Hello everyone!

This is going to be a "short-devlog" to our Winter VN Jam project "Under The False Sky | Blood:Covered Snow" released 10 days ago to the jam's deadline.

Since a bit of time has passed, I think it's best to write a little "post-mortem" going over all the things that happened since release, future projects, further development on the project and some more stuff!

After the Release

Troubles Releasing the Project to Itch

The release hasn't been going smoothly - not at all.  It was 5am my time as I started uploading the distributions to itch.io, I still had one hour until the jam was over, so I thought I was still on time. But I haven't considered one thing: the TERRIBLE german "wifi infrastructure". The upload speed was SO slow.

So in the end I was allowed to submit the game page without the distributions, so that I was still able to submit it to the jam - cause turns out the distributions finished uploading at 9am - yes, it took 4 hours to upload. FOUR. HOURS.

I made the announcement and collapsed on my bed, finally able to sleep.

What a stupid and stressful way to start the year of 2024.
But it only got worse from there :)

Deteriorating Mental Health

The days after the release felt like hell. I was emotionally and physically drained. Most of the time I was only able to get up past 3pm and start my days from there - luckily I took the first week off from work, but in retrospect I think that was a mistake. I should have had people around me the last week, people that were NOT in the community.

I felt so overwhelmed, cause now instead of working on the project every day, there was nothing. Which led me to religously check the stats of the project and this in turn made me spiral even more. Let me tell you: saying Under The False Sky underperformed is an understatement. I was happy when there was at least 1 person downloading the project, which was really sad and made me question myself.

- Was I even good enough?
- Did I fail my team? 
- Did I waste everyone's time?
- What's even the point?

People close to me told me, that I should remind myself that I had fun developing this project and that "its about the journey" and stuff. I know they said it with the kindness in their heart and cared for me, but it felt like daggers in my heart.

What good does everyone's hard work do if it isn't even recognised?

I felt like a failure and I made it the people around me know in a terrible way, dragging them down with me. So the conclusion at the time, that formed in my mind was: to leave.

I wanted to feel happy for everyone who had their projects released at the time, but I just couldn't. All I could was feel bitter and question myself and sadly I'm a person who can't hide that, so instead of showing them that side it was best to leave before I would be able to stirr up more drama than necessary.
I removed all my friends, left all the servers and distanced myself from people.

To some people it might have seen rash and extreme (which might me the case), but in the end to physically distance myself from the people around me (within the community) helped me clear my mind.

I lost friendships and mutuals due to this and thats alright. Everyone has their boundaries and it's a good thing to be clear about them. And I also don't want to force them to stick around me if my behaviour makes them feel uncomfortable.

I blame nobody that it has come to this (except maybe myself).

Doing Better

Luckily "erasing myself from the narrative" really cleared my mind and gave me the opportunity to not only reflect on my actions but also on my own boundaries. I realised that participating in jams wouldn't be the best thing to do in the near future. I clearly need some sort of break and I know that leading teams as well as tight deadlines (like jams) take a huge toll on me (physically and mentally).

I readjusted my focus on what's currently important:

- my midterms are at the end of February, so I need to prep for that
- a few important presentations are scheduled for the next weeks
- Project:Yominokuni 
- my mental health

By now I accepted the fact that this project might not perform so well and am dealing alot better with the game's analytics.

My winter break ended this week as well, so I'm back to college and work and I'm really happy about this change of pace. I really need the change of scenery and change of people around me. I am also slowly getting my energy back, but more information on that in "Future Plans"! ;)

Future Updates

There still need to be some updates for Under The False Sky | Blood:Covered Snow, but to be frank, that's not really high on my priority list at the moment. I stated on the game page that it's going to be on the 14th of January though I don't really wanna make promises I probably can't keep. 

Typos & General Stuff

Only a few typos were brought to my attention, which I want to fix with the next update. There is also some general stuff, like adjustments of sprites, some UI stuff etc.

This is set to be updated with the next update.

Glossary & Character Profiles

As you already saw when you played through the Visual Novel, there is a Glossary and Character Profiles screen available in the project. And as you already saw, there isn't really much information displayed there. - To be honest, there wasn't much time left until we had to release the project, so I opted to only display "coming soon" in the descriptions (since this is only optional stuff anyways).

This is set to be updated with the next update.

German & Polish Translation

Naarel and I are also working on the German and Polish translations for this project, but this can also take a bit longer than expected, since I for example am busy with irl responsibilities at the moment.

This is set to be updated whenever we are done with it.

Future Plans

Project:Yominokuni

This year is going to be big and important for YOMINOKUNI! You might have heard of it; it's my & my team's Otome Jam 2023 entry. It's a dark and mature otome visual novel dealing with death and the supernatural! 

We are currently working on the outlines and want to be done with them by the end of January.

We are also currently remaking the demo with extended content, remade art assets etc. It's going to be a completely new experience! The demo is supposed to come out in Summer right before the Kickstarter we are planning to raise.

Working on Teams

This project showed me that, though working in teams can be a beatiful experience, it might not be my cup of tea - since I get overwhelmed easily.
For the year of 2024, I definitely want to reduce the projects I help out / work on; A) when it's for commissions, B) when it's for friends. But I definitely won't be directly offering my help to strangers or "mutuals" anymore to not overwork myself (at least for free).

I also will focus more on solo-projects, so I feel less guilty towards others when project doesn't perform as expected and so I don't feel like I need overperfom to do other people justice.

During the last year I forgot more and more that I worked on the projects out of fun and passion and not out of a responsibility towards other people.

 (All this doesn't involve / affect Project:Yominokuni of course)

Future Projects

Me not working on teams in the future, doesn't mean I won't be working on any projects in the future. BUT I am planning to take my sweet time with them and don't stress myself over them within jams and their short timeframes. I actually have a lot of project ideas!

- I wanna make more side stories exploring the work of Under The False Sky
- I wanna work on a project I have been working on nearly as long as Under The False Sky
- I wanna make a chatroom type VN (fr, this idea just won't leave my brain)

Of course all of my projects are going to be very dark and mature in nature, since I love tackling dark and twisted topics.

Thank You!

Before I end this post-mortem I want to say some Thank Yous!

- Thank you so much for taking your time reading this post-mortem!
- A huge "Thank You" to everyone who downloaded the visual novel, read it and maybe left a review! Thank you!

But my hugest thanks go to the incredible people I had the pleasure to work with during the month of December on this project! Meeting you guys and making the memories and the experience during development of the team truly means alot to me.
I still can't believe all of you took your time and hard work and put it into this project, helping me bringing it to life!
I know I am not the best team leader and I have my fair share of shortcomings / mistakes - nonetheless I'm still grateful all of you stuck around and we were able to produce this amazing project!

Thank you all so much for this opportunity!