luckily i still have all my limbs intact, haha. velox fabula is not my first 10-day game jam, but the rules this time around were surely different in a positive way! i got to explore what i could write beyond 1k words and got to make some really nice assets for our game c: although, i will say- due to the chillax restrictions of velfab, i ended up flying too close too the sun in terms of project scope. i planned to make more cgs and even a gosh darn opening cutscene for our game. but in order for that to happen, i realise that it’s not just time management you have to practise but PERSONAL management as well!! i’m talking about knowing how much you can handle, not putting too many hats at a time, and ultimately being okay with what you are going to put out. short game jams like this make me appreciate how much you can pare down your game right to its core. and no matter what, there will be people out there who will think your game is a masterpiece, regardless of what you think. something that i’m still getting a hang of. but yea, really glad to have participated!! loving the entries ive played so far!!
Hi! Thank you for hosting this Jam! The Jam was good, especially for me who need a refresh about making VN wwww
The Jam itself isn't too restrictive even with a specific selected theme, and 10 days deadline is a nice balance for making a short VN. The voting period is plenty (for now) to play all the submissions without rushing, especially for game with multiple-branch stories. I'm still going through all of them leisurely right now and it's very enjoyable so far. I love how people interpret the theme (not me who is so straightforward about it) and bring so many varieties revolve around it. And I got many cool tricks people used in their VN, gonna steal that for reference (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑
My only regret is I should've joined this Jam earlier and did more preparation. I joined 2 days after the Jam started, and when I almost finished the script, I remembered I hadn't done UI, and when I got so fixated on making UI, I didn't realize my background arts were too small and needed adjustment after I reworked the textbox wwww So yeah, absolutely need more prep beforehand. And I actually had to cut the last scene of my game, because I didn't know how much "bloody scene" is too much for the graphic violence rule, but it's still good, I might just release that scene after voting period wwww
Definitely will join again if this Jam becomes annual jam! Maybe next year more people will join and (although it's gonna be too much for voting) it's definitely will be fun! {*≧∀≦}
My regret for this jam is I think I should be more able to read my writer's notes since there was some mistakes in the plot and choices implementation and some time management (I kinda procrastinate and beat TOTK instead orz) that made me doing some crunch at the end of the jam (I still feel the effect 2 days later orz orz). But NGL for this jam I feel have more things to be grateful for compared to last jam because I got a number of new people helping me and that relieves the burden very much. I'm glad asking for help by posting job openings so I have more humane working tempo this jam. And the visual improves a lot from my past work so that's another thing to be proud of :D
I don't know what future holds (since I got some IRL stuff coming up) but if I can , I'll be happy to join this jam again. Thank you for this opportunity!!!!
I'm gonna be real with you it's a real struggle to try and bring myself to rate anything lower than 5 stars because I feel so mean knowing how much love and effort surely went in to all the entries T_T the way I'm trying to get over it is by playing a bunch of them first, rank them from fav-> least fav for each section and then make my stars reflect that rather than critiquing each one individually ^^;
I had so much fun with this jam! I challenged myself to reach out and join a group and I couldn't be happier with my team honestly! I am loving all the entries I've played so far and it's so interesting to see all the different directions people took the prompt in :)
I kept joking to everyone in my team how it felt like we'd been working on our game for months hahaha it definitely didn't feel like it was only 10 days long, I don't even want to think about the total hours I spent over those 10 days working on the game LOL
I think my biggest take away as for what to do next time is I should have worked out and proposed to my team how many hours I could spare on code for the project and ensure it was scoped accordingly. There were a lot of last minute cuts and I took a day off work for the final 24hrs to make sure everything got finished in time! So next time I'll definitely try to pre plan that aspect a lot better
I really hope I can join the next velox fabula jam :) it was so much fun!
Joining this jam ended up being a good oppurtunity for me to further push against my own percieved limitations in art - my first and last two jams I'd used a minimal amount of my own created assets beyond basic character sprites (and not even that, in regards to the last one) but this title required me to draw much more, as it wasn't something I found I could portray correctly with stock images and while I don't have high skill or polish I am happy with how they turned out.
It also is the first released VN I made that branched out (pun intended) beyond being a straightforward kinetic novel, even if its not the type of game where your choices seriously impact the plot. It (and the art thing) did result in me putting a lot on my plate, but thankfully I had both the time, and managed to keep pushing myself to actually get it completed.
I was a little wary and considered not bothering with the jam when the theme was announced, not because I disliked it but because those two previous jam VNs I made ALSO used the unreliable narrator and I thought I was a dry well by that point - so I am glad that about a day into the jam I was struck by and took inspiration via a certain plot twist I'd heard about long ago in a certain video game to make this title, instead of forcing myself to come up with something more direct or, as stated, giving up entirely. (and as for the video game in question, it'd probably be better to talk about that... not here, so I can go more into spoilers)
If I had two specific regrets with this jam it was that I didn't include a certain CG I had in mind for moment in the true end (I did, by that point, burn myself out from drawing so much more than I'm used to in recent times, and I just couldn't make it look not goofy no matter how I tried to tackle it) and that I didn't do a more thorough spell check (I typed out the general scenes in wordpad (no spellchecker) and then most of the dates in the game's script as I went, then just reread each part in chunks as I added art assets which, in my game jam fugue state, of course my eyes glazed over a lot of the mistakes this is a very bad way of doing things) before releasing the game when I did have the time to pop the thing through a spellchecker (I've made a corrected version that'll I'll be swapping to post-jam)
I also have to say I mildly regret playing 17/19 of the other entries back-to-back nonstop over maybe 7 hours and avoiding sleep the way I did by the time I forced myself to stop I was just, incredibly motion sick and nauseous, still worth reading them all of course and I trust my ratings and memories of playing them I just should have done it slower
First, I’m just proud I fucking did it! I’ve been thinking of making a game for YEARS but always had trouble making any decisions- what kind of game, what would it be about, what kind of programming skills would I need to learn? I got a new job at the end of last year and finally started having some energy outside of work to do stuff, then I started playing otome games again, and in the last few months I’ve just been inspired to give it a try.
