NaNoReNo 2025 has come to an end, and with it, we have a chance to relax and reflect on the development.

Intro

I am no stranger to Game Jams. 

I've participated in almost a dozen over the years, usually as a Johnny on the spot person, helping with art and programming whenever required with a team of friends or acquaintances. This, however, is the first time I spearhead a Jam production on my own, as well as work on a Visual Novel from top to bottom.

How we got here is a pretty short story:
There's a Furry Visual Novel titled 'Echo' I remember being developed years ago that had been finished for a while, and since people were positive towards it, I took a chance and read it. 
I quite enjoyed it, and just like many other developers in a creative industry, I had stories I wanted to tell, but I struggled to find a good medium/method where I could bring the story out there in a way I was satisfied, be it through comics, or games.
After reading Echo, I thought Visual Novels were pretty neat, and a great way to tell the stories I wanted to tell, so, I started writing a novel that is not The Orange Glow.

By a stroke of luck, I browsed the Itch Jams list and saw that NaNoReNo was starting soon, and decided to join it to make a small™ project.

Before the Jam

After signing up, I immediately started brainstorming some of the story. I already had a general idea of what I wanted to do, which was mixing teen friendship movies with procedural investigation shows which I've been enjoying the past few months.

While I sketched some character ideas and wrote down some of the plot points I wanted to hit,  the lovely folks over at a Discord server named DevTalk put together a gathering for the Jam participants to meet up, form teams, talk about projects, offer their services, etc.

Originally the plan was: Write the story, make simple character portraits with expression changes, keep the UI and backgrounds as simple as possible, and make the backgrounds in a sketchy style that can be done quickly, use CC music, and try to add SFXs however I can.
As an extra, I planned on adding minor voice grunts, words, sighs, half sentences etc to the characters. And with that, the Jam began.

I'm putting together a team

I knew I'd need a sound guy, that could hopefully double down as a music guy, otherwise I'd get license free tracks, and if I was going to include the voices, possibly a voice director guy.

The sound guy ended up being Beef, otherwise known as Thomas Chong, or republicofrice, who made a post in the recruitment section of the DevTalk discord, and I got in contact with him to do the sounds, and music if he had the time.

I have also been friends with another musician, Alan Monteiro who has worked closely with other friends and has a lengthy body of work. Since I had been wanting to work with him on something for a long time, I asked him if he was interested in doing a few tracks for the Jam, which he agreed to.

During the DevTalk gathering, I met Luke Avon, who reached out to me after I did a recruitment post in DevTalk looking for sound/music/VAs. We spoke some before the start of the Jam, and he gave me some great pointers on how to setup Casting Call, working on sheets for the VAs, etc. Thanks Luke!

At this stage, things were settled, but eventually another important person would join midway through production, Tech Wolf. We've known each other for a few good years and he'd eventually offer to participate as an Editor for the project after reading my first draft and having opinions on the writing.
His contributions greatly improved the flow and pacing of the story, as well as made me realize the original ending section was nigh incomprehensible with how events played out.

The planned order of events for the development was simple.
Write the Script, list the SFX, decide the music tracks to be made, design the character portraits, find voice actors, draw the backgrounds, and put everything together. In and out, 20 minutes adventure.

Scope? Never heard of her

The script ended up taking 2 whole weeks to finish. 
What started as a series of bullet points became a juggernaut of 38000 words. I thought the writing would take a week plus a few days for some tweaking and fixing, but there were so many scenes that kept popping up in my head to keep the 'flow' and 'pacing' of the game running smoothly [to me at least] that I couldn't stop. 
Eventually, I finished it, and after Tech read through it all, he agreed it was good, but could use some polish, so, I accepted his offer to go over the script like an Editor and fix my writing vices.

While writing the script, I picked some SFXs and moments to add the music to, and made the lists and sent them to Beef and Alan. Since the dialogue would remain mostly unchanged in the editing, I decided to go ahead and start the casting process.

This however required some artwork so I could give an idea of the characters, as well as to advertise on Casting Call Club at the suggestion of Luke. So, I took a couple of days to polish up my designs for the characters and did the line and colors for them then made the casting call public.

After that, I talked with a professional illustrator friend of mine to see if he would be willing to join the project, but unfortunately he wouldn't have the time. He did however give me some excellent pointers to improve my art, and it did wonders! You can see the before and after in the picture above.
But it also cost me a couple of days while the casting call was up, because I also worked on some expressions that didn't make into the release version of Act 1.

Alright, Beef is filling up the SFX sheet, but it's just listing the first 3 of 7 script files (which would later become 8 when I split one large file into two to keep the resource usage and game performance reasonable), but he definitely wouldn't be able to do every single itty bitty thing I wanted to add a sound to. Time to prioritize.

