Reborn a zombie! A successful failure

This is the first Devlog following the launch of my debut game: Reborn a Zombie! While this first part is more a port-mortem, future devlog with dive in various topic such as the writing process, diversity and trans representation in games...

Reborn a Zombie was released on August 7th. It’s a fantasy, slice-of-life visual that follows the story of Dawn, a trans protagonist who lives in a world where Vampires, succubuses, and all sorts of magic creatures now coexist with humans.

The game took 20 months of development, and is a story of its own, a story of a successful failure!. I’ve always been fascinated by the experience of making a game, to see what it’s like behind the scenes, today is my time to contribute. Join me in this journey of making Reborn a Zombie! 

What went wrong with RaZ!

Reborn’s development was full of bumpy roads, this is part of every video game! Many of those issues came from a lack of experience on our side, and some might learn from our mistakes.

Better than having no plan I guess

RaZ’s first scripts took 6 months to be considered finished. At this point, I was assuming this story wouldn’t have much ground to stand on as it was my very first finished script. My mindset at the time was as follows: I felt this story had potential. It was personal and I put my heart into it, but regardless of my feelings toward this story, no game would start development until I got a good script.

So, I went and asked several friends to read it, as well as some people who didn’t know me. One of them has been a professional narrative designer for the past 5 years, and the feedback was unanimous (well, almost. We’ll get back to it at some point.) This story was enjoyable. It was a fun read, for me and for them. I decided to trust my gut and begin the preproduction of RaZ right away.

The plan was simple:

1 - Prepare a demo that will be released by the end of 2022

2 - Release the full game on March 2023

Simple, right? What actually happened was this:

1 - End of July: None of the character designs was made.

2 - August: Development begins! We’re already two months in and nothing has started. The engine still has to be figured out, there’s a mess and a half.

3 - September: ???

4 - October: ???

5 - November: ???

6 - April 2023: The demo was released

6.5: Steam flags RaZ as using AI-generated content, which is supposedly prohibited.

7 - August 2023: The game somehow launched.

As you can see, things didn’t go as planned! Let's see why.

The wrong scope…

One of the most challenging aspects during RaZ’s production was a challenge that we had to face right on as 80% of all the game’s assets were needed for the first 20% of the story. This is due to several factors, but the main culprit was the story that asked a lot right from the start. Dawn requires several sprites to reflect her transition and the 2 years gap that happens early in the story.

Because it is a trans story, I didn’t want to compromise on one of the most joyful and spectacular effects of transition. It really is an incredible glow-up that often highlights how much happier the person is. 

Problem: This meant that Dawn needed two sets of sprites. And while we can use shortcuts (The poses and facial expressions are the same) it still requires a lot of work for my character artist.

And that was considered after deciding to remove another set of sprites for Dawn, where she’d be fully clothed as a typical boy...And that still wasn’t enough: Dawn is later transformed into a zombie! Which means that Dawn still needed 3 sets of sprites. There was still a lot to do in the first 5k words or so: 6 out of the 8 backgrounds were needed. with 7 more minor characters!

RaZ’s initial plan was to contain only 3 characters. It ended up with 10.  Thankfully, it was easy to get away with a single sprite for all minor characters. But the problem remained the same: This demo was too big. Despite that, the demo was released with a great level of polish. People who played the demo were excited to see more. While the road was full of bumps, the destination remained the same! Having “only” 4 months of delay is a success at this point, so let's see what worked.

The right decision…

• The initial plan quickly adapted to fit reality

The demo was insanely ambitious, it would feature 8 backgrounds (3 for the school!) 3 CGs, including a short cinematic depicting Lucia using a spectacular spell to wake up Dawn/

Needless to say, a lot of these were cut: 

• The school now had 2 BGs instead of 3 (I still think the game could have gotten away with only the entrance of the school, but it would have required a lot of suspension of disbelief) 
• Dawn dressed as a boy got only a portrait-size sprite
• Instead of creating a CG for Dawn’s introduction, visual effects, and a black background were used instead.
• Most importantly, the cinematic was axed. A storyboard was still made!

Some dialogs and scenes had to be reworked to fit the reduced scope.

The right story…

This might sound cheesy, but a core element to RaZ was also the faith that the story being told was valuable.  I’ve seen so many projects rebooted, and rewritten, and seeing those projects still releasing is a tour de force. Fortunately, the script was strong enough that no dramatic rewriting was needed.

…and the right people!

One of the most disruptive things that can happen during the development of a game, especially when small, is when one of the team members decides to leave. Right from the start, 6 people would work on the demo. Music, backgrounds, character art…I won’t dive into this topic in detail now, but being able to pay the team helped glue the project together. 

The whole team was seasoned in their craft. So many things are required when making a game: programming, technical knowledge, directing…and all of this was new for me! But when it came to the essentials, everyone was in familiar territory. Everything in the visual aspect was done by people with years of experience already. My mission was to bring all this experience together in one cohesive direction!

It gets easier

While I've mostly talked about the demo so far, how did it go for the rest of the game?Short answer: It was far easier. 

It took me 3 days to implement the words, and by the rest of the week, the game already had a playable alpha version! Because so much was done early, we could even add several scenes with no additional work for the artists. A blessing in disguise!

Conclusion

I hope you can learn a bit more about the process that went into RaZ with this first devlog. There were so many topics I wanted to cover, but those will have to wait for the next entries!

Thank you for your time, I’ll be back soon for more!