Devlog - September 2025

It feels like every month that I write these, I’m always saying something about how I haven’t actually done that much over the past thirty days. And, yeah, this last month isn’t that different - I’m between big projects at the moment, so there’s minimal work happening for the most part. 

Still though, that isn’t to say that nothing’s happened for the past month. I mentioned in my last devlog that I’m going to be entering this year’s Spooktober Jam, and so most of the work I’ve been doing has consisted of working out my game plan for that. What does planning in the month before the jam result in, you ask? Well, I’ve got a pretty good feel for the characters, concept, and where the story of my entry will go. Some things will no doubt change as I write the script, but that’s the nature of the beast.

Assuming that the title isn’t one of the things that will change, the game I’m creating will be called Creating Paradise, and it will centre around religious horror. I don’t want to drag the story of the game out further than it needs to be, so I’m anticipating it ending up somewhere between 7,500 - 10,000 words in length. If you’re also entering the jam, please let me know over on Bluesky - I’d love to check out what you make and experience some more cool horror games!

Beyond planning my own visual novel, the other major preparation I did was playing some of the entries of the previous year, both to support the community and to see what sort of things people were creating. While for the most part the games that I chose to play were well-made and had some really cool ideas, I found that two in particular were really strong, so I wanted to give them a shout-out here:

• MAMA isn’t a very long game, but it makes every moment count. The story is very tightly-woven and emotional, and creates a persistent tension from early on. It also has a lot of really clever little mechanics to fully immerse you in the game, which really push Ren’Py to its limits. Any complaints that I have about the game are too minor to mention - it’s a fantastic game, and I highly recommend it to anybody who likes visual novels, or good storytelling in general.

• CANIDAE starts out innocently enough, but it doesn’t take long before shit starts hitting the fan and our protagonist is getting drawn into things that they’d really rather not experience. I really liked this game - it had the perfect tone for its story and knew when to reveal information, and when to keep things hidden. I also loved its art style consisting entirely of edited photos - it’s an aesthetic that I wouldn’t have thought would work that well, but it ended up being the perfect style for its story.

Weird that the two games I liked the most were both written in all-caps, huh? I’d also like to give an honourable mention to the one game that I played that was so incredibly edgy that went into the unintentional comedy zone. I played it a second time, this time with a friend, a few weeks later, and it was still just as hilarious that time.

Anyway, that’s been the majority of my August. This time next month I’ll be done with Creating Paradise, so come check in then to hear how the development of it went! I probably won’t split it up into a separate blog post this time, honest.