With that in mind, I picked the most important sounds for the rest of the script, and sent it his way. Meanwhile, Alan was already sending a couple of tests that were really promising that ended up in the final game, except for one track that was a bit too serious for the ending, and wouldn't have worked well at all with how the scene turned out. But he's keeping it in his pocket for later, since I have other scenes that it'd fit very nicely!

After the casting deadline was over, on Sunday the 23rd, I went through the auditions, and picked our lovely voices for Alex (Caldera), Elliot (Luke), Oliver (Torlux), Kevin (Nate) and "Him", actual character name Vincent (OogiMoogi). I quickly put together the full list of words and lines I wanted them to voice, and as they sent their recordings, the more lines I wanted to add, and instead of just the first few words, I started to use entire sentences. You can definitely tell in the game that it is inconsistent, but that's something that both has its charms, and can feel wonky.  However, the results were excellent, and I'm a lot more confident in working with full sentences in the future [sorry VAs]!

I like my development like I like my cereal. CRUNCHY!

Beef had finished most of the SFXs, and he'd be away for a week before returning in the last handful of days to finish the remaining ones, while Alan was already working on the final mixes of the tracks. 
Meanwhile, VAs were sending their lines, and we'd do a quick round of feedback, re-record a couple, adjust the direction in the lines where the intent was a bit vague, all the while Tech was editing the script, sending me the revisions, and I'd go over them and incorporate them into the Engine. Everything was going as smoothly as one could hope.

Except that I did not have a single background done yet.

The plan was to have most, if not all 'content' done Saturday so I could incorporate it into the Engine Sunday and do further tweaks Monday to release it on Thursday. That gave me 5-6 days to illustrate *everything*.
Even if the backgrounds were in a sketchy style, it was still a LOT of work, and I had to be fast. Some of them had many frames within them depicting different actions etc, layers, and some I didn't have a clear idea on how I'd accomplish them.

In the end, I was doing some 18 hour days trying to cram everything from SFX feedback, VA tweaks, artwork, script fixing, some of it writing as well, since I rewrote the entirety of the ending section, and the illustrations, while also doing some of the store assets like banners, replacing Naninovel's default UI, failing to write the feedback form that Tech thankfully took over for me AND taking care of 2 new kittens we'd adopted. All in an effort to not let everyone else's work go to 'waste', as I saw it, if I couldn't deliver on my part.

It has been years since I've crunched, and although it's nice to know that I can still do it like the best hydraulic presses, I hope to never do it again. Just like I hoped the last time I crunched years ago. Time is a flat circle.

Saturday arrives, I finish the last few drawings I planned to make, and sleep for 4 hours into Sunday to then begin putting everything in the Engine.

Thankfully that process went really smoothly, which is why I'm going to do a single line of shilling here for Naninovel for being pretty reliable. After that, it was a LOT of layer tweaking, fade in and out, timing and volume adjustments for the audio, as well as Vincent's scenes.

The soundscape itself was hard to balance, because the source files for each person had different volumes, so I had to try to level everyone around the lowest volumes, which ended up being Elliot and Kevin. So, some sliders and a lot of volume tweaking both in the editor, as well as in the script itself later, I make a build, play through it, and wrap it up!

Release the Kraken Build

The build goes live! People are playing it!

They are enjoying the art, the music, the effects, the dialogue, the characters, hurray!

We did it! 

Any creative work launch is a massive success, especially one with many moving pieces where you can't be totally sure if the end product will be cohesive. Thankfully, it worked for us!

Now we all get to relax and bask in the glory of- wait, what do you mean Kevin doesn't speak after the trail?

The Last Whoops

As it turns out, in my mushed up brain, I released the game without half of Kevin's lines. 
The reason? 
Because I heard all of his lines previously when Nate sent the raw files before slicing them, and in my mushed up brain, I thought I had put them in the game and that's where I heard them.

Whoops.

No problem though. He sent the sliced up files, I put them in, build updated, and crisis averted!

And that's the Development tale of The Orange Glow, Act 1

It was a truly exceptional, and unhinged experience. One that I am looking forward to doing again, albeit with a much healthier approach to the timelines as we continue to develop the story of The Orange Glow.

With all that said...

...what's next?

• A bit of rest.
• Adjusting voice line volumes so everyone's the same.
• Adding different character expressions during dialogue.
• Improve the background art.
• More background art!
• Expanding the events and conversations described after the grilling scene.
• Work on Act 2 & 3.

Phew, this was a whole novel by itself!
If you read all this, thank you very much, and I hope you're enjoying The Orange Glow as much as I'm enjoying making it! Be sure to follow the project to receive notifications when future updates and improvements arrive. And feel free to share the game with everyone and anyone you love, or even those you hate!

I hope you have a wonderful time, and thank you again for reading!

With the kindest regards,
Ailo.