This was my first game jam and first time developing a game! I'm impressed with myself that I even got it done, since I wasn't able to start within the first 36 hours due to real life events. As a result, I pulled an all-nighter and got to experience the infamous game dev crunch time, haha.
The most challenging aspect of game development for me was the concept and the writing. I originally came up with another idea, but it was too long and linear. It took me quite a few hours to reformulate some of the more interesting aspects of the initial concept (infection/possession, multiple protagonist perspective) into the backbone of the final submission. As I started writing the game (directly into the Ren'py script files, since I had no time to transfer between word processors), I struggled with wanting to lean into tropes or break away from tropes. I recognized this partway through writing the 2nd and 3rd routes, but I had no time to revise the concept. I think this waffling of ideas is reflected in the final submission, where some characters' routes were thematically weaker and vague. The lesson I learned here is that it's preferable to lean into tropes; they are tried and true. If I had more time, I could better explore bending or breaking those tropes, but I'm satisfied that I wrote about 14k words in about a 24 hour period.
Art fell into place easily. After an hour of playing around with drawing style, I settled on what I knew I could execute: grayscale sprites and edited photos. I intended to add more CGs, but unfortunately only really made one. It was sort of fun creating sprites on the go as I worked on programming. I took some inspiration from Christine Love's advice on being liberal with how often character sprite expressions change or move. I don't remember the exact way it was worded, but I had noticed the effect in one of her games, and thought it would be an excellent way to bring more life to my characters. I created lots of expressions to that effect, but a downside was that it became difficult to keep the timing of expressions consistent between each characters' routes (since the same story is told through three different perspectives). I think there are some discrepancies, but it also plays a bit into how each character perceives other characters' emotions.
Lastly, I just had no time for sound design, so it was omitted entirely. I also think it would have been fun (and maybe less stressful?) to collaborate with someone on, but maybe that can be a future goal.
I'm still playing through other participants' entries, but so far, I'm impressed with the level of interpretation and the quality of writing of each submission! Seeing everyone's creativity is always a treat, and I'm super happy to see how supportive and thoughtful each person's comments are.