it's been over a full month since i released it BUT i want to talk about my april fools game, date senbei. because i released an update the other day adding 5 more endings and MUSIC so now it is officially complete... which means i can talk about how it became a thing!!!!
i'm sure i already posted about this somewhere, but i gotta tell the story again for posterity.
night with timber was originally going to be "date timber" which would've been my april fools game (similar to date treat). but the more i worked on it, the more it became its own beast. i originally had the idea for it in september thinking i would wait until april to actually make it, but… well, everything changed and NWT took over my entire brain.
so after releasing NWT i thought, ok what do i make for april fools then???? and i decided i'd try to do date tundra, since so many people have been saying they want more tundra content (specifically that they want to date her, even). i turned this over in my brain for a long time and concluded that the premise doesn't really work for her, because she is such a serious character. if i make a tundra thing i wouldn't want it to just be a joke. so, april was fast approaching and i still had no ideas, and i wasn't sure what i was going to do or if i would skip making an april fools game after all…
that's when i thought… well, what about date senbei? it'd be horrible. no one wants this. a lovely dinner with senbei except it's not lovely at all, it's just him being insane at you until you find a way out of it.
and….. i had a backlog of comic ideas to work with, one in particular that i wasn't sure i was going to draw because it'd have to be a whole thing. specifically, senbei explaining to osmanthus that he plans to marry timber (what?!) and having timber chained up at dinner with brickzo acting like everything's fine and the whole conversation about having kids and GOD i needed to make it real.
so i did! and i had a great time doing it!!
production
omg it was a whirlwind. i finished escape from wormwood a bit early (like a week before the jam actually ended), so i was confident i could finish date senbei in time for april 1st...
BUT THEN I JUST KEPT WRITING?? THE SCRIPT KEPT GETTING LONGER AND LONGER????? but i was laughing so hard and having so much fun, i didn't want to cut anything… i do remember feeling a bit rushed toward the end, so there were some parts that i wished i could've thought about longer or like could've added a bit more to, but for the amount of endings i was happy that there was so much in there.
manjuu route has the most endings, but i feel like i could've cut down on them a little… like some of them end in a similar way so it feels slightly redundant, but i liked writing all the choices so… i dunno, there's always a tough balance between making lots of routes/giving lots of freedom and making sure the endings don't get like, really tedious to actually collect when you're 100%ing it… like each ending should add something unique… i mean i wasn't taking it THAT seriously (it's an april fools game after all) but i didn't want to bore anyone by writing in circles. although… it kinda adds to how senbei makes you feel, watching him reason himself in circles… (i'm trying so hard not to ramble, i'm writing this sort of late at night haha)
i wanted to use my new(er) font (nomic sans!), because i use it for my comics and i wanted the ui/aesthetic for this game to be more similar to those than to anything more polished i've made. the problem was that font wasn't quite finished, it only had basic latin characters and a lot of little things i wanted to adjust about it… but i released with it anyway, then actually finished the font, THEN updated the game later to use the more finalized version. it looks basically the same, but there's still more adjustments i want to make because it's not really centered when you put it in a frame and—GAH i'm rambling again.
the art for the game is all done in one giant file… except it's not that huge because it's only 800×600px and only uses like 4 colors! the less i have to think/search for files, the more art i can crank out… my process was basically just setting up an animation timeline for the different "poses", layering it so i could move between things easily, and whatever i wasn't working on i just set as a draft layer so it wouldn't be shown in the exported png. this way i could see the images in the context they would be shown without having to like put them ingame and fiddle with them after—i don't know how much time it really saved because i was still going back and forth changing layers from draft to not, turning things on and off, etc… but it felt quite fast while i was making it, so i enjoyed the process.
i didn't color the characters because i really wanted to lean into it looking low effort… like, it's an aesthetic choice, my doodle comics are that way too… if i had to fully render everything to make a story i would just get so tired. i enjoy sketching more than rendering, though it has its place too… but if i have to think about nicely rendering every new pose, it makes me less inclined to draw a bunch of poses. because the idea is already there! i want to think of the next thing, not be stuck on the last thing! i wonder if that makes sense… my art output has been very high this year because of that approach though. i'm having fun.
