Now that I've been free of Otome Jam for a week, I wanted to talk a little more at length about the next steps for Heart Sigil Elchemia, what I'd like to have done by the end of 2022, and what I'll be prioritizing from here on out. I'll also discuss why these next steps might be different from the previous approach I've been taking towards the game, and how they're expected to improve the game in the long run.

Also, this post is long, so some collab artwork I did with a friend will be interspersed throughout to break up the navel-gazing.

Previous Approach

• Try to complete and release full common route as demo ASAP
• Keep the UI and everything that's not story, art, and animations simple
• Focus on short-term achievements so they can be DONE and I can move on to next part
• Use deadlines and game jams to force myself to work, because I did it once before
• Ignore the harder or scarier things I want to add if they're not necessary to telling the story to start with.

Updated Approach

• Avoid finalizing the common route until I'm confident in the rest of the story.
• Before next demo is released, major quality-of-life improvements will be added based on feedback.
• Focus on the story as a whole and don't fixate on being able to check off tasks as "done".
• Keep in mind my own limits and work with longer-term goals in mind rather than short-term deadlines.
• Do the hard/scary work of setting things up first.

Those are very vague descriptions. Explain.

Gladly! Also, here's a Soma to start.

Why change approaches?

Essentially, Otome Jam this year kicked my ass.

There are a lot of reasons why. Overconfidence after last year's success, over-scoping, being too focused on future success rather than on the process,  health issues that came up with a vengeance this year, more responsibilities at my actual day job, less focus time... but the specifics aren't as important as what I ended up realizing as a result of them.

Basically, Heart Sigil Elchemia is a very important story to me to tell. It's meant to cover a lot of different themes through its characters, and its stories and relationships and central mystery are closely knit with one another. But this means the hard deadline of Otome Jam gave me both a lot more stress than I expected (about telling the story right), and a lot less room to be flexible with the connections I could draw. Even if I wanted to include cute nods between characters, future foreshadowing, setup... I had no TIME to think about any of it, because I had to focus 100% on "just finish this script in time for the jam".

This meant that even after I finished editing a chapter, I wasn't entirely happy with it or where it fit into the story, because it was the result of a "just get it done" sprint. I didn't have the sense of accomplishment or excitement I would've had if I'd written something I could be 100% proud of releasing, or even the satisfaction of not having to change things again. As a result, I was less focused on the jam and on the game, more easily stressed out because I was unconsciously dissatisfied with the product, and doubtful about how well the script would work in future chapters. I was also painfully aware of how many player suggestions I had to ignore just to "get something done", entirely because I didn't have time to work on them during the period of the jam.

As a result, even though I did manage to finish and release chapter 2 during the jam (just barely), I'm not actually all that proud of the result, and it took way more out of me than I can afford. I don't want this to happen ever again. I want each release of Heart Sigil Elchemia to be something I can proudly trumpet to all of you, because I did the best I could on it and I'm satisfied - not because of some arbitrary deadline. I'm a solo dev and a hobbyist who is not expecting to make money off this game; my "pay" for this game is my own sense of enjoyment (and everyone else yelling at me for a dramatic plot twist while I cackle about it).

So if I want to make sure I feel like I'm "getting paid" and doing the best work I can - I need to stop fixating on deadlines and work on the things I actually consider important going forward - like making Lin as hot as possible.

What's important?

First: The story as a whole.

As I mentioned above, Heart Sigil Elchemia's central mystery is wound up in everyone's routes and relationships. There's an insane amount of details and motivations and plot threads I want to keep straight, and a lot of it won't even be apparent until I've made a detailed outline of what happens in each and every single route. Given this, it really doesn't make sense for me to hyper-focus on polishing the common route or the very first part of the game. Even if I set up the foreshadowing here perfectly for what I assume will be the information I need... what if I realize later "oh shit this was a MUCH more important piece of information to include"?

So going forward I plan on taking a bit of time to just sit down and outline everyone's routes in detail, before the next parts of the common route are concretely established. This means the next demo version will definitely not release within the next 2 months, but I hope the end result will be a much stronger and more well-told story.

Second: Polishing and "optional" details.

