It’s been a little over two weeks since the release of my proof of concept prototype demo for Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~!

Since I’ve been a little sloppy with the marketing (marketing…?), if you haven’t checked the game out yet, I’d be happy if you’d spend an hour playing through the slice of a chuuni yuri visual novel that I’d been wanting to show the world for about forever (a few years really).

Now onto the post-mortem! In this piece, I’ll be discussing how it was like to solo dev a short demo for the Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam (BAF Jam), making most of a game alone for the first time since Draw No More in 2021.

I’ll talk about what was the same, what was new, how the scope had to be managed, and my take on solo dev as well as some clarification on future plans for the game.

I’ll write a separate post about fun facts regarding the story and its history later.

What I usually do

In the games that I direct, I prefer to handle the scenario writing (story), character design, and scripting (stage direction). Although for a solo project, while I would have to cover other areas as well, I’d certainly still be writing, drawing, and scripting.

scenario

Fun fact: there is no outline for this game! (yet)

This has less to do with the fact that I solo-ed the demo but more to do with the fact that it’s a prototype of a story that’s been sitting around in my head for ages. I’ll be filling out that outline a bit more eventually…

The majority of the script was written in May thanks to the relatively loose schedule restrictions given by BAF Jam.

I wanted to have the script written so that I could spend more time on everything else, including tasks that I do infrequently and thus knew would take longer.

As the release is an incomplete story, I didn’t know quite how far the story would go in this demo while writing. I initially envisioned it ending at the end of day one, perhaps cutting off after the prophet’s speech.

However, this is a chuunige—battle action fantasy!

Despite reaching my goal, I realized that day one didn’t have a true fight scene (does beating up a guy and assassinating someone in the prologue count?). Thus, I extended the script to the start of the first fight scene. Really, the start.

By that time, June began, so I unfortunately had to turn my attention to other tasks.

character art

The first item was character art.

For my recent projects like Who is the Red Queen? and Lachesis or Atropos, I drew the character design sheets and left the in-game art to the master artists on my teams.

For the prototype of Consummation, being solo, I decided to forgo the character design sheets for now and get to drawing directly. It helped that many of these characters had been frequent visitors in the corners of my notebooks during high school and so on.

One of the perks of doing sprite art yourself is that you can add expressions as you script!

scripting

I tend to do scripting near the tail end of a project, once most assets are in place.

Given that I was in charge of assets here, I decided to plop the story script in a bit earlier than usual. Alas, actual scripting had to wait until I had art or at least some placeholders!

The last things to go in were the music (thank you, Peritune) and sound effects.

What I don’t often do

Everything I haven’t mentioned yet falls under things I don’t do often.

bgs

God Minikle.

ui

I didn’t have too much time to work on UI, so I followed a little heuristic. If you’re changing anything, do the parts that the player will look at the most:

• Textbox (main)
• Main menu (lesser)

cgs

The last time I drew a CG was probably for Moon Archer Shooting Stars. Due to time constraints, the CGs in Consummation’s proof of concept can be considered more sketches than fully rendered graphics.

Haha, maybe they’ll be useful as references.

Prioritization

You can probably see a mild tonal difference between talking about my typical work and talking about the work I prefer to delegate.

In the land of solo dev, there is no such thing as delegation unless you mean using asset packs or delegating to future you who will curse past you for watching K-pop survival shows for a whole week. (Kim Seonyou is very impressive…!)

With a team, the schedule of things can’t be broken down linearly because tasks overlap. Ideally, everyone has most of a jam period to work.

Solo, you have to do it all. Hence, you have to make sure you prioritize the right tasks and make sure to start other tasks in time since you don’t quite have the whole jam period for each item.

While I began smoothly, finishing off the script early, collecting background art, and putting down flats in sprites, life hit.

Starting a new job mid-June (future visual novel funds?), I slowed down the dev work. Before I knew it, when I finished the sprites (a nice 6), only a week remained.

Hello, CG grind.

While I could have decided there and then to drop a number of CGs, I ultimately wanted them to exist.

Making visual novels is a balancing of wants.

In exchange, the CGs had to be a bit rougher and I let go of a few other wants such as: a main menu key visual, more cut-ins (Qin… my beloved, your phone calls…), and more polish in general.

Alas, tis solo dev, eh?

(Two days remained in June when I marked the prototype as done. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to do much more in 2 days, so it was time to chill.)

The “s” in solo is for small!

Most of the other visual novels I made by myself were visually simpler and games of smaller scale (shorter than this prototype demo).

To be a successful solo dev, you have to be a jack of all trades. I prefer to focus on my favorite parts of visual novel development: writing, character design, and directing.

While I find making a game by myself fun once in a while, I think I’m happy to stick with only doing so for small games and prototypes.

Q. Why was this game solo dev-ed?

Most of the visual and audio content in the game will have to be replaced in the case that Consummation becomes an active project. I use the terminology “proof of concept” and “prototype” a lot when talking about Consummation because it is not an active project and may not be one for a long time.

As such, I found it better for me to handle the work that will inevitably be replaced.

Q. Why make a proof of concept prototype?

While I could have left Consummation in the ideas bucket, I really wanted to write it. I really want to write it. At the very least, I wanted to show the world a sneak peek at one of the handful of stories that I’ve wanted to bring to life for a long time.

Unfortunately, I do not have the bandwidth to work on two large (huge even) projects at a time.

That’s right, big yuri visual novel…! To be announced.

shino

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