EDIT: WAIT I FORGOT TO MENTION SOMETHING IMPORTANT, a huge inspo for the aesthetic of this game is ongentoro, which i can't stop listening to. specifically the way the characters are framed in the little windows and popping out of them... so cute and expressive... i would not have done it that way without seeing this MV so i wanted to give credit where it's due (and also make more people listen to the song cuz it rules) THANK YOU
coming back and finishing the game a month later
alright so it turned out because i had a lot going on during april, i did not get to add music to date senbei in the days after its release like i thought i could… instead, i waited until after charm studies was out on steam, which… agh, i feel like i shouldn't have waited so long!!! BUT to make up for it, i added twigs route!!!! which (spoilers) has an ending that recontextualizes the whole game?! wow, i love it!!!!!
writing twigs route was like, fun but also kind of difficult. i think for every route there were times where i was like "ok but where do these choices GO, like what are the different possible RESULTS for this night". for example, with timber's there's only so many ways he can either get away or be trapped with senbei. but finding out what keeps him there or sets him free is part of the fun. some of the last endings i wrote for him were the personal chef and sleepover ones… just because i was thinking like ok what would get him to temporarily agree to this? just having to try to negotiate with senbei… the most unreasonable man…
anyway for twigs it was extra hard because THEY HAVE LITERALLY NOT INTERACTED WITH SENBEI YET IN CANON. so any interaction i write for them is going to color things going forward, which makes me feel like i need to be careful or at least thoughtful with how it goes. and like, i have written some parts of WWT including their canon meeting, but it's not FINISHED yknow??? so i can't reference it, but i knew i wanted twigs to call him silly names so i opened with that…
in the debate ending it becomes a little serious, because twigs can't say anything to acknowledge timber's guilt but is like deeply offended by how senbei talks about/views him… what was coming out was like, i just want them to be able to talk seriously about it, for twigs to like actually defend timber and for senbei to attack their insecurities about what they're doing… i just think about these characters and their situation so much, but the level of seriousness doesn't really have a place in this april fools game… SO… i dunno, i'm glad i also got to write twigs being so confidently like "wow i looove having sex with my partner every day" but also "nooo senbei don't say you love him this isn't funny anymore", like twigs you don't need to be insecure but you've also witnessed how much timber thinks about this guy and AHHH… twigbei interactions are very fun, he really brings out the guard dog in them, i love twigs getting to be nasty to him and it's so incredibly justified…
AND ENDLESS END… truly i just like realized i could make it that way and had to go for it… senbei gets stuck on the "how do you feel about him" question and i had to pause writing the route until i realized he would also just stop it there, unable to answer for himself. OOF!!!!! once again, i have more comic ideas involving senbei using orchid's power for his own introspection that i want to do, but they would have to be post-WWT, so i was holding off on them… endless end is just like a small taste of that… i guess i hinted orchid/lilium's attachment to senbei in the foxy catch too tho… hahaha......... anyway!!!!!!
the music!!!! i was actually undecided for a while on if i would just use the tracks from NWT or LWT straight up. i felt like the NWT ones did not fit the aesthetic, and i wanted to keep the feelings associated with them more tied to the story of NWT specifically. so what i ended up doing was opening the NWT project files and just swapping out the instruments (and turning off the reverb lol). i was glad i had the energy to knock out the new versions, i think sometimes with music i get really intimidated at the thought of doing a whole song because i have to know at least a little going in what i want the vibe to be… and i wasn't sure for this one!!!! but i figured it out… i'm happy with the date senbei songs, it's pretty much exactly the level of effort i wanted to put in to make them. i want to find more cheap-sounding VSTs to make silly little songs with now that i've gotten all comfortable with my nicer-sounding ones.
ahh okay i rambled a lot this time, but you probably didn't expect a full postmortem for such a short game, did you?! the final word count including twigs route actually put it at longer than charm studies... which feels wild....... but i think that's just what happens when it comes to senbei, he's got a lot of words in him.
thanks for reading~