Sockjam Spring into Summer 2022 submitted and now in the voting phase. Exciting! 

I do like writing about the games I make, and although most of them haven't made it here on itch (yet?) I do still write something. So without further ado. And bolded to make skimming easier, I hope. Sharing some in progress pics from over the development. I hope they provide some insight.

Where did the idea for the game come from? 

This is two fold. 

1. I for quite a while wanted to make a series of games following the raccoon cultists. I see this a series that will follow different sects over time and in different places. The games will have different genres and looks, but are connected through a shared history and memory. It's likely going to be a bit of a timeline jump when I do release games, and they will reference one another. If you do beat this game, the narrator hints that she will be part of a another game where they have to rebuild the town. 

2. When I was much younger, I saw the studio Ghibli film Pom Poko. I fell in love with it because it had raccoons, was magical, and quite unlike most media I could find. But the ending was so sad. I had always imagined what if the raccoons had won. It's also why the soundtrack ended up being what it is. I had originally intended for a feel more in line with Pom Poko and a game called Okage: Shadow King (sort of niche, but my favorite game), but I ended up really falling in love with the ending track as it was and like the feel of the other tracks as I playtested. 

Well, in this game the raccoons took a much darker turn then they did in Pom Poko and did win. And sadly I did not get to include the parade I so hoped to. The unfortunate side effect of having limited time, I wasn't able to fully add in how the raccoons felt about this over time. But I will speak about that in a minute. 

How did you come up with a name for your game?

Honestly, this was one of the things that took me the longest time. And it's why there is no title menu and why there is a blank space in the options menu. Oops. Every name I could think of I hated. I also had to really think if I wanted to keep all the Raccoon Cultist games named similarly, and if so, how. Towards the middle of the month, I was stuck with just Isekai (fantasy anime that sometimes have ridiculous long names that tell you the plot) sounding names, which didn't fit the mood at all, but one name was close to spelling RACCOON, so a friend and I went back and forth making names with that acronym in mind. It's going to be interesting to see if I can keep that up and make it sound alright as games are added. 

How did your game evolve over time? 

Before the theme was announced, I was determined to make the first game in the series. I thought it should be a short introduction into the world, allow me to kind of world build internally more, and just get a feel for what I would need to continue to work on for the series. When the theme was announced though, I was very happy that I could do the Pom Poko inspired story line. But, I still had a few different ways this could go. 

Hilariously, the first thing I did was come up with a color pallet. I wanted it to be color blind friendly, and I wanted the game to fit the nature theme with the pallet. The second thing I did was institute saves. I didn't want anyone to feel like that had to play a clicker game for any length of time and then loose progress. Funny enough, I don't like clicker games myself, which is why I wanted this one to be short. 

I started working on some animations, such as the ones you see when doing magic and training. I used Elthan's sprites, but for  many of the animations, I had to modify the art to make it work for my game. When I made the raccoon riding the horse (an initial version, not the one seen in the game) I had the thought of those click to train games. And in the initial version, the training options were split into "+ clicks per second" and "+ clicks per click"  (CPS and CPC). And you would need to get a really big number to pay for the Raccoon Cult Gods to give you the parade and end the game. Also the list was entirely different... 

Then talking to a friend about the issue with big numbers and just in general time played, the idea of a Terror Meter was born. This came in a few flavors as well. The first was A literal bar where each click on a button would get you +1 and then when the bar is filled you would go into a frenzy mode while it depleted and got a bunch of extra clicks and points. I didn't really like this. But I wasn't quite sure what to do yet. 

I worked on using Elthan's cards as a UI of sorts, and ended up creating the gems bar. Obviously 1 click couldn't fil a whole gem, so I added a random number generation to each button and each button is weighted differently (the lower on the screen, the more likely the rate) and when the number is called it adds one to the bar. I had to adjust this a number of times to keep the game under 1 hour increasing and decreasing the number of calls to get the parade as well, which was always a goal to me. After I got that settled, I decided that I needed to add something that showed the terror. So I made groupings of terrified villagers who you see in the opening and in the "6 months" ago scene. Some of them also ended up getting killed in cult animations. 

