Posted December 11, 2025 by E.P.N
#Postmortem
Now that the jam is over and the results have been published, it's time for a dev diary and a postmortem where I list a bunch of problems and their solutions. Warning: this will probably sound more like random thoughts thrown on a page than an insightful dev diary. I'll save the inspiring (tm) speeches about hard work and resilience for LinkedIn. Today I'm just celebrating the fact that I made a thing! (Yay!)
TL;DR: First-time jammer. No experience. No sleep. No regrets. I made a game!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem: Never participated in a jam. Never made a game.
Solution: Do the thing anyway.
As a first-time jammer, I had a vague idea of what a game jam entails: organisers give you a theme, you write a game based on that theme, and you publish it so people can tell you how much of a fraud you are. Beyond that, it was slightly opaque.
That's why I set a goal early on: to create a portfolio piece.
***
Problem: Never touched Arcweave. Don't know the first thing about CSS.
Solution: Read the effing manual.
Since I had never used Arcweave and had only limited experience with Twine, I spent two weeks before the jam experimenting with Arcscript and simple CSS to test both the tool and my abilities. I needed to see what I could do natively and whether I could code simple features like buttons. (Spoiler alert: I can't!) It seems my CSS skills are limited to changing background colors, selecting fonts, and, with some effort, following tutorials on how to make things glow.
Looking back, I realize that watching the video tutorials and reading Arcweave's documentation thoroughly wasn't enough. There were nuances I didn't fully understand before working on the project, which led to wasting valuable time during the jam trying to figure out variables and styling; time I could have used to develop the story further or do more playtesting.
***
Day 1 - Discovering the theme
Problem: I don't want to fail
Solution: Aim for simple and complete, not ambitious and messy.
The theme 'Resilience' was announced at 11 PM on a Friday. My plan was to work for an hour, then go to bed, wake up at 6:30 to walk the dog, and start working. I went to bed at 1 AM after deciding that, as a solo dev with no experience, I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel.
With these elements in mind, the genre and type of game came naturally: a hopepunk/solarpunk cozy game. Picture a mash-up between Winter Burrow and The Last of Us sprinkled with Stardew Valley.
Why not a typical post-apocalyptic landscape where the characters struggle to survive, I hear you say? That would fit the theme too, right? Of course, but there are already plenty of those out there, and they’re better done. The world is already going downhill fast, so I wanted to write a story about the fall of civilization where survivors embody resilience and radical kindness, because that's my thing, and that's the kind of story I want to share. (Hiring manager, notice me!!)
The next part of the puzzle was coming with a storyline and finding the main character's voice. A quick Google search showed that traits of resilient people include "problem-solving skills", "strong social connections", "a survivor's mentality", "emotional regulation", and "self-compassion". From there, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and I... to sleep.
***
Day 1 - The writing
Problem: There's a lot more to do than typing words
Solution: Do what you can, as best as you can:
I started Day 1 by creating the main boards. I would include a Prologue, an Act I ("Setup"), an Act II (conflict), and an Act III (Resolution), along with various boards for exploration and puzzles.
Prologue.
Although the game is entirely built in Arcweave without any visual assets, I wanted to hint at a character-creation screen. The player character is never described, has no assigned gender or race, and no name. When you start the game, you answer a question that hints at your preferred playstyle and receive some form of character customization. Since text-based games exist only in the player's mind, that was my way of "forcing them" to create a mental image of their character. On paper, these initial choices were going to have a greater impact than they ultimately did, but they still made an appearance.
Set-up & Wolrdbuilding
For the setup, I aimed to create tableaux or vignettes with very limited interactivity, almost as if you clicked through them like slides in a slideshow. This way, I could blend worldbuilding with building tension leading up to the inciting incident. It was also a way to develop the character's inner voice, making them more relatable.
To do this, I broke down the mundane act of making a pour-over coffee into individual steps that allow the character to reflect on a facet of the hardship they endured during the collapse of society. When they pour water into a pan, you learn about a war crime, but it also introduces crafting. The sound of the grinder hints at the character's PTSD and introduces the clinic. The simmering of the water echoes the rage bubbling inside them when they joined a form of resistance, etc...
The inciting event
The incident that prompts our MC to explore the world is breaking their beloved coffee maker. The plan was to "survey" the player and give them the choice among three different gameplay experiences.
The player could experience only one at a time, and each path would lead to a slightly different ending. My goal was to provide enough replayability for the player to explore all three endings.
Unfortunately, that's where my struggles with CSS and Arcscript penalized me: instead of focusing on the writing alone, I was trying to juggle everything at once. Make it look pretty, find the pictures and audio assets, edit...
By the end of the day, I had the prologue and Act I but only rough drafts for each part of Act II, and nothing looked the way I wanted. I went to bed frustrated.
***
Day 2 - The culling
Problem: I haven't progressed as fast as I had hoped
Solution: Kill your darlings
When Sunday started, I reflected on my goals and assessed what I had accomplished. That's when I decided to cut two branches to focus on one.
I chose to stick with the crafting branch over the others because I wanted to use Arcweave's built-in functions, like Roll, and make my entry feel like a game. It also had elements of exploration. However, that meant 0 dialogues.
***
Problem: Putting theory into practice isn't easy
Solution: Pull your hair out and just try again until it works
Because I really wanted the players to choose where to go and in what order, I spent too much time on connections, jumpers, and information tracking. Once I started to feel more comfortable with Arcscript, I progressed quickly. Still, at first, I kept seeing that damn Red Exclamation Mark of doom on every single variable I was trying to create. I was like "Whyyyyyyy ???" until I realized that until you put "endif," your variable simply isn't complete... Duh.
Anyway, there's a variable in almost every part of the Red house, which means that if you visit a place more than once, you'll get a different flavor text. tehehe
I went to bed at 3 A.M with no stamina left to be frustrated.
***
Day 3
Problem: Time is running out
Solution: Sit down, take a deep breath, and QA
On day three, all the narrative elements were there, but there were so many typos, grammar mistakes, and loops or dead ends. Also, the game was so brown. I didn't plan for it to be so brown. Why did it get so brown? Well, it's brown because it turns out solar punk isn't a popular genre, and finding "hopeful apocalyptic"-licensed free pictures is nearly impossible.
The rest of the day is a blur because I was running on fumes. The result wasn't exactly what I had planned, but I polished it as best I could, and I was proud of what I had accomplished when I clicked the submit button.
***
Results
Not gonna lie, when the community vote was revealed, I was a little disappointed to rank low on Theme Interpretation, but I was happily surprised to rank #27 overall \^o^/. Now that I understand ArcScript better, I'm going to work on more personal projects. Why pay for therapy when you can create games?