Posted May 29, 2022 by ahmadmanga
The preparation to make this game started while I was adding the finishing touches to Procrastination Simulator GB.
I found the Game Boy Showdown Jam on Itch.io's Jam list. I thought I could take part. Considering it had prizes, I thought it'll be worth the effort. I waited for the theme thinking "If I can make a short story about whatever theme it was, I'll participate in the Jam."
Theme: Time
The theme was "time" and my first thought was a story about zombies. It's an old idea of mine, a story that explores what happens in the year after the apocalypse, or a pandemic, but I soon scrapped this idea because I thought the art will be hard to make.
The Story Idea
Then I decided to go back to another old idea of mine. A story of a Tree. It's an idea I had for years but I didn't know where to start with it. I thought the limitations of GameBoy will help me focus. (They did!)
I imagined the first scene and the rest wrote itself. While some parts took a bit long. The only hard part was the ending because I didn't know where to end something like this.
The story took one day to finish. I posted on Twitter about my entry to this game jam.
Next, I wanted art for it, but I didn't know how many drawings I needed, so I re-read the story a bunch of times trying to figure out places that can use the same art.
Each different scene, (a period of time,) became a chapter. I titled all chapters so I have a good reference point when I make the art of this game. In the end, I decided to give all 13 chapters a unique drawing each. A decision I almost regretted.
I wasn't sure what tree I should have at the start. I started drawing on my tablet without even deciding. In the end, I drew a Palm, (Date Palms are symbols in the Arabic world,) and it was decided then: The main character is a Palm tree.
I spent the next 3 days drawing. I showcased one WIP picture in a tweet. The last three drawings were hard to finish.
I changed my art into pixel art via a Japanese tool called Gameboy Pic.
Only after converting and putting my images then I realized a problem: My line art was too thin! I decided to leave it like that, but if you felt some scenes weren't clear, it's probably because I thought it looked fine enough in my original drawing.
By the third day of drawing, I started to lose patience and felt I was racing time before I completely run out of it. I drew the final photos quickly without caring too much about quality. I just needed to finish this game. Compared to the time spent, I believe the quality was good enough, so I'm satisfied. With that, I finished my entry.