Back and at it with O2A2! Sorry for another late Postmortem; life and piss-poor planning got in the way :’) But we’re here to say thank you for playing Angel Act! We truly appreciate all the reviews, comments, and those who streamed our game!

This time around we were pretty surprised at the reception, we didn’t really intend for this game to be that jarring or sad hehe…

^See? Angel’s doing just fine after the third ending (and on the run), so wipe those tears <3

But in all seriousness, we had a blast creating this micro-VN, and like before we would like to outline our process and takeaways from this year’s jam as well as 2024 in general!

The Process:

Regarding just O2A2, we had a number of things we wanted to do differently from Swing and Miss. We found last year that you guys really like having choices that actually mean something in the game (understandable, that was our bad lol) so we definitely had to have more than one ending this time around. We also realized the aesthetics of the game are important too, so we dabbled a bit within the world of custom GUIs. It had a much more polished look overall and it was definitely more satisfying on our end too.

Plot-wise, however, we were really going through it initially. Our initial idea involved graveyards and resurrection but the plot holes started getting out of hand so we scrapped entirely and our heads remained empty for a good while after that.

And then it was time for Anime Expo :0 We both decided that we’d really hammer out a concept during our flight to LA and any free time we had between con activities. Despite our flight there getting delayed 3 times WE STILL CAME UP WITH NOTHING. It was only when we were lazing around in our hotel that we managed to scrape together something usable.

Sooo one of us actually has a very tiny tiny obsession with the creepy/weird circus concept (courtesy of Black Butler: Book of Circus) and the other was inspired by a webtoon they’d read in the past, so we ended up settling on a circus as a setting. Next we needed a main attraction for the Circus, so we began googling circus freak shows to see what kind of character we should create as the focus of our game. While we saw many options, none of them were really clicking with us for this game. We decided to start looking into the more fantastical route (mermaids, fairies, etc.) and decided on an angel. The more biblically accurate angels have a billion eyes, so we figured we could use that feature as the focus point rather than the usual wings and halo.

Of course, with our need to make another dark game, we knew our little circus freak wasn’t going to be treated well. Since he was already an angel, it was pretty easy to go the religious route for the reason behind the mistreatment (no hate towards religion, one of us is pretty christian lol). And lastly, we needed a little twist at the end of our final ending, so making Angel a human all along seemed like a nice and simple one that conveyed how shitty people can be.

Writing out the dialogue felt a lot more quick this time (and required far less FBI flagged google searches). The word limit was poopy as usual, but we pushed through it. And ya…everything else seemed to just fall into place, honestly :)

Lessons Learned:

From comparing Angel Act to our last year’s O2A2 entry, we definitely feel like our process has gotten at least a bit more polished as newbies, and we’re hoping to continually improve in all aspects in 2025! We’ll see where the year takes us O_O

2024 in general, however, taught us many things about time management and keeping our goals realistic (4 games in a single year…if you guys saw that tweet, no you didn’t).

Both of us were going through life milestones (surviving university, graduation, first corporate job, etc.) so trying to balance everything alongside game development did not… pan out very well, given our kind of chaotic workstyle ^^;. There came a point where we scrapped or halted development on almost all of our projects and dropped out of jams because the stress was getting too much.

Needless to say, it was very humbling, and we know better now XD

Upcoming Plans:

Upon reflecting that our one major pitfall as Sudachys is struggling to optimize and balance our workflow and deliverables, both of us have decided to split up for this first segment of the year to pursue our own projects and hopefully hone our personal skills! (so that we can be stronger together muahaha)

For the sake of clarity we are devs Su and Dachy (don’t say anything, we know it’s stupid).

Dachy will solo develop a short VN for the 2025 Yandere game jam, so if you enjoy casino settings and pretty men with red flags plastered all over them, please look forward to that within these coming months!

Su will be creating what should be a short (but probably won’t be) game about quirky office life filled with characters that should probably be in a psych ward. So if you desire to play a game that requires you to have an empty head, feel free to play it when she gets it out within the coming century (no game jam to rein her in, so who knows when this shit will come out, but trust it will someday <3).

For the 5 of you who have probably seen our twitter posts (we love you), you may have seen some concept art from a while back. We have an upcoming BL VN that has since been put in the back burner, but we will resume development on this later in the year as our first longer completed project! (We haven’t forgotten Nuitepine, we just need to summon enough mental energy to revamp it all and start writing the routes, also Su dies a little every time she thinks of those ugly-ass sprites she drew in the middle of a fever TT)

If you would like to receive more updates on our activities, feel free to follow us over on twitter or bluesky!

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