Hello from Team Abyss! We're here for the postmortem of Vale, our latest project made for the O2A2 (Again) 2021 Game Jam.

Vale (pronounced wah-leh based on the Latin pronunciation, which roughly translates to 'be well' or 'goodbye') is a distant sequel to Goodbye, Emilia, our entry for last year's O2A2 Jam. Set in the same world fifteen years after the true ending of Goodbye, Emilia, it tells the story of an imprisoned oracle and the executioner who has come to kill her.

We jumped into the jam after finishing the extended demo of our Otome Jam 2021 project Eternal Winter, which we're still working on! ...Just not during this past week. The project is a bit of an impromptu decision from one of our members as a brief change of pace before we get back to Eternal Winter, but at least there was enough time to plan it out properly.

Now, let's begin the postmortem...

What went right?

1. Planning the narrative flow early.

Learning from last year's last-minute story edits, we decided to plan out all the branches and endings properly before we're allowed to write down the script. Vale's narrative is fairly complex, with multiple endings that are only achievable through multiple playthroughs--in other words, multiple 'New Game Pluses'.

In other-other words, a bunch of flowcharts.

With the jam's 1000-word limit, we had to cut down a third of the content on the fifth day, but the process went fairly smoothly since...well, the oracle is chatty. Just cut out her banter and voila--editing done.

2. Divide and conquer.

Whereas Goodbye, Emilia was about 95% created by one member of the team, Vale was done by two members of the team. Each member divided their work depending on what they could handle, while assets that both couldn't handle were solved by using Creative Commons materials (i.e. the BG and sprite art).

As a consequence, Vale's production ended up being much more relaxed as compared to Goodbye, Emilia's. Not to mention, the production quality is (subjectively) better...or so we hope. At least we're not scrambling to finish things at the last minute!

Onto the negatives, then...

What went wrong?

1. Audio quality.

This is an issue that happened as well in Goodbye, Emilia. Since it's a rather impromptu game jam, we just used an Abyss Team member's voice for the VA. Unfortunately, the voice doesn't quite suit the oracle's character, and the voice acting is...er...it's bearable. The recording quality isn't great, either--in fact, it's full of noise. Since it's just a one-week jam, though, we decided to just leave it be.

Maybe we'll get back to it and find a proper VA to rerecord the lines, but we don't really want to bother others with a free project that has a lot of lines.

Conclusions

You've probably already noticed that there are much less negatives in this postmortem than last year's Goodbye, Emilia. We've learned our lessons and became more efficient game devs with every project we complete, so it's a given that we should at least see some improvements!

As always, the O2A2 Jam's limitations caused us to think outside the box and devise new ways of delivering our narratives. Goodbye, Emilia had multiple endings? Well, Vale has multiple endings and multiple playthroughs! We've designed a story experience that can only work as a game, and we hope that you get to enjoy it as much as we enjoyed crafting it.

Thank you for playing and tuning into this postmortem (if you manage to read this far). Stay safe, everyone!

--Abyss Team