Postmortem: NSFW, Numbers, and Nano

Hey there, friend. 

I've got another wall-of-text wrap-up for you as I work through some of my final thoughts regarding How the Ink Tastes (henceforth referred to as Dave because I don't want to keep typing that out). 

So please join me, if you dare, as I spew about my process: what worked, what didn't work, and what my plans are moving forward in the VN dev space. 

~ Writing 

 Omg, I actually got some ratings for this game. Exciting.

And it seems that people either really liked it or really hated it. Maybe that's just the result of the 5-star rating system, but, to be honest, that's kind of the spread I expected when putting this out there. 

Dave is a very strange and bizarre story. 

It's the culmination of me trying to harmonize tropey, fun horror with my more serious—admittedly boring at some times—style of writing while on a deadline. This meant very little plotting and very little editing. No writing sprints. No questioning. No setup and payoff. 

Just go!

I wanted Dave to be a complete about-face from Flotsam with regard to its writing and to only focus on vomiting these two styles on the page and seeing what became of it. Having only three drafts as opposed to Flotsam's six or seven is testament to that approach. The drafts that I'd previously used to polish or rearrange things I completely nixed.

I did, of course, allow myself to occasionally indulge in my naughty, naughty tendencies of bouncy prose, alliteration, and sentence fragments; describing the sheriff's backstory was honestly so much fun and that whole section flowed out of me in like five minutes.

But, having read and played through Dave multiple times now, I do admit that it is a messy read. It isn't particularly cohesive or coherent. Is there fun in all that messiness? Maybe. Maybe not. It's hard for me to say.

What I do know is that I don't care as much for this story as I do for Flotsam. Is that a product of it being my second game and not my first? Maybe of me not spending nearly as much time with the writing due to the aforementioned lack of polish and smaller word count? I have no clue. And, quite frankly, I'm too tired to speculate further.

~ Visuals

When I thought about where I wanted Dave to go, I very quickly decided that I wanted it to go nowhere. That is to say, I only wanted one setting within which I could include many sprites to 'act' out the VN in an almost animatic style.

Much like my Halloween deadline, I thought it would be a fun challenge for myself.

Let me tell you, friend, I ain't never doing that shit ever again.

My bony arse sticking my chicken legs in the air so that I can draw Seth's fight with Grant from reference.

While Flotsam was bottlenecked by writing, Dave was severely bottlenecked by this art direction. Sure it was fun to experiment creating vastly different sprites and moving them around the scene and fiddling with their sizes to demonstrate depth.

But, holy balls, it was a lot of work. It pushed Ren'Py beyond what it was intended to do (at least for Ren'Py novices like me). And, most importantly, it wasn't enjoyable.

I believe that the VN medium is unique in many ways, and while I appreciate the chances I took in trying to bend that medium, this was definitely not something I will attempt on this large a scale again. Maybe for a couple of isolated CGs, but otherwise, no siree Bob.

Instead, I'm heading back to the traditional sprite presentation, hopefully with some better-quality ones. I've tried to fit in some practice in my spare time. Here are the examples I've posted on Twitter. 

Clothes are back, baby!

If everything goes as planned, you won't be seeing this handsome boi for a while yet.

~ Regarding the NSFW label

Flotsam and Dave are both labeled as adult content. I realize that this puts me in the same category as porn games, and while I was a bit annoyed at first, I do believe that this is the correct decision… for now. 

Unless you are just a random friendo who stumbled upon this post (welcome), then you probably know that neither Flotsam nor Dave contains any sex or erotica. Not in CGs and not in text.

So why do I give them the NSFW label?

Well, I come from the world of r/nosleep and creepypasta, so I'm adhering to their guidelines for what should and should not be marked NSFW/Trigger Warning.

I get that it's awkward to mark things that are non-sexual and purely in text format as explicit, I really do. And I do wish that itch had a better way of distinguishing the different types of mature content on their site other than tags.

I think this comes down to the exact definition of NSFW and what it applies to. Absent some clarity on that, though, I will retain the label to be on the safe side.

~ Regarding Numbers and SEO

Gay.

Y'all are gay. No, seriously. The Gay tag has brought an obscene amount of traffic to this game. It's been three weeks since release, but Dave has nearly eclipsed Flotsam in page views and downloads.

The browser version also got a fair bit of play, so I went back to Flotsam and configured some things so I could get a browser version of that going if you don't want to download it. Don't know why I didn't do that earlier.

I also think these numbers were bolstered by my better marketing right out of the gate.

I expected these changes to bring in quite a bit of traffic, but the sheer amount is kinda insane.

I'm sure this won't influence my creative process at all…

~ Regarding NaNoWriMo

I'm plotting a romance. There, I said it.

While I had intended to start on The Giant in the Field for NaNoWriMo, Dave sapped every ounce of nihilistic strength from me when I crunched to get it out the door by Halloween night.

I have never written a romance before. I've read a dozen or so, but that's mostly because I'm somewhat obligated to keep up with reading trends for my job. Few really grabbed hold of me.

That said, I'm not doing this to torture myself or to appease the SEO gods because, let's be honest, romance and erotica are king for gay content. And that's not to throw shade if you enjoy steamy, sexy stories; they're just not things I've historically been good at writing! Anywho, I'm working on this romance to practice for 2024's MAY WOLF JAM hosted by Unagi.

Whether I will drip-feed it or release it all at once is anyone's guess. The same goes for the post-apocalyptic story I talked about in the last DevLog which is currently at ~5k words and has a pretty solid foundation on where it's headed.  One  of those two will be my next project release. ETA some indefinite time in the future.

~ Regarding Deadlines, Crunch, and Procrastination

I pushed myself perhaps a bit too hard in trying to complete Dave on time. It wiped me out creatively. Even three weeks later I'm struggling to get back into the groove of things.

I've tried for a long time to gain consistency and establish work habits, but I think that this was yet another sign that I'm not that kind of person, and when I try to force myself into that mold, I burn out quickly.

I started developing VNs to improve my writing skills and learn some others, true, but I think that Dave's dev cycle reminded me that I'm doing this for enjoyment and fun more than anything else. Serial procrasta-planner that I am, deadlines steal a lot of that joy from me when I see the date riding over the horizon. Thus, no more of those for my solo projects.

All right, that's all I've got for you all. 

Thank you to everyone that played Dave. It really does mean a lot to me. Here's to more great adventures in the future.

Good luck at your Thanksgiving family meetups or solo Thanksgiving feasts, and eat your veggies.

- Kraaj