I scrapped the CPS and CPC idea because I thought it looked too clunky and I didn't really want to work on the numbers issue too much in terms of balance. And I changed it to the current set up where they are all just "+ count" I also swapped the game UI entirely at this point. originally clicking was on the right, and the button on the left. Parade was under the buttons, they were much smaller. It was looking incredibly cramped.

Towards the middle/end of the month, I decided I really needed the game to actually look nicer. It was really ugly and dark (not that it's particularly beautiful right now) I found fonts, inserted more of the UI elements that I had made earlier from Elthan's card set, adjusted sizing, etc. I had originally had the music player on the main screen, but at this point it looked out of place, so I put it into the options menu. I added an ambience only track for those who didn't want to play in silence but didn't want the music. For the itch release, I removed the quit button as it crashes the game in HTML. To further accessibility, I added touch screen support and ensured that at no point did you need anything besides the mouse pointer. 

Towards the end of the jam, I was not happy with the background used (was pretty much a dark green) and decided that I wanted something that would show this game was intended to be events that happened over time. There were two options, one is using seasonal backgrounds, and one was doing the day-night shift as I chose. I opted for the latter because the parade was made (and yes, I do have a partial parade made) in Lene at night. I make no mention of this happening, and my playtesters were a bit surprised when the first transition happened, and then again at the second. 

I added a banner/counter to the terror meter so you could more easily see your progress in the game. It is a bit annoying to me that the button is not aligned with the banner. The itch discord helped me make sure that the UI was readable and not looking too crazy. Being colorblind myself, I don't trust myself to make color choices 100%. 

What else would you have wanted to do? 

Honestly, there is a lot and a little, and I believe I will go back and add some of these, possibly as a different app, one being the Game Jam Version and one being the "Complete" Version. 

In no particular order and probably forgetting something;

1. The parade. If there is one thing I regret the most is not working on the parade first. It has been a ginormous time sink to work the way I want it to. As I am pretty certain I will release this eventually I won't get too much in detail but essentially you will be seeing Lene at night with the Warriors, Cultists, and Parade beasts marching over Lene as it becomes the forest you see in the ending sequence. 

2. Some more cutscenes, adding text box or "emote" box to existing cutscenes. I want to give what's happening in Lene some more context, and I do want to go a bit more into how exactly the raccoon cultists came ot be. This game isn't intended to be their origin story, so that won't be explained here but right now they just sort of pop up. 

3. More animations. I have some unused beasts that I had intended to add as they are part of the parade. Various other little things.

4. Sound effects during game play. I went back and forth with this one. I didn't want it to be annoying. At minimum, I should have some sort of noise for when the meter fills, and maybe when you mouse over the raccoons on top of the button (A tiny Easter egg that each of them, when moused over, sends a heart back and forth to the other)

5. Subtitles for the narrator. Absolutely intended, never got around to it. 

6. More dialogue pop-ups. Debated this. Still debating this. 

7. Going back and solidifying hints I made to future games. 

8. Improving some animations (colorblind and not) visibility with new background. 

9. General UI Adjustments. 

What is something you learned making this game? 

This was the first game I have made with a human voice that I was in charge of recording. So I did need to learn how to make audacity work for the voice I was recording, AND make sure it didn't come out too tinny in Godot. That took longer then I anticipated, and it's not perfect but it is so much better then it was. 

Also not learned but probably finally hammered into my brain, I hope, is that when doing animations for something like this, I need to START them all the same size. Midway I had to go back and adjust so many to make them fit where I wanted. Here's hoping I actually learned. Also just more work with pixel art modification. Here are some uglies that came up in the process. 

Anything else? 

I am always up for questions or if you want to know about anything more. You can email me, message me here, discord, comment, send a cultist raccoon, etc. 

If you do play before July 7th, consider rating the games for the jam, it's not necessary but might as well plug it. 

Thank you for reading, and have a nice one!