So, I thought it would've been interesting to share with fellow devs or interested players the process that I at least used to make this game, as well as some behind the scenes.

-Before the jam-

I couldn't start working on the game before the start of the jam, but I could start thinking of the game.

I had some various ideas. The first was to make a petscop-like game, I was considering buying a plugin that would've allowed to have pokemon bw-esque graphics, and the idea was to use it to make a game similiar to petscop, which, for those who don't know, it's a false game created for a horror youtube series.

Another idea was to make a backrooms-like game, however, I did not know much about the backrooms; last time I made a game I was told that there wasn't much gameplay and too much dialogue, therefore, I wanted to include battles in this one, the idea of the backrooms was discarded because I did not know what threats to put in the game.

Thinking on the petscop idea, I thought it would've been neat to have a game where the player could go from a real world into the dream, petscop-like world, and, as a small quirk, to use the default 2d graphics for the real world and activate the 3d plugin only during dreams.

From there I started to think of a plot that could use this dream to real world mechanic and realized that, outside of the petscop aesthetic, I did not actually know what would've happened in the dream world. As I thought of a plot, I thought of subverting the classic trope of a person fighting some mental trauma they have inside with, instead, fighting the trauma that is present in someone else. OMORI was used as an inspiration since it also dealt with themes of loss and jumping from reality to fantasy as a way to cope.

Quickly, the plot developed in what it is like in the game right now, the main character, unable to do anything to help her friend in the real world, as a way to cope, imagines herself as a self insert that saves the day and kills the cancer spreading within her friend.

As I wrote down the name, Moony became more and more of a wuss and crybaby than intended, but the execution still went well.

-ENGINE-

I used RPG Maker MV, aside from being very beginner friendly, it has a lot of sounds built in and the core gameplay for any RPG or visual novel is already built in and favoured by the engine, this makes it extremily useful for gamejams, especially as a solo dev, since it cuts out all of the time that would've been spent otherwise programming or bugfixing.

-Day 1-

Day one was sketching day, I immediately started to think about how would the plot go in the game and the settings, and put everything down to paper.

I didn't have much time to make stuff look pretty, so the drawings are half bad, but they did the job well enough:

-Day 2-

I decided to go layer by layer, aka, in one day I did all the sprites and animations, in one day I made all of the maps, in one day I made all of the music, etc.

This day was the day for the characters sprites. I had to put those in a world so I speedrun some tiles to use as backgrounds and started to experiment with the colours of the world.

The first rendition of the world used a pure black for the darkned parts and overall darker colours. I felt like it enveloped and swallowed the character too much, so I went and tried out more alternatives

This one made the land look like it was covered in poop.This one wasn't bad, but it made the world seem more grass-themed rather than dark themed. It also looked like a GBA game, which didn't fit the style of the other characters.

Here I started to go back and play with purples since they seemed to fit the aesthetic best. I think might've been influenced by Deltarune when making the colours. 

Swapping colours took like 5 minutes per colour, so getting the right combination took about an hour. This is also where I got the idea to change the colours to red and then white as the game went on.

This is basically how much progress was done on the second day, which is actually good chunk of the whole game,  graphics wise.

--Day 3--

This day was focused on making rooms, which included also the creation for the big heart sprite.

Fun fact: the following placeholder dialogue stayed in the game until the very last day.

--Day4--

On the fourth day of screamjam,  my devving game to me.

Combat.

I have little to say about combat.

The skills designed are simple that offer clear effects without too much overlap: Healing, Damage, Less damage and less healing, atk and speed (reliability), and a powerful ultimate attack that cannot be spammed.

Except for Life Ender, every skill actually deals extra damage the less health the player has, and, on the flipside, a good chunk of the damage enemies deal is current hp%, that is to say, enemies deal less damage the lower the health the player has. This was done in an attempt to add some "artificial difficulty" of making the game seem harder than it is and also give a satisfactory "comeback victory" or last stand, where the player survives with just a sliver of health remaining. 

This was also when the enemies sprites and battle backgrounds got made. Fun fact: the castle background in the first few fights is based off a wall outside of my house.

--Day 5--

This was music's day. The main theme leitmotif was actually composed during day 1, here it got adapted into the various songs it was used in.

There's not a lot to say, I suck at making music. The final boss theme is an edited version of a theme I made like 2 years ago and half of the OST is just the Knightsong with different instruments. Initially every song was meant to have incorporated the leitmotif, but I quickly found out my composing skills are nigh-non existent, and tried to cut corners instead by abusing drums. 

Fun fact: almost all of the ost, except for the final boss theme and one specific beat, was made with the Earthbound soundfont.

--Day 6--

Day 6 was originally meant to be eventing day, aka, the day where I put the sprites togheter with the room and the music, and add dialogue, to make the game work. Day 7 would've then been used to fix mistakes and add QoL, however, the eventing turned out to be a 2 days long project.

This was my first attempt to draw Monica's face. This is also when I realized that I really suck at drawing faces. It's a miracle the end result came out so nicely.

Other fun fact: I am extremely hilarious in writing placeholder dialogue.

--Day 7--

Day 7 was originally meant to be the last day, and the day the game was supposed to be released, before the 12 extra hours were added because of itch issues.

Because of my good enough time management skills, the game was actually finished and playtested a few times to ensure there were no bugs on this day! Huzzah!

I wasn't too happy with the game. At the start, when drawing the sprites, map and combat I felt the game had tons of potential, but I overestimated my composing skills for the music, and the dialogue came out lacking. Luckily, the 12 extra hours meant that I could fix any upcoming issues...

(Small bug where the main character duplicated. I thought it was very funny.)

--Extra 12 hours!--

I decided to use the extra time to go and:

Not use the extra time.

There were issues to patch up but I felt like the game still came out pretty well and, since we got a time extensions because itch was having issues, if I had waited for 12 more hours then Itch might've had issues in the actual moment of upload. 

So I made the game page with the purpose of: The build finished in 7 days is already here and if something goes wrong with the 7 days +12 hours build, I still have the original game.

Quickly, I found out that I did not want to actually work on the game more and just submitted the game.

And thus ends the story of Knightsong.

I don't know how to end this devlog properly

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