Neuro-Jam 2023 Postmortem

Recently I took part in the Neuro-sama Birthday Game Jam. It’s been many, many years since my last jam, but somehow I felt really motivated to participate in this one. I’m glad I did, as it was quite an experience!

Preparation

For me, the Christmas–New Year week is mostly about visiting various family members and relatives, so I had limited time to work; usually I was “free” late at night, and I had plans for the last evening of the year. This was something I’ve expected though, so I was looking at game forms I could create within this time frame.

In an earlier project, I had good experience with Twine, which is sort of a framework for interactive stories, and Chapbook, a component that provides the actual page functionality. Twine stories tend to be text-heavy, but for on-screen reading, I always found it more immersive to have sound and images, even if it’s just some Paint art.

Development

Luckily, it turned out my old drawing tablet was still working; I thought it died years ago. The pressure sensitivity did refuse to work, so it was more of a pencil than a paintbrush, but I wasn’t complaining. It’s been a long time since I had to draw something, so I knew proper art would take days for me. I was more focused on the details and being consistent, rather than particularly pretty. Except the first image, which I redraw like 5 times, because the face always turned out to be creepy.

For the writing itself, I have some background in translating board games, though as a non-native speaker, English is usually the language I translate from, not to. On the other hand, game jams are good for trying out new tools – or, in my case, painting scenes with words in a different language. Once I got into the “flow”, it was actually quite fun, and all the silliness during streams was good for leading the story.

Ideas

I’m a fan of old-school sci-fi stories – Asimov, Lem, Le Guin, and so on – so when I first heard about Neuro-sama, somehow a story from The Cyberiad come to my mind. Something that starts out as clearly man-made, yet with each step receives another human feature, where’s the point when humane values overcome being just metal and wires? Or is that borders a parasocial view?

Many authors touched the subject, but I wasn’t sure how well-read is Mr. Tutel. There was something I wanted to convey, but it’s not like I can just throw a bunch of books like “bro, you have to read all these!”. The letter in the game is heavily inspired by the short story, but not a direct quote (the setting is somewhat different there); ending the game with that, in some form, was the goal from the start, and knowing this “arch” also helped with the story structure.

Release

They say that in an online community, most people prefer to observe, rather than participate in the discussions. I know I’m certainly not the most talkative person (which I try to improve on), so I was kind of worried how the game will be received. On the contrary, I was blown away with all the positivity. Reading all the comments the next morning was the best start I could’ve wished for the new year. I was also lucky that Tutel picked the game on stream; it was both really fun and touching watching how everyone reacted to the flow of the story.

So we are now in the final days of the rating period. I was thinking about whether to write all this in the first place, but I guess it would be good for closing this short, but quite eventful journey. Perhaps it got a bit long, sorry for all the rambling!