Hoafrost Wires Postmortem

Before I say anything else, I want to express my deepest love and gratitude to my friends Cen and Dalys for all of their support and feedback. I appreciate you guys always supporting my strange ideas and I'm glad that you're in my life💟

✦ A Short Ramble (Sorry) ✦

Sharing first things is nerve-wracking, so publishing a first visual novel of all things took a lot of courage for me.

I have increasingly felt the urge to become a recluse on the internet as the desire to share my writing/art/ideas in public spaces wanes. While I believe the term "media literacy" has become somewhat of a buzzword, it still serves as an apt descriptor for how we genuinely have regressed in terms of analytical ability and general reading comprehension.
I had to silence the part of my mind that was worried I would get a complaint (not criticism) because someone misinterpreted my work. Or worse, that people would make assumptions about my personality, beliefs, or morals when they don't even know me.

None of that matters because someone will always take issue with or misinterpret what you say or do. Better to find the people who appreciate what you're saying with your work, rather than worry about bad-faith criticism. I know the story of Hoarfrost Wires and its characters wouldn't be controversial or anything (maybe?), but this was a big mental hurdle for me to jump over due to past incidents that I had suffered and also had watched my friends suffer in online spaces.

Getting off my soapbox now.

I'm very glad I saw Hoarfrost Wires through to the end. I appreciate each and every person who was interested enough in my novel to download it!

✦ Process ✦

I have a lot of adoration for characters who are “non-human” entities with the desire to experience human emotions, especially romance. So I was immediately invested in the concept of this Game Jam.

I had a whole moodboard of character inspiration in my head, but what first came to mind was the Adventure Time character Minerva Campbell, Finn's mother who was revealed towards the ending of the series. We find out that she was a doctor who created myriads of robotic clones of herself after her death to protect the remaining humans on Ooo from the various ailments they suffered since surviving the apocalypse.
A lot of that came into Sofiya's character and the story's conception as a whole. The similar isolated environment that the humans on the island felt suffocated in was the same atmosphere I tried to create for Kumanika City, the setting of my story.

Another source of inspiration was (obviously) Chobits. The relationship between Nia and Sonya was inspired by Minoru Kokubunji and his Persocom Yuzuki, who he modeled after his deceased sister. A lot of Sofiya's character development was inspired from Minoru learning to treat Yuzuki as her own person rather than a replacement for his sister.

My third main source of inspiration was Lobotomy Corporation. I was (and still am) fascinated by the tragic and psychosexual dynamic between Ayin, his creation Angela, and Carmen, the woman Angela is modeled after. If you've played Lobocorp, it becomes obvious which girl was based on who haha.
I don't like to define my works or the works of others by solely tropes, but I really love the concept of 'haunting the narrative'. Getting to see how a character's absence affects the characters in the present is always a treat for me, so Sonia was meant to serve that role.

After conjuring up my main characters and their general character arcs, it was time to draw sprites. My main goal was to keep the designs and colors simple, with focus on one main feature for each girl.
For Sofiya it was her discolored hair, Sonya's headphone-like antennas, and Nia's floral glasses. I tried to make Sonya and Nia's appearances as similar as possible without being entirely identical, giving both Sonya and Nia sky-blue eyes and brown hair balayage.

Sonya and Nia had a few sprite variations, which honestly took me more time than I expected to complete. I ended up drawing around 96 sprites!
Unfortunately, that led to me not having enough time to draw all the CGs I wanted, but I'm still very proud of what I managed to put out considering this had been the most drawings I had ever created in a short period of time, as I am a very slow artist lol. I plan to both redraw all the CGs I wanted sometime in the future!

My favorite CG

For other resources:

The music was all lovingly borrowed from Dova Syndrome. All of the music is very charming! I tried to add as many sound effects as I could to enhance the experience, mainly snow falling and the turning of keys. All of the backgrounds were borrowed from Unsplash, where I then added filters over it. Maybe in a future VN I might be ambitious enough to try drawing my own backgrounds?

For the actual programming, I already had prior experience with Python from my college courses, as well as using Renpy for a different visual novel about a lightkeeper named Brizo that was never completed. I figured out most of the stuff I didn't know using the documentation and trial-and-error, but I don't think Renpy is at all complicated to use.
Please do not be afraid to try out Renpy!

✦ Closing Thoughts ✦

If you've read this to the end, thank you so much!

I'm very proud of what I managed to put out in a month all by myself. And I am genuinely so grateful for all the support I received throughout this! Even just a like on my process posts or a comment really made my day.

My main personal takeaway is that I should make whatever moves me and not let the fear of rejection affect that. I like stories about sad girls and the somber environments they live in. And I want to be able to tell those stories through any medium I can.

Thank you so much again to Malaika and Starbage for hosting this Game Jam! I really enjoy both of your games (What is it Like to Taste and HalOPE are my favorites)

Thank you to each one of the participants for posting such amazing works! I'm slowly getting through each one, but I have enjoyed everything I have seen so far!

Sending a million 'thank you's. See you next time!

Mina ★