So, last time I was talking about how I was working on two game jam projects. I was actually mostly talking about the one that's not due until the beginning of December, rather than the one that was due on October 25th.
Needless to say, I spent most of the intervening time working on the latter, not the former.
It was rather like working on a particularly grueling NaNoWriMo project, only with the major difference that in a game jam, you turn in your work at the end for the whole internet to see (if it so chooses). Kind of terrifying. :p (The comparison to NaNo is rather apt, though, because I ended up adapting several lengthy passages from a rather awful Trojan War novel I had written for my very first NaNoWriMo, back in 2011. The passages in question weren't awful, I feel the need to point out.)
Anyway, the game is called "Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?" and it puts you in the role of a generic Greek king (named Creon, which was used for at least two kings of different city-states in Greek myths, and I believe does in fact have a meaning along the lines of "lord"), and you have to lead the united Greek (or rather Achaian) army through the long slog of the Trojan War (though there are two ways you can actually win in the first year). You can find the game here on itch.io, as a free download (the pop-up might make it look like you're being told to pay, but it's only offering the option to make a donation, which no one ever actually does). It does still have some bugs, despite all my attempts to find and squash them, but it mostly functions. :P
It was decidedly exhausting having to spend so much time on writing and coding (to what extent coding is needed in TWINE), but I feel like in the end I've made something that's actually pretty neat. It needs a lot of work still, and eventually I want to move it to a different engine that will give it more components to function a bit more like a proper strategy game rather than a text game with the possibility to get a lot of characters killed (sometimes in very stupid ways), but as a prototype I'm pretty proud of it. Though I do want to go back and add a glossary/list of characters that can be accessed at any time.
That's for later, though. First I have that other game jam project to finish. ;)
I will probably not do much on that between now and November 1st, however. (What with today being the 29th, that's not saying much, of course...) As I am again refraining from doing an official NaNo project in protest of the way they ruined the site and especially the way they decided to massacre all our projects by making their hideous cover art the focal point of the project pages, with everything we've written about the projects squished into teeny tiny text boxes on the back like bleeding afterthoughts, I'm going to be an extra rebel in that I'm not even going to be working on a novel or counting words; I'm going to count minutes and work on game scripts. As I did last year on my old blog, I'm going to use my blog to keep track of my progress. (Which I hope will be able to continue steadily, but...I have no idea what's going to happen to my mental state after Tuesday. I can only hope...and vote...)
Anyway, I'll be polishing and reworking the rough draft of the escape game I talked about last time, and working up the glossary to go with it, as well as working on the way the game should look. Once I have the game finished (more or less), then I'll deal with going back and adding a glossary to "Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?", as well as trying to fix the bugs.
If I finish with both of those tasks before November is over, I actually have two other games I want to make, as well as wanting to get back to working on the whole novel that the escape game is just one chapter of.
One of those two games is a direct...what should I call it? Reaction against? Rebuttal of? Well, whatever you want to call it, precisely, I was inspired by my rage at the description of an otome game I saw in the "Coming Soon" section of the store on the Nintendo Switch. (An otome game, I should explain for those who don't know, is a type of dating game wherein you play a woman and are courted by a selection of handsome men (and/or have the option of trying to court one of the many handsome men around you). I've actually played some that are pretty good, but a lot of them are not.) I had actually clicked on it because I wasn't sure if it was on the level or if it was a parody. I'm sorry to say it was on the level, and particularly badly translated if the game's sales page is any indication, but what enraged me was two parts of the description. First, at the top it said:
You are a so-called "love-allergic" girl who spends her time at home in a track suit.
How to interpret that but that the heroine is, like me, aroace? (Or at least aromantic. I suppose she doesn't have to be asexual, too.) Also that she likes comfortable clothes, but so what? So does Amy Wong, and she's not exactly short on boyfriends. (Futurama character, for those who don't know. Always wears a pink sweatsuit, and is known for her massive number of boyfriends. Until she gets involved with the love of her life, that is.)
But then towards the end it says...
This is a love story game in which relationships form between the "love-allergic" heroine who wears track suits around the handsome men. ... In this romance simulation game for girls, you can go from a life empty of romance to one in which every day is filled with excitement and happiness.
In other words, the game is designed to force an aromantic/asexual/aroace heroine into a heterosexual relationship. And you're supposed to be rooting for that. They expect you to pay money for the experience of denying this woman's sexuality.
That is deeply, deeply wrong.
If the game was about a lesbian being forced into a relationship with a man, Nintendo would never have allowed it on the Switch. And if they did, they'd be getting picketed by LGBTQ+ groups all over the place.
But because it's about an aroace woman, an equally distressing situation is being completely ignored. (Admittedly, given how little effort went into the translation, I doubt it's going to have much in the way of sales, but that's not the point here.)
So, I am going to write an anti-dating game, where the player character is an aroace young woman who's in a situation where she has handsome men courting her aggressively, and the point of the game is not to get forced into a relationship with any of them.
Looking at the game jams of the past on itch.io, it looks like the annual Asexual Jam is held in January, so I'm thinking this game would be perfect for that.
The other game I was thinking of making I will talk about later, because I just realized it's now past midnight, and I'm suddenly quite tired, so I think I will go to bed now. :P
(Yeah, my brain has not yet recovered from the strain of the last week of the game jam...)
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