Eyyyy, welcome to Cupid's Kiss’ devlog. The reception for the game has been so mind-blowing that I've just been running around like a headless chicken for a couple of days, not quite knowing what to do with myself. 

Still, I wanted to share my thoughts. I learned a LOT about myself in this tiny project and there's a lot to unpack, so I'm gonna get right to it. 

(If you’re just interested in the ‘what the heck is next’ I suggest you jump to the end cause this is a chonky boy of a devlog. Ironically, bigger than the game itself.)

As an avid reader and writer, I've always loved tropes. In some stories, it really does feel like the author's playing Cupid: a side character barges on the two leads while they're having A Moment. Or they hate each other but oh golly, now they have to spend five hours trapped together in a basement, and they get to talking, and they're not so different after all. There’s forces of fate at play that are either keeping them apart or pulling them together, keeping us at the edge of our seats.

Tropes just speak to us, and that's why they're tropes. 

There's just such a primal joy in both reading them and writing them. They're tools in a writer's arsenal that we (can) use to get our dumb characters together.

But what if these things were happening in the story, not because of a godly author but by design inside the story itself? 

What if it wasn't an accident or a fluke, what if these things were happening because there was someone else who was on the sidelines going "OH WOULD YOU KISS ALREADY FFS???". 

I was noodling on this and, at some point, that SOMEONE's story felt a heck of a lot more compelling than the story of the two characters I was writing.

Thus, the Cupid Idea was born. 

When I came up with it four years ago, I'd just gotten started in my development journey. I drew a few sprites (two and a half to be exact), a logo, wrote about 10k words for it… then realised it was too big, got overwhelmed, chickened out, and stopped. 

Yet the Cupid Idea kept living rent-free in my docs, quietly judging me for not doing anything with it. I KNEW it was good, I just didn't know what to do with it.

Then on July 8, I wrote a 50-word drabble for that same idea.

I didn't get started right away. It was, after all, a commitment. I didn't have an artist or a composer or anything, really. I just had myself. I'd never (successfully) done o2a2, and I've never been great at writing short, concise stories - as you can tell from this devlog, I like blabbering on. 

Above all, my brain keeps insisting that I'm Not An Artist, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The Not An Artist disclaimer usually pops up after I've spent two hours on a piece and remember that drawing is hard (“what do you mean I can't just sit down and instantly be the best there ever was at something I rarely do?”)

But I’d already written the words. And they were good words. So I kept struggling with myself for a few days:

"It's just one sprite. One sprite. No poses, no nothing. You can fake it for one sprite."
"Just the one background."
"Surely, I can do that much."
"Even if it's shit, nobody's gonna play this or care, it's just gonna get lost anyway."

Then on June 10, I tried making a logo. 

As you can see, I was still casually refusing the call to the heroes journey. Turns out with a bit more noodling it became a slapping good logo, possibly the best I've ever designed, and I wasn't about to let that go to waste - the power of great branding has me in a chokehold and most of the projects I do end up making are usually just cause I think the ✨aesthetic✨ would be cool 😂

Things moved very fast once the final decision was made. 

I sketched a concept sprite and a background, I wrote the 1k words and I designed the wholeass GUI in two days. 

As you can see, Virgil went through a major wardrobe change because what the concept taught me was what I did not want him to wear 😂 Olivia also did a Mean Edit on the script because I was fast running out of words and between us chopping away, we got it back down to what I thought were 1,000 words.

Still, things were going really well and, with three days missing, I figured we could probably do VA, if we found someone willing to record like... tomorrow. 

As the BAMF she is, Olivia offered to take that side of things out of my hands, so I could focus on the very real task of both coding everything in and turning my sketches into an actual sprite. 

I knew I wanted to do some hard-lined, harshly shaded anime (because it would fit the ✨vibe✨) and so I fell face-first into pinterest trying to figure out what the Art Rules were for the style and exactly how I could replicate them.

Then on the 13th, all hell broke loose. While parsing the script for the VA, I realised we were over the limit by 600 words. (So yeah, fine, not all hell, but some hell.) 

We had three options: gut the script to make o2a2, release both versions, or give up on o2a2 entirely. I think I went through all the stages of grief that morning.

Now, I know myself. If I'd let this project escape the confines of the jam, I'd have ended up expanding the scope to an impossible degree, and it never would have ended up being done. 

As some of you said, there's A LOT to work with. There are possibilities. But my brain cannot cope with all those possibilities. 

I needed a fishbowl... and o2a2 was that fishbowl.

So what I decided on was doing both versions. Shane was kind enough to agree to voice the full extent of the script, and Olivia and I did a SECOND Mean Edit and axed out all the endings. 

It was either that or lose all the quality banter at the beginning, and I just couldn't stand that. So we sliced that script apart and made the best of it and, honestly, it was actually better for it. Tighter.

From then on, it was a rush to finish. I managed to get the sprite closer to what I wanted, then sketched, lined etc until we got Virgil's current sprite. Then I drew six expressions, and realised I couldn't possibly just have six expressions, the horror. (The fishbowl had no power over me there, sadly, so we ended up with like... 22 between open and shut mouths.)

I spent the last day cutting all of the voice lines and tinkering with the sprites/script/code. 

