The best part about a jam, is what you can learn from them. By design, they force you to come up with quick solutions or adapt. A great way for finding out what you're capable of and what you're not, in a short amount of time. Everyone had moments they were proud of, but the moments they learnt from are just as important.

What was your proudest moment, and what was a time where you felt things could have been handled better?

NiA - Director, Writer, Artist

My proudest moment was certainly seeing the reception we've had so far. One thing I always worried about, especially seeing how hard everyone was working, was making sure enough people would see our efforts. Nothing can crush me as much as putting in lots of effort into something and having almost no reaction to it. I didn’t want that to happen to the team. Elm helped me immensely with the tweets, so we were able to reach people. It really felt so rewarding. 

Something that could have been handled better was certainly updating the asset list. I was a bit overwhelmed during development in making sure I didn’t forget any details. I need to find a way to make that easier for me, so I can respond better to adjustments we do in a team.

Allie - Editor

My proudest moment was coming out of the developmental editing meeting (which a part of the team listened in on), and hearing others comment about my notes and skills. While I have plenty of editing experience in different settings, this scenario was a bit new for me and seeing the reception helped me fully register that I was bringing something worthwhile to the team. 💙

I wish I had handled the post-line edit rendezvous better; we fell victim to bad timing a bit there! With the way our schedules worked out, I was submitting my line edits right before I was out of town and unable to check in nearly as much. Having poor Nia react to a full-throttle line edit for the first time with me unavailable to do editing aftercare was less than ideal. Shoutout to Coda for stepping in to help triage any notes I wasn't available to assist with, and next time I'll do my best not to be out of town!

Ooyu - Programming

My proudest moment is definitely showing off the microscope transition. It’s so fun and I’m proud of it~

For what could be handled better– definitely wished I had gotten the beta builds out earlier than I did. To some extent it was IRL issues– (I was out of town the last weekend of the jam, and my IRL job was giving me hell that entire last week)– but it would have saved the team from some last-minute-change-stress and maybe given us the opportunity to add in a couple of more-involved coding adjustments here and there.

Ingthing - UI & Design

One improvement I would make in going into future game jams would be to update the product backlog at more frequent intervals—although some elements were described in text in the script, we eventually added in screens for them because they would be better served with visuals. This led to additional considerations: after the addition of the phone message screen, I realised we didn't have assets for the photos sent between Marlowe and her dad, and I rushed to do some quick paintings for them.

Baguetti - Backgrounds

Honestly, I was happy when I was finished to let everyone else get on with their work. When I finally saw the UI and characters together with the backgrounds I knew we had something with lots of potential for success. It would have been nice to have heads up about the early deadline. With work I only have nights to work on backgrounds so it was a tight deadline. I didn't have enough time to play around with ideas. I would have loved to add a few extra backgrounds for certain endings.

Amidst - Sound

How well some of the effects on some of the voice lines worked into the scenes. Given it was my first-time doing VO design and editing, I was glad with how well the response from the team was to some of the lines in the final cut. Along with seeing everyone in the team’s reaction to the creepy versions of the music.

In retrospect, I could have benefited from studying loudness in voice lines a bit more thoroughly and how true peaks in audio tend to stick out. Staying more consistent with updates on my progress in the music side of things. While also taking more frequent breaks in-between sessions for my physical health.

Coda - Voice Actor

Trickle was having trouble with an ending that was a long monologue with an ebb and flow of emotion. Monologues are difficult because a successful one requires you have a solid understanding of the character's motivation, the contexts leading up to it, and the personal momentum to navigate all of that in that scene. We only voice-acted the endings, which are a culmination of contexts you had to read on your own time to get. But sometimes you need more time to let a lesson sink in. I know he recognized he was falling back into his comfort zone, getting too in his head. We were getting close to time and had another session left to nail it, so in the time between, I thought about how I could help. Trickle has been excellent in dialogue. Generally, with dialogue, it's easier to modulate yourself to the other actor's energy, rhythm, and tone, and implications come across clearer. So I took a copy of the script and wrote in lines of Marlowe that would not be used in the final recording, but only serve to guide Trickle through such a long passage and nail the right emotional beats. My edit—having Marlowe feed into Niall's insecurities as an amoeba wanting to be a human's romantic partner—and Cody's direction suddenly had Trickle's second take of the night be the final take for the game. After the silence of his last line and me astonishedly uttering that that was The One, ugh, you should have been there! Trickle's own surprise, gratitude, and pride made me feel so, so proud of him! And proud of Cody for such a deft tweak of the direction when he had no prior chance of reading my script edit before the session! And proud of me for my attempt at helping pay off so beautifully! The absolute best moment in the entire jam for me, and it'll stay with me forever.

As for a moment that could have been handled better: the timing of the voice recordings were running up before the script was reviewed and finalized. While we couldn't help the timing (later on, several people had life appointments take days away, so it was in fact good that we did everything earlier), what we should have done was recognize some of the wording in the first script draft wasn't as smooth as it could be. Instead of sticking to some of those unedited phrases, we should have simply let NiA know of our opinion so that we could volunteer small line edits that made more sense for our performance in the moment. Both she and Allie (who was officially scheduled to review at a later date) would have understood and worked with us on that sooner.

Cody - Voice Direction

My proudest moment is wrapping up early. Halfway through the month, we had three scheduled days of recording left. Of those, we only needed one hour. I had just finished DevTalk's first ever live casting event, six hours of strenuous work, and moved straight to the PiL recording session with basically no break. Coda, passionate woman that she is, had prepared some materials for the session alongside my own meager offerings that day. Thanks to our prep in August, our previous sessions, and the investment from both Coda and Trickle into their roles, we got everything done way ahead of schedule. This made the rest of the team's job easier because they could handle the files with plenty of time to spare. When everyone buys in like that, it's magical.

As for doing better: When preparing sample scripts, I handed out a section of the movie Crank, with Jason Statham. It has a lot of profanity. I should have checked with my cast if they were comfortable with profanity

Elm - Casting Director & Marketing 

I was definitely proudest when I saw the growth the Night Asobu account experienced and everything I learnt doing this. We hit many milestones, and each of them was another proud moment for me, but also made me even prouder of the team that made it possible. I originally wanted to hit 100 followers, doubling the original amount. We even went on to double that initial 100 by the Jam’s end! I was especially happy with finding a voice for the Twitter account, and the number of times I tried something completely new— Like helping reach out to content creators. 

As for what could be handled better. It at times felt difficult to have really effective marketing consistently when I’m not creating content, and the game is being produced in such a short amount of time. I would have liked to have a more in-depth marketing plan and tried out more variations on the type of content. With a bit more prep time and an understanding of the genre, I felt like I could have created a more interesting approach.

The Takeaway 

Everyone is certainly proud of what we achieved together, and every experience was certainly valuable. But it was only possible because everyone was willing to adapt and recognise when we had to change gears or cut something out.

The lessons learned make us better teammates, which leaves us with our final postmortem: Advice to future spooktober teams.