TBA Pt. 2: Overall- Trepidation, Belatedness, and… Amusement?!

Just want to say in advance that since I'm going in order of the categories this time, this means I’m kicking off with the dramatic venty part and I’m gonna be very open about my emotions surrounding the process. If that makes you uncomfortable for whatever reason then wait for tomorrow's update. If you stick around though then you’re a real one.

Also spoilers are unmarked from this point forward! If you haven't played H&TCoT yet then stop reading and take half an hour to give it a shot. Ratings and feedback are much appreciated!

Tooned Out

I made a lot of risky decisions this jam, but I had a grand plan to give myself plenty of time in advance to prepare as many assets as I humanly could. I started about three months before the dev period, but many other time-consuming commitments happened to pop up in that period. One of these was an absolutely transformative trip to Toonfest in Oklahoma City! I got to meet the Toontown Rewritten team I had been part of for a solid year in person, interacted with the incredibly positive and diverse TTR community, and even got to watch the update I served as audio lead on launch in real time and play it with some attendees! For what felt like the first time, I felt like I genuinely meant something to a large community through more than just being the resident joke. I even wrote a diary about it!

So now it’s two days to jam time. I’ve been taking the week easy after flying home, but I’ve barely been able to do any pre-planning as a result. I started maybe three or so songs, did a few sprites here and there, barely have a story, and didn’t even get to prototype my battle system.

On top of this, the whiplash from Toonfest to the far smaller Harold Jam has gotten to my head. Literally what worth would there be to me entering this time? Inevitably busting my ass for a solid month after promising for real this time to chill out just so maybe 20 people can play my game for two weeks, feel extremely inconvenienced that I have once again won Best Music, and then promptly forget about it? Then I upload the soundtrack to SoundCloud where several bots tell me to buy hundreds of fake followers and blow a good few weeks on a Definitive Edition absolutely no one will ever play. There’s no subcategory prize this time, so I don’t even have the 1/6 chance of making the same amount of money I do off one paid commission! There’s just so much more I can do, so much more I can be. Harold Jam was a beautiful gateway to an amazing new way to express myself, but I think I’m past it now. I need to move on.

I nearly sat out. I was this close to just dropping it, focusing on other projects, and letting everyone else have their fun. At the very least, I was ready to cut battles out of the equation entirely and rely on existing graphics. I even got invited to do an original soundtrack to Harold Between Worlds 3, although that didn’t pan out as you’ll find out later.

What made me commit was intrinsic motivation. I wanted to make this battle system work, I wanted to learn pixel art and pursue this aesthetic, I wanted to write these songs, and I wanted to develop these characters. So once the jam objectives dropped the very minute June began, I killed my ego, killed my gender while at it, and unwittingly forged ahead.

Actually Making The Game And Not Being Emo

Luckily for me, I came up with the plot and use of the objectives as soon as they were announced, giving me a good head start. For reference, the objectives were:

1. Character: Someone named David or Davina! They can have any design but must have that name. They must be in there, even as an NPC. Harold must also play a prominent role in your entry!
2. Line of Dialogue: "Kept you waiting, huh?" This must be spoken by a character, exactly as printed. It can be placed anywhere within a sentence.
3. Location: An island. The player must go there.

It’s simple! Harold and Marsha retire to a faraway island where Solid Snake resides. From there, Fred and Eliza would sneak onto the island and try to rob a treasure hoard in the cave. There’s our plot and our setting! I also came up with David's dummy thicc gag and penchant for "waiting" puns that same night, setting the tone of the game.

As you can probably tell, I was not trying or caring. Obviously my standards were high as ever and I wanted the game to look and sound the way I wanted, but I was not trying to maintain any outward image. I was not trying to show off or teach anyone how to write a good story. I did not have RBT's better interest in mind; for all I know, if I win Best Music one more time they're probably gonna crucify me! I probably sound like a huge asshole saying this, but that intrinsic motivation proved to be the single best tool I could have this jam and I had Aseprite and Furnace Tracker.

Unfortunately I started the development process much like my music; sick as hell. The first day of dev time, what I thought were the worst allergies of my life had developed into a horrible sore throat! There was a COVID scare from Toonfest so I thought I was screwed, but thankfully the tests came out negative. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, however; it’s very hard to try and make a game when you feel like your throat has been violently clawed out and it genuinely hurts to walk or even think. Thankfully it ran its course in about five days. In that time, I managed to get most of the mapping, some combat prototyping, and a song done. Unfortunately I had family fly in not long after and got to spend my birthday with them, so dev time was a little limited.

A big early issue was not exactly understanding what my game was early on. I had maps, characters, and a rough plot, but I had no idea how the game played! I could’ve gone with a walking simulator, but I was hard locked into having some sort of battle because I had an amazing battle theme already started. Granted I could have used it for another game, but still. As fate would have it, I revisited my card-based battle system from the Prologue and decided I’d take the risk because I just had no other ideas and thought it would be fun. Even the overworld gameplay took some figuring out, and that was mostly walking! It took some iteration, but I felt really great about the direction I ultimately took. Combined with my yearly Stuck in the Past replay to get motivated to write more Harold, I was really feeling it.

