Post-Mortem, Pre-Published.

Greetings.

I said I'd leave some additional thoughts here, and none of us have any inclination to talk about the story or setting in this, so I might as well keep my promise.

The one thing that I wish we could have found a way to do better is the optimization. Unfortunately, Ren'py is not very open to the idea of only culling some previous temporary messages, so it's rather all or nothing for the effect required here. Something to revisit another time, I suppose; there have been no reports of performance issues in the beta-read.

The one thing I'm happiest with is how much we were able to say without detailing, without drawing lines or complex shapes in visual. How much was placed within the text itself as text-itself. Actually, no. Scratch that. The audio. I like the audio a lot. Much like other aspects of the game, we could have put more detail into it, and it would have been worse off for that. If there's one thing that I want to call direct attention to on a re-read, it would be that. How it builds, how it flows, how it's constructed. What it is, what it represents.

The one thing that was hardest to do was cut down to even this size. It feels cut-short. It always does. Everything is. Nothing can be understood except in full but the fullness is an impossibility. Understanding is not possible, unless you already understand, at which point I would rather we resonate about it instead. Does it convey? Is it expressed? It could always be better. There could always be more. There needs to always be less.

...

I am not anxious about reception to this, to be clear. Not as a work of art, not as a piece of writing, not as an entry to a game jam.

I just see those walls, and can't help but wish they were gone.

Until next time.

- ⟡