Prince Everett has been sickly ever since he was young. Out of fear for his life, his parents, the King and Queen, forced him to stay in his room. On the night of the biggest seasonal event, he is laying in bed wishing to dance the night away like others in his class.
As if an answer to his prayers, a stranger appears on his balcony injured and asking to be let inside. But without knowing his intentions, what can Everett expect of him?
This Victorian-era Visual Novel revolves around our main protagonist: Prince Everett. On a night like any other, he expects to retire to bed and sleep through a once-in-a-lifetime event. But during the night, he wakes up to the sound of something rapping against his balcony glass. When he investigates the noise, he finds a tall man with an injured shoulder asking to be let in for refuge.
Developed in two months for Yaoi Game Jam 2022.
- 6,000+ words! (30 minutes to 1 hour gameplay)
- Two endings!
- Beautifully illustrated CGs of our handsome gay vampire!
- Gorgeous background art
- Original soundtrack to dance to alongside our fated lovers!
- Full voice acting (with an option to turn it off if you'd like to make up the voices!)
- Game Design, Writing, Proofreading, Editing, Testing - Oishii
- Editing, Proofreading, Playtesting - Sharlotte Teidy
- Proofreading, Editing - QuickNuminex
- Sprite Artist, Playtesting - Social Demonz
- CG Artist - Moonkipp_
- Background Artist - Luciam
- UI Designer - NSAID
- Composer, Sound Editor - Austin "GGelby" Gelber
- Voice of Balthazar - Allen Chan
- Voice of Everett - Jerron Bacat
- Voice of Maid - MagicEm
- Programmer, Gallery Designer, SFX, Voice of Guards - PJ Pollina (me)
Alright, now that the PR mumbo jumbo from the Itch page is outta the way, let's talk about the project from MY point of view, ME, the CODE MONKEY who put this jigsaw puzzle together. Obviously I'm not the only one who worked on this. I actually joined up on a whim cuz I was having serious writer's block with my main, largely solo-produced and developed project. Glad I did, cuz this was a great experience, and it did a lot for me and my career ambitions.
Let's talk about the code itself though. Implementing the script, initially, only took a couple hours. Were I a normal person, we probably coulda been at least half done then, but I am severely unwell, so it was more like 1%. Similar to what I'm doing for <UNNANOUNCED PERSONAL PROJECT>, I had some fun messing with the ATL to have some funny moments, cool effects with CGs, etc., and that was probably half the dev time right there. That animation of Everett dragging Balthazar into bed? Ages. Hope it was worth it. I'm not really an artist, but I like making things look cool, so I'll spend hours figuring out how to break this engine over my goddamn knee if I have to.
Speaking of, if you've ever used Ren'Py as someone with prior code experience, you probably know the default SUCKS. Like, that default project structure is a NIGHTMARE if you actually wanna change shit in it. So early on was a whole lotta "I need this shit GONE" while waiting for the UI mockups and assets to come in. Working on a template repo ATM to make it more raviolli than spaghetti code, hopefully that helps people, cuz DAMN it's bad. Once I got the assets and layouts, though, it was pretty easy to implement it via code. That's a lie, but it was definitely easier than designing everything from scratch like I am with <UNNANOUNCED PERSONAL PROJECT>. Or the gallery, I guess, since I designed all that myself. Hope people actually look at it.
Implementing VA, GOD that was a pain. Going through every goddamn line, one by one, jeez I'm actually getting sick thinking back on it. Boy would it have been nice to learn about auto voice BEFORE I did all that. Also had an issue with the script, so it was a nightmare for everyone involved. Funny story, did you know the guards originally said maybe 20 words all together in the original draft? Because of the script mishap, though, a lotta the maid's lines didn't get recorded, and then the VA got COVID, so she couldn't record them. Ended up having to rewrite the missing lines for the guards instead where it wasn't possible to cut the maid ones out entirely, hence why you hear my jackass voice as much as you do in the final product. Speaking of, that's enough for me to get an IMDb page, right? That'd be sick as hell. Anyway, aside from all that, and a minor miscommunication that almost lead to Allen hunting and killing me for sport (deserved, honestly), it's pretty cool we got full VA for this.
If you're reading this, you're probably a developer, so you know it's never as simple as saying "yeah, this is done". As we all know, projects are never finished, merely abandoned. Unless you use Rust, apparently. God, I miss Rust. Anyway, if there wasn't a hard deadline, I probably coulda spent another week or twelve sanding down every rough edge left on here. Guess that's part of what makes game jam's nice, it forces you to ship a product before you can waste time optimizing every little detail. Biggest regret I have probably is the issue with the audio mixing. I dunno whether it's Ren'Py or the files, but the audio was a nightmare to make passable. Feel free to open a pull if you can make it right before I decide to spend 12 hours in Audacity, screaming and crying and wanting to die. Other than that, I think I did well. Like, I don't actually think that, but if I try and remove my own "this is the worst code ever written" bias, it seems like a fine enough game jam entry for a single programmer. Especially since I only picked up Ren'Py in March.
Honestly though, the non-coding experience is probably the most a got outta this. I've never really worked on a team or shipped a product before, so it was nice finally learning how to work with other people. Workflow, organization, all that jazz, invaluble experience all around, and hey now I have my name in the credits of something.
But, yeah, that's my dumbass rambling done. Writing this right after uploading the final build but before it gets publicly released, so I dunno if the reception's good or bad yet. Hope it's good, at least the stuff I did. For the first shipped, finished project I've worked on, I'd say it didn't turn out half bad. Especially as a two-month, no-budget game jam project, and the first time I've ever actually worked as part of a team. Good work team.
—PJ Pollina, The Midnight Dance's Programmer