On the one hand, the bigger your jam project is in scope, the bigger the hurdle will be, while on the other hand, the smaller your project is, the more achievable it is to have a higher quality and polish. It will not come as a surprise that you might not find a full team to work with, even after searching every corner. This is where you should look into using Creative Common assets if you’d like your project finished on time for the deadline when the original assets lag behind.
Creative Commons is a type of licence under which many creators share assets such as art, music, or even stories with other creators out there who might not have the skills or money to acquire appropriate original assets. Be sure to check the licence a creator uses, as they differ from creator and asset. Some you might be allowed to use in commercial projects without credits, while others may require you to credit them and strictly forbid commercial use.
Discord server communities like Devtalk and Otome Development cater to indie visual novel & game developers have resource channels to look for these assets as well as users ready to share assets they have found or made. Lemmasoft Forums is a website for visual novel developers and enthusiasts that is also well known for the free-to-use assets section it has built over the years. Lastly, you can check websites such as itch.io or DLsite (careful, there is 18+ content) for free or paid assets to use. When in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask around for links and recommendations to asset sites.
In this article, I am informing people about the availability of using CC assets, because more often than not, people new to game dev try to search for a full team and are still left standing with spots open for reasons such as; there are no volunteers willing to join or the ones who did apply do not meet the requirements you wish for.
First, ask yourself these questions:
- Did you cut the scope to the very possible minimum?
- Are you clear about the number of assets you’d need?
- Do you really need all of those assets?
- How much of that can you cover yourself?
- Have you lowered your standards?
If you already have checked and have done most of the things above, I’ll tell you to look for free assets if you want to see your projects created or even finished. Even if you have positions filled, bookmark assets which can act as placeholders.
A personal example I have is the NaNoRenO Project I did with my friend Azuremia, Appetite Amor.
Most of the backgrounds we used are Creative Common and Free to Use assets I found, some we have recoloured and resized. Further down the development, we came to realize that the composer of the team couldn’t finish the soundtracks and sound effects for the project, and we instead looked out for asset tracks and SFXs as well. Neither Azuremia nor I were BG Artists, and we both were aware of how hard it would be to find one to draw the many locations we had in mind for the project. There is no shame in using them as many well-known indie developers tend to use these assets as well, and have still created fascinating stories and worlds despite that.
A highly sought after role in the visual novel community are BG artists, they are high in demand and they are few in between, therefore, teams should expect to not find anyone to fill this role. Keep in mind, however, that not many people pay attention to the background as opposed to the characters and wouldn’t notice similar BG unless they see the same ones right after another, which has a slim chance to happen unless a lot of people use the same school setting. If you look at big brand VNs, you might also notice some of them also use filtered photos, 3D backgrounds with a filter on them, or cleverly use the same backgrounds and only show specific sections of a much bigger picture.
A lot of times one of your biggest hurdles will be the background art because finding a BG artist is one thing, but if they can manage to create more than four of them in a month is an entirely different one. As I and many artists can agree, drawing backgrounds can be one of the most difficult work to do, depending on the level of detail that you want, and many artists will avoid that workload to primarily focus on something more achievable for the deadline, such as character art like Sprites and CGs.
For jam projects, you have to keep the deadline in mind and what each member on your team is capable of in the given time. Naturally, a bigger scope requires more work to be put into it to finish in a short time, but not everyone is good at managing big teams or keeping track of all the processes going on in them. So the only outcome for a less experienced person is to either cut the scope or give it up.
That’s why I say to not feel bad using premade assets. Same with Appetite Amor, as a team, we made it clear that the jam project version would have the minimum and decent quality of content that satisfied us. We decided that later, we can make an expansion where we can polish the project with more story, a few more art assets, replace placeholders and put our project on Steam when it’s finished.
The story and its characters are the primary focus of a visual novel and if those suck, pretty art cannot salvage everything. When it comes down to it, sometimes a game with all CC assets is better than no game at all. Don’t feel “ashamed” at using readily available assets.