In a lot of fields, there's a the concept of a "minimum viable product" (MVP), which is the bare minimum a project needs to be considered usable/complete. Everything else is considered "polish work", meaning optional improvements that would be nice to have if they were made, but which aren't absolutely necessary. So MVP is very important in time-limited game jams for obvious reasons.

However, the flip side is that an MVP is rough, probably buggy, barely playable, and extremely simple. It is by definition a minimum that's produced just for the sake of having something complete. But my goal for this game has always been to tell the best story I could with the skills I had, not to just "get something done". I could make myself focus on MVPs for other jam projects and my own projects with less investment; I cannot do that with Heart Sigil Elchemia, because it is a more personal project, and I need to know that the current version of the story is the one I am proud of.

Third: Setting up the hard technical bits.

There are a lot of things I actually want to do for Heart Sigil Elchemia, and more that people have given me feedback on. For instance:

• A "tips" UI with lore that explains ishim powers, the world, interesting tidbits, etc.
• A "previously in this chapter" story summary.
• Jump-to-chapter options.
• Changing UI font size based on settings.
• Figuring out how to get the stupid fullscreen ADV text box to scroll down instead of just showing text offscreen.

I'd previously ignored these because they would take programming time and force me to do the hard parts of re-learning Unity instead of just relying on my game engine (Naninovel is amazing, by the way). But on reflection I really shouldn't; these are all things I WANT to have in the final game, and not having them set up from the start just means they continue to loom overhead, reminding me that I'm ignoring players' feedback. If I don't force myself to adhere to strict deadlines, I'd actually have time to sit down and teach myself everything I need to know in order to set these up in code - and I'd feel significantly prouder of the end product as a result.

(Hilariously, I'm a programmer in my day job and that's why code scares me. It breaks so easily...)

Fourth: Working sustainably for the long haul.

I'd once estimated Heart Sigil Elchemia to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200k words. That is a gross underestimate. If we assume 50-70k for the common route and 75k for each route, that is at LEAST 350k words, and I'll probably end up adding to that as I go along. 350k words - just in writing, let alone the coding and art needed - will take at least 2-3 years to finish for a solo dev with a day job.

Therefore, I cannot fixate so hard on working on this game that I burn myself out before I've reached the end. I have to understand how I work best long-term, how to avoid excessive stress, how to integrate this game into the rest of my life, and how to take breaks and be okay with taking breaks when I need it. Heart Sigil Elchemia is deeply important to me, but it should not be the only thing in my life that is important - there are lots of other things as well. I should be willing and happy to take care of things like my own health, exercise, social life, etc. etc. - instead of treating them as distractions from the process of creation, because I am still human and need human things.

It's more important to live well for a long time than to achieve and then flame out.

Final Thoughts and Next Steps

As described above, the next demo will not come out any time soon. But what I am hoping to have by the end of 2022 is a set of things that I expect will put me in the best position possible for getting half of Heart Sigil Elchemia's romance routes done in 2023, and then the rest by 2024. 

The most important of these things will be full chapter-by-chapter outlines for all 4 routes, which will include:

• A count of how many CGs are proposed for each route.
• A clear idea of how many unique character sprites/expressions are needed for the route.
• The total # of backgrounds and music tracks needed for that route, and where they might play in the chapter.
• The specific story details that each route reveals.

Second-most important is setting up the game engine, UI, and other "game basics" properly. This should include:

• Tips, lore, and story summaries
• Character descriptions (which should preferably change throughout each route, but we'll talk about that later)
• Chapter selection
• Support for showing the UI in different fonts
• Optional: "Closeness rank up" indicators? Also, adding settings to toggle stuff like that on/off.

Only after all of these are done should I be thinking about the next demo release, but having them will make the next demo significantly better and hopefully more approachable for both new and older players. And once I have all of that set up, the remaining work is expected to be simpler if not necessarily less time-consuming. Turning outlines into a proper story, drawing everything, programming everything, and spending a ton of money on an actual soundtrack  finishing other polish work will all feel more doable with a game engine and roadmap that's as complete as possible. So that's the plan for the rest of 2022 - and hopefully by keeping to this I'll be able to maintain my momentum for this game and update you guys more consistently as well going forward.

Thanks for reading! Have an Eguze for your troubles.