So this devlog is going to be a combination of my usual monthly devlog and postmortem for Chimera Baloney. If you want to read more on me developing Chimera Baloney, you can skip to the section Chimera Baloney Postmortem Start! 

For the monthly section: oops sorry for being late on this! Since publishing Chimera Baloney my mood has been pretty low, and I'm not sure if it's due to Post Game Release Depression, me starting on new medication due to health stuff cropping up, *vaguely gestures at every fucking thing*, or lmao all three. I'm starting to feel a lot better about finally posting March's Devlog since I didn't do one for February.

Admittedly I didn't post a devlog at the end of February only because I didn't really do much in that month nor do I have things I wanted to show. Funny enough, some of February was spent on doing some visuals for the Pillars on Poppy Hills 2.0 update and working on some Chimera Baloney art because I intended on finishing it for Trans Joy Jam 2025, but I didn't want to announce CB then since it wasn't done yet. (And yes I know I relegated February for making art, and, well, I incidentally was making art, no?)

Then at the start of March I tried to get a new VN made for NaNoRenO because I’ve always wanted to make a fully made game for the jam. Unfortunately I couldn't get it off the ground. Life really happened in the first week of March and that would mean cutting down the scope, which inherently isn't bad and is recommended for a game jam like NaNoRenO. However, the more I cut back, the less I was confident in executing the themes in the game. This honestly means I didn't plan the game well enough for a 1 month jam, so it's back to the WIPs pile for it!

So that left me with no project to work on for March. However, Chimera Baloney was actually pretty close to being finished, so why not finish that by the end of March?

Chimera Baloney Postmortem Start!

And well, March is done and over with and with its end is a new game from me! If you’ve followed me long enough then you may have seen my devlogs about Please Don’t Understand Me and Translucent Trails. In them I describe that those two micro VNs made for Neo-Twiny Jam 2024 are actually a part of a trilogy, with PDUM being the first and TT being the last. There was meant to be a second game to bridge the two together, but I couldn’t get it done in time for Neo-Twiny 2024.

Well hey, here it is~! Chimera Baloney is the second game of this weird game trilogy! And there’s an incredibly long history behind it because this game actually goes way far back, like even before my first visual novel Pillars on Poppy HIlls in 2021.

So here’s a funny little history about how this 2000 word story took me 7 years to finally make:

Game’s Timeline

2016-2017: At this time I was in university and figuring out that I was nonbinary. However, nonbinary still didn’t 100% fit me but at the same time did fit me. So was I actually trans or was I just pretending? To no one’s surprise, I did some writing while contemplating this and the original CB script and base coding was born of me just figuring out my feelings.

I never did finish it because at the time I was too scared that it was incomprehensible. Makes sense as to why I felt like that, considering even I couldn’t really put words as to what I am, so who the fuck could even figure out what I said if I, the writer, couldn’t figure it out?

However I loved the concept enough to keep it and the proof-of-concept in my files for basically forever in hopes of finishing it one day. Over the incredibly busy years of my last years of uni and heading directly into the start of the COVID Pandemic, I never really had motivation to finish it. And over the years, I finally settled into an identity that suits me better: genderfluid. This actually explains why at times I feel great and other times the dysphoria hitting too hard and why being perceived was kinda hellish, so now the script and feelings were starting to make sense to me.

Keeping the old game files around was a boon though, because some of the choice code where hovering changes the text/images is what I used for Wolf’s Wool! It’s interesting to think of this visual novel as the proto version that helped shape Wolf’s Wool to be like that. Go figure that both games are centered about feeling like a weird creature amongst others due to queer identity growing pains lmao.

2024: Neo-Twiny Jam appears! This is a great opportunity to finish the game, and since the jam allows 3 entries max, why not make a little trilogy? The original story was about feeling like an incomprehensible mess, so I planned a set of games where the prequel is pretty much in the depths of their depression, Chimera Baloney was coming to terms with who they actually are, and the sequel being in a place of calm looking back on it all.

So, funny enough, the prequel and sequels got made! But I wasn't able to get the main game that started them in the first place due to time constraints. Oh well, I will work on it in due time, but other priorities took its place and I wasn't able to take a crack at it until…

2025: Trans Joy Jam! Now I don’t have the 500 word limit and write as much as I like! The theming around feeling like a weird animal like a chimera seems like it's appropriate to have at least three endings, so I rewrote the two endings into three: Lion, Goat, and Snake. But I also took the opportunity to write in the fourth ending, as a way for me to reflect on myself and how much I’ve changed and grown happier over the years. Kinda like a letter to my younger self as to why you’re going through a lot of growing pains regarding your own identity, and telling them that despite your anxieties of the world and how cyclical pain is, happiness is always possible.

