"Wow," you may think, seeing the difference between Hollow Ruins (5 days) and this (14 days). "You just really needed an excuse to go crazy. and draw a lot"

Maybe so.

What did I learn?

Uh, everything.

When I started on the Harold Game Jam, I just barely knew how to use the engine at all; a lot of trial and error was involved in getting even such a basic setup right. I got excited when I got used to using switches.

With Romilli, in a very brief window of time, I learned about
-ALL the Picture functions
-Parallax mapping
-Weird uses of variables (store map X/Y/ID, region ID, drawing cursors, & of course, the main gameplay mechanic Select Item.)
-How to actually use all the plugins I downloaded
-Mapping in MZ (AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGH)
-Autotiles (for that tree tile)
-Colour grading
-How to draw an 8-directional sprite
-RegionIDs
-terrainIDs
-Parallel processes
-How to use grids in general
-How to make a Windowskin
-How to make an emote bubble
-How to make a stepping animation (& why it's formatted like that)

You may notice almost none of this is actually something that shows up in how the game functions. I actually tried a BUNCH of new things with this, almost all of it going absolutely nowhere, and I feel like I have a solid grasp on the engine in general now that I've done all that. I feel like I just  took an advanced course. Just because I don't need it now doesn't mean the fact I can log my map position in variable slots won't come in handy later.

& of course, the primary downside to game jams, ideas you have being fileted for realism and practicality's sake. Here's a list of functions I'd want to see in a full game;

Mapping

Complex Floor Plan
I just copied the Resident Evil foyer - as remembered from the last time I played through it at age 11 - and did not make ANY floor plan and I think it probably shows.

More explorable rooms
The dining room, sitting room, Azel’s room, the entire third floor, the attic, all of Romy’s family’s rooms, and the yard are conspicuously absent from the game. I don’t know if YOU noticed it, but I did.

Game Design

Lore booklet
This game’s setting has a lot of extra details, and it can be hard to keep track of fantasy names. I intentionally limited it as much as possible so there was less to remember at once, but keeping information compact also means cutting out a lot of useful details. Keeping the lore in Romy’s perspective would also give the player a greater sense of impact when Romy finally starts learning about all the things happening in the world outside.

Flavour text
The estate has only been empty for 30 years, and in disrepair for 20; there should be more to look at in a passive, non-chit-chatty sense. I can create a new interactable marker for this filler.

Hide Room Picture Overlay
Not actually that useful in the game’s current simplistic layout, but I like how it looks and would like to use it.

Gab Window
All conversations are started by either Romy commenting on something or Azel noticing that Romy is thinking about something. I think it would add more diversity in conversations and make backtracking feel more rewarding if they’d have chit-chat between maps, maybe about information Romy has picked up since the last time she’s been in that room. This is especially useful for the player’s instinct to backtrack to make sure they haven’t missed Truths that can be created in the house, but don’t show up until you leave.

Combo Deductions?
There used to be a 3rd item class made from chaining together observations into 1 huge final deduction, but I didn’t have time to build all that in, and it’s possible to use them as large triggers to moderate the depth and characterization in the ending cutscene. I actually liked the effect this had, so I may save the 3rd item class for a later game with the same gameplay.

Key items
The more work I did the more I felt a window for key items would be a good idea.

Fancier menu
I fought so hard to make a cool-looking menu out of events I bombed a game jam, for a little frame of reference on how badly I need this. Literally. Like just a week head full of nothing but “menu pretty :)”

Fancier title screen
Menu pretty :)

New parallax plugin
GALV is nice, simple, !!completely free!! And easy to use, but I’d prefer to buy Anisoft’s Prime Parallax, which seems to be a little more powerful (and more importantly, has more detailed documentation). I just use the same 3 preset settings for every single map because setting it up gave me so much trouble.

Empty textboxes
Realized only around the end that I could make those shifting character portrait expressions player-controllable by simply leaving the textboxes blank and setting them to transparent.

TileD
I hate mapping in MZ so much. “Draw a symbol on the transparent tiles if you mess up so often“ maybe I don’t want to!!!!!!!!! Maybe they should have had an eraser to begin with!!!!!!!

Interaction replay-o-vision
A bit of a novelty, but the ability to revisit nodes once they’ve all been watched. Also, my switches and conditions are so sloppy I have to remake them all anyway, so why not.

Writing

Wider range of subplots
I wanted to just keep it to story threads that could be cleanly resolved, so even in my complete outline large chunks of the setting are completely missing (most notably Honora Sarymos, who has so little impact on Romy’s circumstances she practically doesn’t exist.)

You can handle a little truth
More rooms = more world = more observations, so obviously there would be larger Truths to discover. I’d like 5~10 Truths in the estate; ideally to get people to catch a few more gabs.

The rest of the game
Well, yeah. There are actually about...2 or 3 new areas (though to note, the mansion should take up 2/3rds of the total gameplay no matter what. It’s the crux of the emotional heart, and I want to build it up as its own character.)

Playable Flashbacks
I will make this game so fat.

Sound design

Footstep sounds
It was going to be in the demo but I couldn’t get it to work and got bored and annoyed. I need them so bad

Less common RTP music
I think most of the music is effective just the way it is, but if the player is spending a lot of time hearing 1 song, it shouldn’t be immediately familiar.

More Sound Effects
Game is missing a small handful of sounds that would have added a lot to immersion.

Letter sounds?
I like   the noises :)

Graphics

Redraw everything
I just grabbed a pen tool without much sensitivity and essentially scribbled in colours, & the lack of visual direction sticks out in places. Also, there was a lot of issues with size consistency. Want to redraw them all and paint them much more carefully. (Same poses, I intend to trace the old ones. Just want to ink and colour differently.)

Bust facesets
I don't actually like just the faces. Their ears are too big & facing head-on doesn't look as good.

Cutscenier Cutscenes
There are small segments that would benefit from more creative applications. None of them are in this demo. I just have future knowledge.

Taller sprites
I am a sprite artist. Drawing 8-directional walksprites already took way more time than it was worth. Still hurts to not use tallsprites (that I HAVE EIGHT DIRECTIONS FOR) so I could draw the characters faster and reduce visibility of limited animation. Want to go all out.

Sprite Animations
The characters don’t move a lot, despite how many scenes are limited to textboxes. A few scenes need a little more visual flexibility.

Emote backgrounds
Like in Tales of Berseria? Those little expressive background panels?

More motion & expression in portraits
Not enough sliding and hopping. MORE gestures. Also, a lot (not all; I realized I could do it while working) of the visual novel scenes just pop in, and I would like all of them to fade/slide into place when they begin.

Picture UI for observation fusion
The dialogue windows just feel clunky.

Doodads
I’ve never parallax mapped before now and was really intimidated by it, but I’ve used a grid so often extracting all those mansion sci-fi tiles from their sets that my fear of alignment issues seems silly now.

I bought so much DLC you guys I really want to go ham
Baby I miss you so bad the things we could do with Dark Fantasy tiles please come back please please please

Aestheticism
Continuation of DLC & different mansion layout; because the most elaborate and unique tiles were the Sci-Fi mansion tiles, I defaulted to a more european-victorian look, but I actually would have preferred to lean more into a greek aesthetic for the Sarymos.