! By the way, if you haven’t already, please be sure to play Homekeeping by Spicaze here! 

Last but not least, thank you to everyone who’s interacted with and left feedback on the game page itself! I’ll be sure to keep these notes in mind for future endeavors and your kind comments keep me going. 

Thanks again and catch you all later.  ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

- dodo