Release

The game, now titled Arbiter, Oracle, has been released.

I ended up using SuNoFes (a ‘game jam’ that explicitly encourages finishing WIPs, ending at the end of August) to bring this to completion. I actually ended up forgetting entirely about SuNoFes until like…earlier this week, so wound up doing a lot of rushing, but I also didn’t want to spend too much time on it either! (I really wanted to keep up the pace on Magician too, ok)

In the end, I accomplished some of my goals, as probably expected?

✅ I definitely got over my creative block from earlier this year! I’ve got so much I want to make now! ✅ I wrote a story I’m really proud of. I kept to the idea of making something enjoyable to me only, and I think it was better for it. ✅ I have a visual novel engine??? I’ve used it for multiple VNs now! And still web-based, so I’m definitely thinking of experimenting with presentation / more text-based storytelling in the future

❔ I ran a playtest, but it was so incredibly informal. No one used the forms, and everyone just gave me feedback via discord or call. I guess that’s ok???

❌ I wound up not doing much, if any, of the progress-sharing promotional practice I wanted to. I hoped to make a trailer / character profiles to share and didn’t do either.

I did, in some ways, have a ‘devlog’ (here, and in other discord servers), but they were much more technical devlogs rather than things I’d show non-gamedevs to show off what I had for the project. Besides sharing raw image assets, I’m…still not sure what to do for that. I feel like trying to make an entire game and share it at the same time is hard for me, but also I don’t think / remember to share anything if I’m not actively working on the game.

Some more reflections

I’m actually quite happy with this game. I think it’s one of the most unapologetically ‘me’ things I’ve written, and is very much a product of the time it was written (weeee, work burnout). But also wrapped around everything I’m interested in, which is an intersection of ghosts, memory, magic as dance (and vibes only), and also people fumbling around relationships and dealing with the aftermath of something, regardless of whether it’s success or failure. And it was also good to kind of internally realize that I can just make every important character nonbinary? (I consider both Rune and Aster to be masculine-of-center nonbinary, though I think it’d only really matter if I decide to try to get voice acting. Which….that might be interesting, but also maybe a step too far…)

I don’t think I did a very good job (or…any job?) of promoting it, and I’m not sure how many people actually played it on itch.io…but oh well. I made something that I think is enjoyable to myself only, and those tend to be what I think of as my best work. I might still make a trailer for it just to practice trying to condense its essence into a video, but as a project, this was meant to stave off writer’s block, and I think it did that nicely.

Also ,I wouldn’t be surprised if Aster and/or Rune showed up in something I made in the future. Albescere City is a setting that pops up in other stories (Grant City too, but that’s less explored here) and it’s always good to have more characters to draw from.

Anyway, a lot of words for this! It’s done (the game has been done for a while, actually…I just procrastinated hard on the last bits). I’d be thrilled if you played it.