Updates / Postmortem

Fan art by Benji! You can view the original post here.

As we approach nearly 10k downloads on the project, I figured this would be a good time to make some announcements and do a little postmortem for this project. First and foremost, I wanted to address a question I have been receiving a LOT, and I wanted to give a more official stance on it. YES, I do plan on continuing Clawstar Wrestling. I had originally intended this project to be a short one-off, but I didn't expect this level of reception! I am very new to writing, so keeping the story short was the best way for me to make a reasonably finished product, while still giving me some wiggle room for potential expansion.

So! There will be more Clawstar, I just don't know what that means right now! I have a few ideas, and might possibly run a poll/gather feedback from y'all on what you might want to see. Currently, the main thing I'm trying to decide is if I continue the story of Eli and Tremor, or if I create a small anthology of short stories centered around the Clawstar Wrestling organization itself. More on that later when I have more information to share!

Next, I wanted to give a little postmortem about the game to hopefully provide some insight for anyone working on a project of their own. The entire idea for Clawstar Wrestling started back in late 2020, where I had just started to pick up various FVNs. I think I read Adastra and Echo, and concluded that this is a really amazing medium for telling stories. I wanted to make one for myself, but didn't really know what to do, let alone how to write. The original concept was completely different from what we have now.

Different characters, different protag, different story! They might show up later in the story, so I don't want to give away too much about them right now. The short and sweet is that this first story just wasn't very interesting. No real character motivations, pacing was weird, and I didn't really know what I was doing. So the project was ultimately put on the backburner.

During the last two years, I have been fortunate enough to work with some wonderful people, and even had the opportunity to do some work for some other projects! Most notably, I worked with George to create The Smoke Room Summer Special. So, fast forward to last month. I had been doing work on other projects (that have yet to be announced) when Clawstar Wrestling reappeared in my thoughts. I knew I wanted to keep the same setting, but I wanted to try to do something different with the story. Keep it short, keep it straightforward, make sure it's something I can actually get done.

So I came up with the original sketches for Eli and Tremor, and decided these two were going to be the new stars of the story.

I didn't have a story yet though. Just these characters and a rough idea that I wanted to see Eli get flattened. I knew that for something so short, I would have a chance to really lean into the stuff I wanted to see, but I need some more substance than just horny wrasslin'. I created an outline, and really tried to put some interesting story beats in there. Again, I'm new to writing, so I didn't have a strong grasp of what I was doing. After getting feedback from friends, I had started to write the script.

One thing I learned about the original attempt at this story is that I wanted to make sure I had everything written out before I got started with any art assets. I didn't want to get burned out doing the fun art (drawing) before I got done with the hard part (writing.) It took me about two weeks of my spare time in the evenings, several edits and revisions thanks to feedback from friends, but I finally had a completed script! The next thing I tackled from there was character sprites. I started with Arlo, then Lyra, Theo, Fang. Eli and Tremor were the trickiest ones for me to get right. I knew they were going to be the focal point, so I needed them to look good. Took a few passes, but I am very happy with where I've landed with them. Eli's expressions were such a blast to put together, and having multiple poses for Tremor ended up being a very worthwhile effort.

From there, I started thumbnailing CGs for key moments in the script. I put in a lot, which was uhhh maybe setting the expectations pretty high right off the bat, but there were some good moments I wanted to show since this would be a shorter story. These probably took the longest out of everything in the project, and were the hardest things to get right.

I went back and forth between compiling the code, working on CGs, and adding new expressions here and there during the last week of production. I was doing a LOT of work on this, and it was starting to get to me. I completely forgot that I needed to add in sound, and was getting super stressed out. After talking with some friends about the project, Orion surprised me by putting together the sounds and music for the game overnight (which is insane omg thank you again.) I was just about ready to push the project up.

I remember the day the project launched. That Monday I took off from work because I needed to finish the CGs. I ended up doing 4 full illustrations in one day, and with all that done, I was finally ready to publish to itch. I was tired, exhausted, anxious as hell about how the project would go over. I spent the last month, pretty much every spare minute I had went into getting this completed, and now that it was all out there, I was a nervous wreck.

I calmed down, and was pleasantly surprised to see that people actually liked it. All that hard work really paid off, and dang. Just DANG. I cannot thank you all enough for the feedback on all of this. I feel so proud of what I've created, and I could not have done this without the help of my friends, and support from all of y'all. So truly, thank you. It's been a really wonderful experience, and I'm looking forward to showing you more Clawstar Wrestling in the future.