Thank you so much to all who have played Cultivating Happiness! As my first game, I wasn’t expecting such a large and positive response, so I’m incredibly grateful and encouraged to continue working on games! This retrospective is a bit (very extremely) overdue, I wrote most of it a while ago and then forgot to post? Whoops! The reason I'm posting it now is because of some exciting news: CH was accepted to issue 38 of the Indiepocalypse zine! I wrote a special exclusive postmortem about the flower language behind the SUS lady's flower crown for it, so if you're curious, go get the issue and support a bunch of really cool indie games!

Cultivating Happiness was made for the O2A2 VN jam, which had strict limitations-- it had to be completed in 1 week, be less than 1k words, and use only one of any assets including sprites, VAs,  BGs, etc. The low bar of entry and casual but restrictive nature is what enticed me to give the jam a try, and I'm very glad I did!

The process of putting this game together was a bit unique, in that I did just about all of it on stream. From the beginning stages of letting my viewers vote on what concept to write to the VA recording and game testing, nearly everything I did for the jam I streamed (aside from some bits of programming and art tweaking). Honestly, I’m not sure I would have gotten through the programming if I hadn’t streamed the bulk of it-- special shoutout to https://supercircuit.itch.io/ for helping me figure out the self-pruning menu! As my first foray into programming and game development, I’m satisfied with how it came out, and I've fallen in love with programming and making games!

Streaming the development process was a really fun and unique experience. I honestly didn’t expect there to be as many people as there were in my streams, consistently cheering me on. Especially when it came to cutting voice lines and doing mindless plug-in programming, I didn’t know if people would find that interesting enough to watch, but there were always a good few people hanging around! It was really encouraging, and very fun to interact with my audience and get their opinions while working. They also pitched some great ideas, some of which really helped the game shine-- including the SUS acronym. Streaming also worked as a good way to document the process of creating this game, as a resource for both my future self and others (vods will be uploaded to my youtube channel soon, though I mayyy have forgotten to save the initial writing video. Whoopsies. Lesson learned).

There are definitely some things I would want to add/change if I remade the game. Firstly, I’ve noticed a lot of people (especially ones who aren’t used to visual novels) getting confused when making a choice jumps them back to the self-pruning menu without any sort of response/feedback. I initially considered adding an “any more questions?” type line to bridge the transitions but ended up cutting it, though I think that still would have been unsatisfying with the lack of feedback. I would definitely want to add in some more responses there, and I’d also like to expand on the endings a bit. I wouldn’t want to have the player actually go to the cult, as the story is meant to be a self-contained focus on recruitment and the manipulation tactics used to entice people to join, rather than whatever goes on at the actual settlement. It would be fun to see a whole story set at SUS where you find out how they do their TV-speaking and such, but right now that’s not a story I plan to tell. I would just want to make the endings more satisfying, with a bit more finality to them so you’re not left craving more too badly. I’d also like to add effects and cinematography, like maybe zoom-ins/outs and a screen shake when the TV is broken in the “aggressive” ending. Animated TV static would also be cool, and an actual phone number popping up on screen, but I couldn’t figure out how to make those work within the jam rules in time. And, of course, I'd turn the default music volume down so it's not super loud and eclipsing the VA. I don’t currently have plans to update the game-- these are just good lessons for the future!

In the months after release, I've gotten more feedback than I ever expected. There have been a lot of playthroughs that have made me so happy to see-- including one by manlybadasshero, who I'm a big fan of! Someone made a TV Tropes page that totally nails it, and I've even gotten a few pieces of fanart! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported CH and given it a play. I'll be releasing more games in the future; stay tuned for "Sunshine & Roses", a sweet older BL romance coming soon for Oji Jam/Blossom Jam/BL Jam, and the full version of "Who Killed Bigfoot?", a murder mystery set at an office Halloween party that will be released closer to spooky season. Play the demo for WKB here!

If you want to read about the flower language in CH, as well as support a bunch of cool indie devs, check out Indiepocalypse #38 here!