Personal Contemplations

Every moment of everyday brings about countless new endings. On the flip side it also creates countless new beginning that are born from those endings. It is the tendency of people to see the value of endings purely through the change and renewal that they create and this is understandable, it is a positive angle on what is a painful experience. However, I find myself wondering if there might also be something worthwhile to be found in the ending itself and our reactions to it. This thought kept bugging me for the best part of a month until I final decided that I would put my feelings into words with the arrival of NaNoRenO 2022.

As I began to write it became clear to me that I could never cover the breadth of what an ending could mean to the many different types of people in this world. My solution was to focus solely on a few example of how people react to the news of an ending and how they choose to spend their time in the time before such an ending. This choice was made to allow for the narrative to offer a degree of play expression through choices and these two elements complemented each-other while serving this purpose.

The reaction an individual has to finding out about an ending related to them is often revealing about the kind of person they are under whatever mask they might wear. Some will panic, while others will be calm. Neither can be said to be the correct reaction and the value of this experience is not something an outsider can judge. Similarly, what a person chooses to do with the remaining time they have left before the ending is something uniquely theirs. Getting the opportunity to decide this is a freedom not open to all, but for those lucky enough to have it, there is a moment of catharsis to be found in putting everything to bed.

Assigning meaning to an ending is one of the stranger elements of the human condition when looked at in the abstract. Compared to what people do for beginnings, endings receives countless more statues and monuments of all sizes and natures from a simple bench to towering pyramids. The disparity is quite astonishing. Perhaps this is merely because beginnings inherently offers hope and promise and as such holds a positivity that is inherently expressed, while endings are often not happy and require some form of recognition to make them bearable. However, I think there is a certain beauty to this expression and understanding of endings and I hope Pierced Veil/Distant Firmament has managed to showcase that value to you.

Narrative and Technical Considerations

The choice to make Pierced Veil/Distant Firmament an apocalypse story was made relatively late in the planning process. The narrative was originally focused on the recent death of the player character’s friend but as I wrote more of the story it became clear to me that this subject matter was far too potentially personal for the narrative aims I had in mind. This was meant to be an exploration of the themes in an abstract manner rather than something overly emotive. As such I ended up settling on the suitably alien situation of an apocalypse as the main conflict of the narrative.

In terms of technical aspects I continued my established process of iterating on what I had programmed for my previous work. The most notable departures were the extensive choices offered to the player and the alterations to main menu GUI.

If there was one thing that I have learned from my experience designing choices for this game is just how much extra work a single choice takes to realise. This visual novel was only envisioned to half the length of the final product. In hindsight, I may have been a bit overly ambitious with the number of choices I needed to offer the player, but at least I learned this on a relatively small scale project and I can now avoid this pitfall in future works. Despite this miscalculation I am quite happy with the way the choices enhanced the final experience and they were definitely worth the extra effort involved in their creation.

In a similar vein, my alterations to the main menu GUI were more painful than I anticipated. However, this time it was not due any unforeseen work, but instead my own perfectionism. For the life of me I could not get the GUI elements to line up in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I should have just been happy with the initial placement of these aspects then I would have only had to go through one iteration rather then the seven which became the final total. In future perhaps it would be for the best if I left designing such elements to someone else.

Final Thoughts

Looking back at my work on this game, I feel that I need to sharpen my focus when it comes to the practical implementation of my vision. Creating the story is the easy part and I am generally satisfied with the improvements I have been making with my writing style, but understanding how it will translate over the a visual novel format is an area I still find myself lacking in. However, that is the beauty of participating in a game jam, you get to find these things out in a safe environment and a short time. So as my time with this game comes to an end I find what meaning I can in it and move forward onto my next project with greater understanding and purpose.

Let us all meet again in this land of stories and familiar strangers.