Time for a look back at how I'll Come See You came to be! That little story about an injured cyclist turned out to be more tragic than even I anticipated. I'm still not sure how that happened but here we go.

In 2020 I participated in the first Only One of Any Asset visual novel jam and had an absolute blast - my entry The Sixth Prison became the starting point of my on-going sci-fi mystery series. I of course was eager to participate again in 2021, but this time it was clear to me I had to produce a one-off story; not a prologue to anything bigger. I can only handle one large project at a time, so I needed this new O2A2 entry to be truly one-and-done.

The idea of the O2A2 jam is to create a very short visual novel with very few assets, all in just one week. I brainstormed quite a bit beforehand, and even wrote a quick outline for a completely different idea that I ended up scrapping. The whole time I was worried I wouldn't be able to come up with an idea I really liked. Sure, I had some ideas, but did they excite me? Nah. I was more stressed than excited about the jam at the time. Pre-jam I only had two things in mind I definitely wanted to do:

1. I wanted romance, or at least some potential for romance.
2. I wanted to draw a sprite that had different lighting than usual - perhaps something really colorful, or maybe it could be backlit. A fun thing about O2A2 is that you get to design your art assets without having to worry about how they'll look in other scenes; there are no other scenes.

While brainstorming I sketched some pose ideas for a sprite. At that point I didn't even know who the character would be, I was frankly just throwing things at the canvas, hoping that one of them would inspire me. And somehow, one sketch did. It looked like a worried dude looming over the player character. A story idea began to form. Why's he worried? Maybe I'm hurt. Where are we? Maybe outside - the sunlight would make the sprite look neat. A hot summer day felt like an obvious setting since my country (Finland) was going through a heatwave at the time. I despise heat but I found myself listening to a lot of summery music, trying to to get into the mindset of a person who actually enjoys summer. I had to know what the protagonist was thinking and feeling before the accident!

I think the idea of the protagonist being a cyclist came from me watching Yowamushi Pedal years ago. I also have (mostly bad) memories of cycling to and from school in my youth, so it felt familiar enough to write about. Unlike me, the protagonist actually likes cycling and might even have pursued racing as a career if not for... Well. Anyway!

The stranger was originally going to have blue hair, but I quickly realized it didn't look very good against the equally blue sky. Please enjoy this alternate universe version of him regardless. He's a little bit yandere over there.

The story idea of an injured cyclist and the stranger who came to help him was simple enough. I knew I could write it within a week and in less than 1000 words as the O2A2 jam's rules require, so I tried not to overthink it. Still, I ended up fiddling with the script until the very end - a script never looks perfect to me. In the end I finished and uploaded I'll Come See You with a few hours to spare. The last day of the jam was mostly spent on refining the script and adjusting the sprite's expression changes. I also tried to make a web build, but I ended up getting frustrated and, well, maybe some day you'll be able to play my games in your browser, but not today.

I left the story open-ended on purpose. Did the protagonist survive the accident or not? I don't know. What do you think?

Follow me on Twitter @Cryoslight for weekly updates on my projects! I also post Star Wars fanart and dank memes of my characters on special occasions. Before I get back to my main sci-fi series, I have a more introspective project planned for this Halloween season!