Hi everyone!
Happy New Year! We took a break from answering questions over the new year period, but we’re back to it now! As always, you can send in your questions here.
Do you ever experience burnout because of high expectations for your game, either from others or from yourselves? How do you cope with the pressure to try and make your game the best you can and ending up more stress/overwhelmed because of it?
In the first few months of developing The Divine Speaker, it was all very exciting and new. It felt like any kind of burnout or stress would be impossible, since this was just a fun hobby, right?
Well, half right. There hasn’t been a time I wished I wasn’t working on the game, and that’s the truth. But have I been burnt out? Yes, of course.
I think with any project, where peoples expectations are weighing on your abilities, you can get burnt out. I’ve only had this twice the TDS so far. The first was during our Kickstarter – rather than being burnt out, it was the stress of suddenly so many eyes and expectations on something that, before then, I could take at my own pace and do to a standard I enjoyed. Once it was up there, it was a promise to everyone that I would see it through to completion. It’s a scary thing! This faded though, and in its place was just excitement to create.
The second was more recent. We’ve worked on this game for a long time. It’s getting closer and closer to being completed. We want to put it out already! We want everyone to see all the love and hard work we’ve put into this project, and we want to be able to move on to the next game. But there’s still a long list of things to do, despite the story being complete. It’s a little frustrating.
So, what did I do? I took a little break over December. Some time to myself to breathe without feeling guilty. It was good, and everyone deserves a break sometimes. You’ll come back feeling more refreshed. It’s hard to get out of the mindset that you should always be working, but you need to do it sometimes.
Another thing I would suggest… have as much work as possible done on your project before you put a Kickstarter up (if you plan to). Before that, you don’t have any hard deadlines. You can write when you feel inspired, program when you feel most able, and take breaks without feeling like you’re disappointing people. Once you have a hard date for release and expectations weighing on your shoulders, it starts to feel more like “work”. You have to write x amount a day, you have to program x amount of pages a week, etc. Take your time enjoying your project before you put these expectations on yourself.
Lastly, I would say don’t be afraid to cut things out. Reduce your scope, remove features that have spiralled to become too much work. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
I heard it's best to make small-scale games before trying to make a longer one. Did you guys also experiment with making small games before starting on TDS?
Thanks for the question! There’s actually been quite a lot of commotion in the indie game community lately over starting with a small game verses a large game, so I appreciate getting to weigh in a little.
If I had to answer in short: start with a small game, but don’t be afraid to make it larger.
The idea with making a short game is you get experience on shipping a full product – from initial ideas, to making it, to polishing and releasing. It’s meant to be a learning experience, and it stops you from getting stuck producing your first game for 10 years.
The Divine Speaker is our first game. We hadn’t made any other games, I hadn’t ever been a writer, and I only did a small amount of programming. Should we have started with something small? Yes, definitely. Would I go back and change it now? No, definitely not.
We lost the chance to make something small and ship it in a few months, but we gained the chance to make the exact game we wanted to make. We’ve created a large, sprawling fantasy world that we can place so many other stories into, outside of The Divine Speaker. I’m proud of it – and we learnt a lot making it that we’ll change and improve next time around.
I wouldn’t suggest doing what we did to other people though. Firstly, it’s expensive. Full voice acting on a game this size? So much art? These costs add up very, very quickly. Secondly, it can be draining. This kind of relates to the question above – you can get burnt out and end up giving up when you have 300,000 words left to write.
Start small. Join a game jam and try to ship a visual novel within a month or two. Join a team and learn from others. Make a small demo just so you can try out every aspect of creating a visual novel.
But don’t feel held back by it. If you want to include something new, try it out. If it doesn’t work, cut it out again.
I did work on a demo for YaoiJam last year as a writer and programmer, just for some practice. It’s definitely worth trying some shorter projects to wrap your head around how to do longer projects.
By the way, our next games will definitely be shorter… if that tells you anything!
Bit of a weird VN-related question, but is it alright to use a mix of both free and paid assets to save money? For instance, using royalty-free VN backgrounds but also commissioning certain backgrounds that require extra flair, provided the art styles match up close enough? Or like having an official soundtrack but also including other royalty free tracks that also sound good?
This is a great question!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using free assets in your game, as long as you know you have the right to use them. Make sure of which Creative Commons the image or song is under, and what it requires of you. Some require credit, some require nothing, and some are only allowed to be used in non-commercial projects. Just make sure of your rights so you don’t get into any trouble down the line.
As long as the styles match up well enough, it shouldn’t take anything away from the player. One thing to keep in mind – if you sell your OST, you probably will not be able to include any free assets you used, and it may end up with some people feeling like they haven’t gotten everything they wanted. Just make sure to give a list of the songs included!
However, I would advise that if you intend to go for a fully commercial project, it’s worth getting all original assets just for the sake of standing out from projects that use the same assets. It will give your game another level of polish.
That’s all for this post! As always, feel free to stop any questions you have in our Curiouscat!
Until next time!