This IS my final form!

Hello everybody, for the very last time!

This post is all about my final task for Media Channels and Platforms course. I'm... not cut out for analytical or professional texts, so I wanted to create a practical piece. At first I was gonna explore social media by making a fake account and see if I could create a believable persona, but it turned out to be a bit too hard for me so I decided to make a game instead. This is how School Survival was born!

Doesn't this title screen make you all excited?!

Visual novels and dating sims have been a big interest for me this year. I've been inspired by the games I've been playing (like Hakuoki and Mystic Messenger) and I've slowly started to develop an interest of making a visual novel game of my own. I found out about Ren'Py last year and tried it out a little, but School Survival was the first thing I actually made with it.

I've never programmed a game myself, in fact I know 0 things about programming. The reason why I decided to use Ren'Py, a visual novel engine, was that it had a clear tutorial and also a wide range of instructions online so picking up this engine's language was quite easy in the end (read: I knew what things to copy-paste...). I had to ask a couple of friends for help at some point though because I couldn't understand what was wrong with my code, but they didn't write it for me or anything.

Which one?!

I wanted to make a game with many interesting questions regarding our course but I found out that I'm too dumb to make anything too great so I ended up with very basic quiz questions. At first I was gonna program the game in a way that it would've always resulted in a bad end after a certain amount of wrong answers but I didn't for two reasons: 1. Programming it would've taken me a lot of time since I didn't really know how to do that, and 2.  I found out that writing the wrong answer dialogues was a lot of fun. Now I understand why game developers often make an achievement system: there's so many things left unnoticed if you don't play a game multiple times! (I'm partly joking about the last statement. Partly.)

I had a couple of people try out my game before I presented it to our class. They kinda liked it because it had a very relatable story and there weren't any bugs or errors at that point anymore.

Don't worry, the teacher will forgive you.

I... would like to be an illustrator but I'm not far with my skills yet. As you can see from the picture above, the backgrounds weren't drawn by me. Instead I used Prisma and Everfilter apps to make photos look like drawn images. Someday I wish that I could paint my own backgrounds too. As for the other graphics, I drew Ms. Holliday with 3 different expressions. I think that was enough for a game this short.

As I mentioned before, writing the dialogue was a lot of fun. I actually got some players interested in Ms. Holliday's backstory with all the little hints I gave here and there, which I feel like was a little victory of its own. Unfortunately I never planned to give her more backstory than there was in the game... Looking back it would've been a nice add but that would've also derailed the game from it's original purpose a little.

I was a big, bad thief and used music from different games and series for this game. Finding the tracks was pretty easy because I already had in mind what kind of music I wanted to go for. The tracks are listed in the game's credits! I used music from Hatoful Boyfriend, Clannad, Ace Attorney 5 and Yuri on Ice.

The style of this game ended up being a bit comic because I felt like I was in the mood for writing something lighthearted and fun. The self-irony is really strong in this game! The game almost ended up being a stress reliever for myself rather than a proper final task for the course... Maybe I should've made something more academic but like I said, that kind of stuff is really not "me" at all. Someday I might learn, but until then I'll keep on marching to the beat of my own drum.

The only true love of your life. In reality this game is a love story between you and your five credits. Or is it...?

I learned a lot during the time I was making this game! I now know for sure that I'm not that interested in programming (I had a feeling but trying it out made it clear) and that I definitely want to make another game. One of my friends already suggested that he could be my programmer if needed, so I might take up on his offer. I also got a good reminder of the things we learned during this course while I was deciding on the questions. Overall actually finishing something lifted up my mood a little and made me regain some of my hope for the future, haha...

Anyway! Thank you all for this course! If you want to play my exciting game, head to the Google Drive link below and download the .zip file. It should work on all computers but if it doesn't, give me a nudge! When you've downloaded it, just click MCP.exe and the game should start.
This is the link! Yay!

I hope everybody has a good and relaxing vacation!

Happy thoughts for the rest of your lives,
Oona