After I was done, I tossed the link at twitter as one does. I expected a few views, a few likes.  

Instead, it motherfucking blew up. In two days the numbers just dwarfed every single one of my other games put together for two years. And I’m SO thankful to all the people who played it and commented and left really nice reviews. 

Y’all are amazing ❤️

I like my fishbowls. A LOT.

There's a concept called decision paralysis that I struggle a lot with in my life. Trying to make the perfect choice out of infinite options is not something I would wish upon my worst enemy. 

In this case, having a fishbowl made me very fast and very decisive. 

I came out of these five days and I'm not burned out, even though I did a LOT of work. Most of my anxiety when it comes to the development process comes from having to stop myself from veering off course every two seconds. It comes from the pressure of having to make the perfect choice all the time and make the perfect asset or write the perfect line.

So yes, having baby gates all over the development process really helped lessen the emotional load. 

I learned that I like dropping into a project, doing it and finishing it.

A lot of the joy of the development process for me is trying out new things. New art styles, new palettes, new Game UIs, new aesthetics, new writing styles. I'm constantly learning and growing, and it's nice to actually finish a project for once, rather than dragging it out for months on end.

However, with a long-term, massive project, that's not a thing that can be done. 

I see the devs around me with their huge, long-term projects and I thought that was what I wanted too. 

In fact, in late 2023 I started plotting out a five route game that was truly monumental and, to absolutely no one's surprise, I wrote about 10k words for it, realised it was too big, got overwhelmed, chickened out and stopped.

(Sound familiar?)

All this time I thought I lacked the skills or discipline to develop just one project for 1-2 years. I definitely do and that’s something I’m working to get better at. 

But I think what's also happening here is that I don't want that for myself. The prospect of doing a 100k-word-long project with five routes that will take over my entire existence for two years fills me with dread.

Some projects will be shorter, some will be longer. Maybe in the future I’ll decide that I want to do long projects as well. 

But for now, I want to try to focus my energy on smaller projects where I can go through the development process from start to finish.

I want to learn to get shit done.

I want to improve my scoping skills, to learn to write more reactive and choice-filled stories that make you feel like you’re actually having a conversation. 

I want to write short games that you don’t need to brace yourself for because you can knock them out in 30 minutes to an hour. 

That’s actually something that’s been on my mind for a while, the sheer amount of energy and time you have to allocate to play a big game. I know that there’s a lot of games I don’t touch at all because they’ll take a long time to get through and I need to build up the courage to start. 

So maybe there’s other people out there like me who would like to play the short games I want to make. Maybe both me and my players can all get our happy doki doki dopamine hit without having to commit to something too big.

(amusingly enough this entire devlog is about how small games are really cool and all, but the devlog itself is MASSIVE)

I learned that sometimes, if I have a good idea, I should just RUN with it

(And by you I mean me. Or us. Or anyone really.)

Maybe you don’t have the skills. Maybe it’s not the right time to pursue it. But at some point, it may be. 

Some projects we never start at all because we’re scared of not finishing them. The commitment is too big or I’m Not Good Enough at [insert creative medium here] is too overpowering. 

But as someone who has started a LOT of projects and not finished the vast majority of them, I gotta tell you, sometimes you just need a jolt of happy in your life. 

If you do creative stuff for fun, then it should be for fun. Not because you owe it to anyone to do it, simply because it brings YOU joy for as long as you’re doing it, whether that be an hour, a day, a week, a month. And once that enthusiasm fades, it’s OKAY to drop it. Sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason.

What’s the point then, if you’re not finishing it?

The point is you’re learning and growing and making things. And you’re being fueled by Shiny New Project energy, which makes the learning/growing/making things… easier. And that builds over time. 

You can focus on learning to finish things some other time - that’s a different skill. But if you’re having problems just getting started because you don’t know where it’s going or how it ends or if you’re good enough for it, start it anyway.

Maybe in four years you’ll spin it back to life and make a weirdly popular game about a plot bunny you never could quite bring yourself to send to the bunny farm. 

I get that in some cases, the shortness won’t be enough. There’s been a few people telling me they’d love to see Cupid’s Kiss expanded, and I may do that at some point… just not right now. 

Cupid’s Kiss is a teeny game with immense potential, I get that. But that’s where player creativity comes in. I don’t own the concept, I don’t claim this to be a once-in-a-lifetime idea that’s just mine and no one else’s. 

So I strongly encourage you to just take it and RUN. Make it your own. Draw your Cupid OCs or your Human OCs, write their story! Write some fanfic, draw some fanart! And if you do, tag me on twitter @MarySueGames or #cupidskissvn because I desperately want to see it and fangirl a lil.

As for me, I’ll be here making my smol projects. Bigger than Cupid’s Kiss, for sure, but still very small. Projects I can get done in a couple of weeks and can be played in a short time. If you think you might be into that sort of thing, make sure you follow me either on itch or on twitter, cause cool new things are already a-brewing 😎

(I will also be opening up GUI commissions, so if you like my work and would like me to make a GUI for your VN, feel free to dm me on twitter @MarySueGames.)

Love y’all, hope you’re having a lovely weekend! Maria ❤️