I didn’t plan on making a game so soon, cause I literally hadn’t written any fiction or drawn anything since high school, but when I saw the jam announced and I already had a week of vacation scheduled around the same time, it felt like the best way to challenge myself to take that next step.
I think I’ll be better prepared when I make my next game since I really had no idea how much time things would take when I started. I wanted to add CG’s but ran out of time to make them (although I may go back and add them later so I can make sure I understand the coding around adding a gallery). I also would love to get original music and/or voice acting into future projects, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’ve really enjoyed the other entries I’ve played so far and I plan to play them all. I knew making games wasn’t easy before but doing it myself now makes me appreciate it all the more and I want to support everyone else!
i am typing this from my phone so apologies in advance if it’s ~a mess~
but i had a lot more fun than i expected for this jam!!! i don’t know what i Expected for a 10 day jam since i’ve never taken part in any jam shorter than a month. but considering i had initially gone into the jam with major NPC energy (only doing qa and helping a bit w writing), i definitely didn’t anticipate taking on as much as i did.
but i think that was a huge part of the fun since it was a wild ride experiencing so much chaos and delusion with so many amazing people and getting so invested in a little project in a short amount of time. for me, the jam was memorable because of the (oblivisci) memori(a)s (HA!!) with so many friends and also because i was able to push myself in so many ways as a dev! i got a little outside my comfort zone writing two stories that are pretty different thematically or atmospherically from my usual writing, learned how to be more intentional with creating and coding gui, and learned so much from other people on my teams and their creative minds.
my sense of time is extremely messed up now that the jam is over and i Will be catching up on sleep, meals, and water now. but i’m coming out of the jam with a lot more than i thought i would going into it. as a creative person, the time constraints have def pushed me on how i can create New and Exciting games/stories and adapt story or game elements as we keep scope in mind. Which i think are two very important skills to have as a dev. And seeing what other people have created has been so much fun as well! i’ve been loving everyone’s interpretations and seeing the fun narrative or game elements they’ve added in a 10 day time limit. so i’ll def be holding these velox fabula memories close to me ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
Considering I made a chaotic decision to join at the last second knowing I was going to be too busy to have the full ten days for the jam, I think everything turned out pretty well! I think my biggest regret was having irl things going on and not having the full time. Mostly because I used this jam to finally start learning how to code/design GUI and I definitely broke some things in the process lmfaO (RIP options menu, you'll be back). I'm really glad I used this jam to learn some new things, though. Especially because coding is my weakest skill and I really held myself to learning some things I've been avoiding. I actually really enjoyed how the aesthetic of it all turned out. I also planned out a majority of this via handwriting, and I even wrote a decent chunk of the script by hand due to not having access to my computer at times, and honestly? I think I'm going to handwrite more because it worked a lot better for my brain. I already knew that for the brain storming part, but I didn't expect how much it'd make things flow in terms of the actual script. Actual magic.
I think my biggest fear was my story being too vague or not giving enough hints to what was going on, but based on the feedback I've gotten I think that part actually turned out ok? At the very least I'm not overly worried about it anymore!
I've been enjoying the other entries a lot so far! I'm taking my time getting through them, and even with a specific theme, there are so many different styles and genres that were submitted? It's been super cool to see, and I for sure am going to get through them all before the voting period is over. I'm also struggling with rating everything though, because I've honestly enjoyed the entries I've played currently. I've been trying my best though lol
Overall, this jam has been a great time and I'm happy I decided to join in anyway! Hopefully when/if there's another velox fabula jam I can join and I'll have the full ten days for it!
I think the mere existence of this jam was the kick in the ass my team needed. We've been working slowly, on-and-off on a big game, and having a jam with a theme and a short time limit really focused us and made us think about what we could do, and what time things would actually take.
As a first game for literally all of us, we're proud. And having content out there for one of our (admittedly massive) cast of characters is pushing us to want to work harder on the main game, so we've got that going for us.
I will say having a 10 day jam that shared a weekend with a maker's market I was showing at was probably not the best plan, but it worked out.
I now know a lot more about the nitty-gritty of game making, and I think that's going to help a lot in general.
I know I'm excited at the prospect of other jams after having participated in this one, we'll see how my artist feels once they emerge from the blanket pile they made for themselves Monday night. XD
I wasn't sure i would be able to pull this up in the first place ! I joined a bit late, alone, with near 0 experiences and a broken english- This jam really helped me to motivate myself because without a limit of time i would have lost all will to continue working. I struggled to make it work mostly by myself and learned from mistake I couldn't have been prepared to if I didn't tried ! Great experience and a nice oportunity for me to check on really nice games ! I'm slow at rating because i have little time to play but so far I'm amazed on everything people create in such a small amount of time >:O Lot of cool concepts and interessing games in design and in story, a pleasure to try them all.