And then I didn’t make the deadline for that jam lmao. Unfortunately one of the busiest events of my dayjob was during the jam's runtime so I was left too exhausted to finish the game. I did get a good portion of groundwork done, so yay! It's just a matter of doing the rest at some point, and that just happened to be next month in March.

2025 again but one month later (NaNoRenO/IntRenAiMo): After my failed stint on trying to make a NaNoRenO game from the ground up, I decided to just finish CB after all. I just gotta finish up the images, make sure it runs without breaking, then yay new game!

Thankfully the Make Visual Novel Assets! Jam had already finished, which had some really good code I wanted to integrate into my games. One of which was CuteShadow's timed choice code, which was way easier to use than the code I've been using. Another, not part of MVNA! Jam admittedly but still from the same person, was the particle emitter, which was cool to see it pulse gibberish.

Unfortunately I didn’t get everything I had wanted from the release (such as using filters) and some health stuff had cropped up towards the end of March. I just wanted to get this game fully done and fully published, so other things I wanted to add will come in a future update.

How About That Art?

Needless to say, this game came out way more different than what I could ever dream of seven years ago! Here's the initial sketch and how I had drawn over it for the art you see now.

I honestly wish I can get screenshots of the original proof of concept game, but the game itself isn't loading sadly. If I'm able to get them, I'll update this devlog!

The art was honestly winged and didn't have much planning to it besides going off the notes and drawing on top of the sketch I had from sevenish years ago. To those who haven't been around to see my previous devlogs and don’t know about my creative situation I’ll state it here: I've been feeling low on my art for a while due to burnout, and for a long while I've been trying to rewire my brain so that it doesn't do an anxious spiral each time I think about drawing. A part of that spiral may just be me internalizing and overthinking due to bad experiences in the past and my brain intensely magnifying it, but it still sucks and is hard to break out of it. I just wanted to have fun making the art and not think about how I'm actually making something not portfolio worthy and super unpolished, etc. It felt nice to not worry about how “good” my art “should” be for a moment, so hopefully I'm getting somewhere with digging myself out of burnout.

Regrets? In this economy?

I mentioned this before but I do have some regrets with the release. It’s more about stuff I’d like to have on release day but wasn’t able to, so you could consider this a list of things to look forward to when I get the spoons to update them.

One of my two biggest gripes for this game is honestly the fact I couldn't figure out a way to develop this on a mobile device by release. Like Wolf's Wool, hovering your mouse will show what her true thoughts are, but there's no hover function on a mobile game. Wolf's Wool's choices are text based so there was a workaround for the mobile port, but I'm a little in the blank for this game. Well, actually, I have an idea as to how to go about it, but that would require more work and unfortunately when I release a game I don't want to think about it for the next few months lmao.

The other qualm was text-to-speech optimization. I was honestly more concerned with trying to get the game finished and fully playable because I need everything to be set and playable in order for me to figure out where/how to insert the alt text. With the art being improvised, it also made it difficult for me to write out alt text beforehand. Admittedly, me being particular about adding text-to-speech is more recent and is currently worked on for my already published games, so I haven’t actually had a moment where I write or add text-to-speech during development for a new game. Everything I mentioned before are things I’ll keep in mind next time I make a new game, especially for allocating more time to add them in.

So for those who need alt text or text-to-speech to play my visual novels, I’m so sorry! The next update I do for this game will add them in so it’s an easier experience.

Final Thoughts on Chimera Baloney

It’s wild to see something I’ve had in tow for literal years finally make it out to the public! From even before my first published visual novel! Seeing it change from what I had initially to how it is now is an interesting mark in how I’ve grown and changed in how I go about making art, writing, developing visual novels, and even marks how I changed as a person. Sure it’s a small game in the vast sea of games, but it’s a little cathartic for me to finally see this in the open now and I hope it helps or vibes with someone who was questioning, like I was.

Also, it’s wild to think this game was developed and worked on during both Trump presidencies lmfao. That’s a weird coincidence worth two nickels. 

So What Now? 

 Well I am planning on something small and silly for The “Worst VN Ever” 2025 Jam. I’m a little spent on emotions and dev, so once that game is out then I’m honestly going to take a break playing other people’s games and work on longer term projects. I do have some game jams in mind I’d like to participate in, but only if I have the spoons because my body is really telling me to rest and relax for now.

I highly doubt I’ll be able to get the Wolf’s Wool 2.0 update ready by its anniversary, sadly. If I were to work on a game it probably would be Pillars on Poppy Hills 2.0 since I am quite close to finishing that, but even then I estimate it won’t be for a few months at the least. For now I want to draw and write, just not dev for a hot minute.

For now, I shall peace out. I hope y’all have a great day despite all the political shit, and I hope things turn out well for once in our goddamn lives lmao.

          ~Knickknack PJ

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