So, Don't Die Digging.

It's hard to put my thoughts down because I'm still in the exhaustion post-release phase of the whole thing, this being my first ever visual novel which I worked with all I had to make in the 2 months that the Yuri Game Jam ran for. I wouldn't say I subjected myself to crunch. It's simply that things over here where I live were/are so chaotic and sanity-draining that the creation  of this game gave me the perfect excuse to distract myself as much as I could from all of that. Without it, I doubt I could've kept myself together through what is basically our version of what happened in Brasil and the United States.

Regardless, that's not the point of the post. Don't Die Digging was a difficult project, probably the most immediately difficult I ever tackled. Not the longest or the hardest to write (my 1-million word Pokemon fic still takes the cake there) but a time limit does up the stakes a bit. Still, thankfully it wasn't only manageable, but very fun too, even if stress sometimes got in the way of the development.

The idea for this game was born from a very old Pokemon tabletop campaign over which I am still obsessed with, thirteen years later, and a set of three characters in that campaign. Two were NPCs, one wasn't. For the purposes of comparison imagine them as a straight version of this game's cast, with the one in Tess' place being a man. But it was still a hell of an interesting love-murder-triangle. Or... well, two thirds of them were. One of the NPCs, unfortunately, was never given as much depth as I think she deserved, and served as mostly an 'obstacle' in the way of the (admittedly) very well-written relationship between the other two. I don't need to tell you that said forgotten NPC is what I based Enid off of. 

And so this game came around because that story, and that three-way relationship has been on my mind for over a decade, and I thought 'hey, could I do that NPC justice and turn this story gay at the same time?' Obviously it's not the same story, nor the same characters, but a lot of the inspiration comes from them. And so I decided to give this poor NPC another chance at life, at revenge, in the form of Enid.

There were other inspirations, though mostly relating to the world-building, how little of it there was notwithstanding. The concept of Deva is sort-of inspired by Ouroboros from the Trails series, and their members' naming convention was inspired by Ember Knight. Other than that, I tried to spice in my own flavor, for which the help of my beloved musicians Nihilore and Alice Walker was a huge help. Even if their music wasn't made specifically for my game, I'm glad they let me use it.

Anyway. 

This Game Jam gave me a lot of things. Experience in making visual novels, a bunch of new cool and amazing creators that I am now following and the distraction I needed from a very precarious and stressing time in my country.  And I couldn't be happier with how things ended up. I sincerely hope people can enjoy my game and my characters.

To finish it off, here's the first drawing I made of these characters. Only Tess looks noticeably different:

Also here's some fanart my wonderful partner made of these three!!! I love how they look in a  more realistic style: