I did it. I submitted to my 2nd Jam in 2024.

Even before this game jam began, I was questioning on whether I could do this or not.  As I started the writing and art, life happened, as usual, and I missed so many goals. Again. July 25th came and I started to go ahead with what I had. Then, after more doctor visits and finance issues cropping up again, by the second week of August. I was completely away from this until the evening of August 23rd. I was going to leave the jam, but I looked at what I have done and decided to make it work with anything I had. 

Here we go:

First sacrifice and most elementary mistake, the title page. I completely forgot that RPG Maker has a much lower default resolution than I am used to using, and thought I'll just Photoshop some stuff over this default title. The default title that gets stretched in my resolution. Those white bars will haunt me even if I fix them later. *sigh* Today I learned...

Second, using old not to scale art for my menu. Maybe this is nitpicky, I don't know. None of it really fits and it just looks off.

Third, sprite movement went out the window in dungeon scenes and any other events that were installed on September 1st. Absolute panic mode by that point, is all I can say. Also, please note that I'm not complaining or making excuses.  I'm just stating what happened, so I can prepare better next time.

Those were mistakes I know I made due to time constraints. My story is a lot shorter too, but honestly if I was able to do the whole plot, I think it would have been too long for a jam game. I have not played the other games yet, but I can't wait to see how they handled a city theme!

The game system, like the battles and menus, were fun to try, but I really hope I can find time to study that some more. Maybe make a tutorial for the Spellcraft... Learning about battles and attack stats and what not are my biggest weakness, but really fun. (Big battle mistake, I had an enemy that blinds the party. Now, I can hear the party saying back to me, 'Well, that was useless our attacks are weak anyway. We're mages, Phoebe!' It should have been silence...) Still, I feel I made some steps forward from my other games. Improvement is good.^_^ 

Art was better and worse than the first game this year. 'Path of the Light Guardian' has really nice visual novel elements, but maybe only the title page and one drawing per character. For 'The Call', I took out the big drawings and tried expressions. Honestly, I need to see if I can combine the expressions with the busts in the future. That takes a lot longer to draw, and I have never had enough time to shade or clean my drawings as much as I like. Still, I made my own bosses, and I actually really liked that. I also put in icons that I have done, as well as some from VisuStella which I just thought looked amazing. I don't know if I could make glass like that... I'm not super good at drawing backgrounds or buildings, but my drawing over the parallax in the Land Ward wasn't too bad. I really wanted a tree house city area. I also used cut ins and attaching item pictures to treasure dialog. 

Honestly, I see more good points and improvements than I thought I would when I played it. If you are reading this before 13 days from now, please head to the jam page and rate my piece. I don't care if it's good or bad, I just want to know everything I can about what to work on. If you have time to comment, please do! I really appreciate critique. Also, please tell me if you make games to, so I can check out your work as well! I'm off to play the other jam games now, so exciting!

Thank you so much for reading this!