Hi guys! Today, new release, new devlog!

You guys have to know this game wasn't planned at all and now I'm way behind schedule for my yaoi jam game. But here is the thing: I saw some O2A2 entries being submitted to the Single Choice VN Jam and I was like "Oh! It would be fun, but I don't have time so I shouldn't think about it."

And yet, here we are! I guess this meme kinda explains my whole situation:

But anyway, I didn't have time, didn't have any idea for a game with one single choice, so... nevermind, let's focus on my yaoi jam project...

BUT THEN

ALAS

Inspiration struck. Like, you know how people suffer from blank page syndrome? I don't know her, honestly, I'm inspired by basically anything. A plaid can become the door to a world in which children play or the comforting embrace two lovers need to feel like they belong together; a sock can be the one your ex left behind and you feel strangely nostalgic, remembering your relationship; an orange could be the last thing a group of three people have to eat during the apocalypse and they have to fight to decide who gets to eat the orange and who dies... Basically, you got it: I can turn almost ANYTHING into a plot! It doesn't mean I'd like to work on all of them (for example, the orange thing isn't something I'd have fun writing; the sock one is!).

So yeah, I had an idea, I drew a sprite of a guy who wasn't holding a suitcase and... alas!!!!! I had to make it!!

Coding-wise, I experimented a lot with blur, text tags, animations and colour matrixes. These are all things I used in the past, but I was really happy to combine all this knowledge I've acquired to make a short but polished game in my opinion??

So, that's it for the part without spoilers. Now run away if you want to avoid them.

***

Have you heard of this show named Why Women Kill? Well, I haven't watched it. But I kinda started to think about the ways a wife could murder her husband and of course, food-poisoning was a top pick. But of course, the husband had to be worth murdering: a toxic abusive asshole would do the trick. That's the reason Oleander is kinda based on Lara from Namida Side Stories - Katekyo's First Date design-wise.

But I thought: "Well, it is obvious that the steak is poisoned, it is not a plot twist." So I decided to think of a plot twist and I thought: "Oh, what if you played as the twin of the wife, who had worked abroad for years as a hitwoman, coming back to discover her sister was abused and didn't dare to leave her husband, impersonating her to help her but deciding to murder him instead because you thought it was the better solution?"

So... yeah, that's basically the plot. I kinda tried to play with the ambiguity of being a good housewife feeding her husband and breaking free (and a plate) with the choice, but still the character you play has never been Orlena, it made sense that both endings consist in putting an end to the relationship one way or another.

I enjoyed writing it because it REALLY WAS out of my comfort zone writing-wise. In general, writing is the strong suit of my games, but I never really made a game solely based on instigating a suffocating mood and working the plot twists from there, so I hope it isn't too bad, haha!

I'll admit the game ended up WAY MORE HORRIBLE visually than expected. With the script only, I felt like it was 13+... Then I kept adding details... then I decided to add blood on the sprite... To make him choke on the floor... So, yeah, ultimately, I thought it was too explicitly violent not to be 18+ (although I personally think it is overall a less horrible experience than High School Lolita - my crushing love story, which is 16+? I guess it all depends if you're more sensitive to psychological or to gore content in the end...)

So, yes! That's basically what I have to say about this game! I hope this devlog was interesting to read! See you for the yaoi jam game, if you're interested!!