Unfortunately I finalized the gamplay look two weeks into the month-long dev period. Nearly halfway to the deadline and I only had a single song, a single enemy with no attacks, and barely any graphics and events to show for it. These next few weeks would be a ride.

This Game Sucked To Make

From then on, it was what the late Wesley Willis would call a war hell ride. Nonstop agony. Nonstop frustration. Zero hours of sleep. Three brain aneurysms and a UTI. I went to bed and saw the face of Satan leering down at me one night. Tears were shed. Blood was spilled.

The craziest part is that I’m kidding.

From then on, it was what the late Wesley Willis would call a harmony joyride. For what felt like the first time in a Harold Jam, I loved making my game! I would genuinely wake up for every part of this game, from the tedious scripting and eventing to the pixel art and story writing. Watching the aesthetic come together after sleeping it on a year was euphoric. Possibly even more so was the joy of finding solutions to issues that had festered in my head for weeks. Even on days where I knew I was behind schedule, I only felt slight worry rather than crippling anxiety and depression. I expected the breakdowns to come sooner or later, but they never did! I was shocked!

To compare, I only felt this way on the last day of the last Harold Jam, and pretty much the rest of it was laden with depressive episodes and what I’m pretty sure was a brain aneurysm. Even this was a step up from the year before, which was a nonstop stress nightmare-fueled grind that used every second of my abundant free time. I genuinely have not enjoyed a single Harold Jam this much since 2021, and even that one had plenty of anxiety to go around.  Perhaps the biggest win I got from this jam was not having to put “Anxiety Haver” under my name in the credits for the first time.

It’s funny because I went into this jam the same way I did with Stuck in the Liminal. My motivation was at a low and I only planned to either make a joke game or write someone else’s soundtrack, but I rapidly picked up steam once the process began and really found a groove. What made this process so much better for me? For one, I wasn’t married to the idea from the get-go and improvised a lot along the way. While I think this may have slightly hampered the quality of Teebeyae, it also meant I could focus more on the process than the result. It also helps that I wasn’t trying as hard to sell the concept. On top of that, I found myself taking more breaks the moment I felt I could burn myself out, which obviously hampered my pace but prevented the process from becoming miserable. I’m writing this down now because one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is I have to find this level of fun and carefreeness with KCoL. That’s how it’ll feel like something from my deeply flawed but honest-to-a-fault soul. Not having a hard time limit is a good enough start, although it's not good for my terrible focus.

All Scoping, No 360 No

I mentioned being behind at all times and feeling a little worried about it. That worry was at least enough for me to have scoping on my mind most of the time. For instance, the cave was originally going to consist of a main room and a pair of two-map “wings” with solutions to a puzzle. I had no idea how I would handle this, so I boiled it down to a single room and the puzzle came naturally from there. Some of it was pure happenstance, such as hand-drawn portraits for all five characters not fitting in text boxes. Cutting out blockers when working on the fly is an important lesson I’ve learned in the last few years, and it’s a lifesaver in game jams where my entry inevitably spirals out of control. There’s a whole section of this postmortem coming up where I talk about more that didn’t make the cut. As you’ll find out soon, every single bit of scoping proved to be miraculous for the end result, because...

It Actually Sucked To Make By The End Believe It Or Not

Between not giving myself enough time to prepare and not having much time between being sick, family being in town, and slightly more work hours than usual, I came into the last week of the jam with a lot to go. I made the decision to sideline all remaining graphics and sound and have a full beta ready by Saturday morning, which ultimately proved successful. However, it took going from learning Aseprite to opening Paint during breaks at work and cranking out a few enemies or tiles a day. I even brought my laptop one day when the office was empty and just evented the entire overworld on my breaks instead. Graphics and music would be drag and drop and wouldn’t actually affect the coding and events in the game itself, especially since I had placeholders at the ready.

Unfortunately this meant I had to write most of the soundtrack, fill in some remaining graphics including the logo and credits (I was not going to do scrolling text and violate my pixel fidelity no way no how), and address any issues from testers in a single weekend. This is not good for human beings, even the super cool awesome beautiful sexy gender-devouring genius I expect myself to be 24/7. I expected myself to work at superhuman speeds and confidently bang out most of a soundtrack in two days without breaking a sweat. I somehow managed to do that, but just not confidently. After a nearly perfect four-week streak, I finally started to get down on myself two days to the deadline. I think I even had another aneurysm and genuinely felt my brain shutting down in real time. It got bad, but at least the timing was convenient.

By the way, the Harold Between Worlds 3 soundtrack is history at this point. I started two songs. That’s it. May reuse them later though.

It’s not a stretch to say it came down to the wire. I ended up doing the final boss theme in the last hour of the jam. To compare, the last time this happened it was at least with a dumb filler song I crapped out in ten minutes. This was a final boss theme that had to be good, and it was the last remaining asset left before everything was in place. My body was running at fever temperatures, my heart was pounding out of chest, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t feel my arms. I exported the final boss theme with an empty pattern in the Furnace Tracker file so it sounded like the game freezes for four seconds, converted it to OGG, overwrote the placeholder final boss theme, and with 15 minutes to go, deployed and submitted. I decided to use my last 15 minutes to do some final testing and found out that oh no, I forgot to swap out the animations! They’re all RTP! In a Game Boy game!

I swapped out the animations, deployed again, zipped again, and uploaded to Itch. Uh oh, the ZIP file’s too small! Files may be missing! On top of that, it also ate the old version I uploaded to Itch just before! I have to get this right or else there's no game to play! Oh god, is this going to be another Show-Stopping Hero?!  Deployed again. Zipped again. It’s 11:55 PM at this point with nothing uploaded. My internet sneezes once and I’ve wasted the last month of my life. I upload the ZIP. The loading bar inches along. I open the clock from the taskbar. It is now 11:58 PM. The seconds are counting down. Eventually it reached a point where I knew it would upload in time, and with my mouse at the ready I saved the page the moment it uploaded.

11:59:40. Twenty seconds to the deadline. It’s over. There is nothing more I can do.

Somewhere, in some dystopian timeline, something took half a minute longer than it should’ve and all thirty days of development and a solid year of planning have amounted to absolutely nothing. Even typing that all out, I can still feel the stress and adrenaline that burned through my body that night. It took me a while to bounce back and one more restless night before I could (over)sleep again, and I’m grateful I didn’t completely burn out from that moment. While I’m not happy I still managed to stress myself out that bad, I can at least recall four out of thirty days that were frustrating at least and painful at most and twenty six days where I was just having a blast. It’s sad that just having fun is a step up, but it’s better than just never learning that.

The Internal Conflict

A lot of good came out of this jam. I learned a ton, from the basics of pixel art to RPG Maker MV’s inner workings. I even got to warm up my Furnace Tracker skills for a big chiptune gig! More than anything, I had fun doing it all! Game dev isn’t always this arduous process with a big payoff at the end; I’m capable of having fun with the process itself! This is that so-called grit I can’t stop squawking about! If I can combine my newfound understanding with this enjoyment for the process and take it to KCoL, I’ll be unstoppable!

Anyway this game is a cryptic, buggy mess you can easily get softlocked in.

I’m obviously very frustrated about this. To go so hard on everything but the core foundation has been a recurring issue of mine for years, and you'd think maybe I'd know how to fix it by now. Everyone is telling me that it’s not a huge deal, and they’re all way better devs than me and way cooler people on top of that so they probably know what they’re talking about. I’ve played other games by amazing devs which have very clear issues as well, so at the very least I’m not alone. Even then, I can’t help but regret not having time to pre-plan, overwhelming myself again, failing to write like a human being again, throwing away a lot of other commitments, and somehow giving myself even less testing time than usual. I’m watching people play Teebeyae, accidentally skip half the dialogue in a plot-important fight, and get softlocked in the final battle. Then they come into my DMs and tell me this is one of the best games they’ve ever played. This just makes things more frustrating and confusing. Is softlocking fun now, or am I just carried by presentation? Is it all lipstick on a pig? I know I'll sound so ungrateful by the time results drop because I know I'm placing relatively high, but at least I hope you can understand why I want my gameplay to match my presentation.

But then there’s another conundrum. It’s Harold Jam! I’ve consistently placed high in this jam and have very little left to prove or show. Why am I so upset about this? I think it’s obviously because of my extraordinarily high personal standards, and I hate bringing less than I truly believe I can. I’m also conflicted because if I place very high in Gameplay especially, then does that actually say anything about me as a game dev? Hell, what does it say about those who placed below me? I don’t even make games! Am I truly good at what I do, or can I only look good in comparison to others? People do genuinely like this game for what it’s worth, and hopefully it’s not out of total pity. Worst part is I just know this is probably gonna be something I look back at in a year and be like:

There’s an out, though. Yeah I can keep slaving away in jams and wondering what the point of it all is, but I have KCoL!  I’ve been chipping away at merely planning this game for almost three years! I love the cast to death! Kalyla is my daughter for crying out loud!

I hate saying this out loud because it never comes true, but I feel like I’m nearing the end of a Harold Jam Hero’s Journey. I started off not expecting much and leaving with a new storytelling outlet, flexing as hard as humanly possible and nearly killing myself in the process, putting my all into prototyping KCoL, and now I’m back to just crapping out something I think is funny. I’ve learned a lot and now I gotta put that into practice while using Harold Jam as a fun cooldown. Hell, I’ve learned so much from this jam alone, but it will only truly feel worth it if I can channel it into larger projects. Please hold me to this; I’m sick of looking like a lazy idiot.

Wow! I feel so much lighter with all that emotional baggage off my back! It’s time to take a deeper dive into each aspect of the process. We’ll be getting into Gameplay: Turn-Based Antics tomorrow to talk through how Curse of Teebeyae’s gameplay developed from beginning to end!