If you just want to know about what I’ll do in the future, skip to the end. But for everyone else, I hope that my story inspires you or helps you in some way. The beginning is a bit dark. But that only makes a happy ending more meaningful. So, where in fact did I start out? Well…..

The Shittiest of the Shitpits.

So. In May of 2018, I had just exited a job that illegally baited-and-switched me. The job said it would be graphic design, which I had desperately seeked for a year then, but it was actually a shitty sales job with 0% of what was promised. I did that for 5 days, and due to how shitty I was at the job that I did not apply for, they let me go after 5 days.

Rewind.

I had graduated from college in May of 2017, and in the following year, I tried countless times to get a job in graphic design, as it was what I had been working towards for so long: A good and steady full-time job. For my whole life, I had been led to believe that getting the Bachelor’s would guarantee my success….but that was simply not true. As hard as I tried, I only faced rejection. I had worked on my grades as hard as I could all my life, got a great SAT score, went to a highly ranked college, but in the end, I had been doing it all wrong. I had focused only on grades, and when I was thrown into the real world, I had no experience in dealing with it. For a year, I felt lost, purposeless, worthless, and pathetic. I was extremely depressed, and at several dark moments, I barely resisted suicidal urges.

So, when I finally got that job, I thought I DID it. I bragged about it with my family, I was taken out for food in celebration, everyone around me was so happy…and from my highest peak of joy, I fell into my deepest pit of despair. Rock bottom.

Getting let go from a scam job was extremely demoralizing. I was at the bottom of the bottom, it was the worst time in my life. Life sucked, and I thought that it would continue to suck for the rest of my life - which I then envisioned as a bland, grey, pathetic, disappointing couple of decades.

This was the fact of life, I thought. Nothing will ever get better. Nothing will change.

And then something happened. And I said something that would change my life.

Why not?

In a certain game’s discord chat, someone mentioned to everyone that there was a gamejam coming up - an event in which you make a video game in a small amount of time. It was AdventureJam2018, and it would happen in but a few days.

Storytelling through video games had been my passion for a looooooong while, though I had always thought of it as a hobby, as an unrealistic career choice. But….I was at my lowest of the low. Also, I had been reading about the point-and-click gamemaking program AdventureGameStudio, and I had the most basic of programming knowledge, so I thought….why not?

Keep in mind, this was not a hopeful or optimistic “why not”. This was the “why not” of someone who was so tired, beaten, and defeated that they had no hope or expectations for what they would do. But it was still a “why not”, and that’s what really mattered. That first step. That simple and seemingly unimportant leap of faith. With that, I got to work on it.

My First Game.

What were my strengths? I had been DMing tabletop games like DnD and Trail of Cthulhu for 2 years at that point, and I had always been complimented on my writing and storytelling throughout my academic life. Some suggested for me to go into writing as a career, but out of low self-esteem, I never had so much faith in my own skill. But, I knew it was indeed a skill. Not only that, but I had been an artist for as long as I remember, though it never got any attention and I always thought of it as mediocre. But it was a skill nonetheless.

So, using these skills, I would have to make a game in under two weeks. There were various categories in the gamejam, and I wanted to be highly ranked on Characters, Storytelling, or Dialogue. I expected little success, but I thought to myself:

“If you’re gonna try, then try your hardest and make a game that YOU want to see. If you don’t win, oh well - you’ll have made SOMETHING.”

So, I worked on creating my very first video game. I constantly read tutorials I found on google. I asked others for tips, critique, and SO MANY programming questions, bless their kind souls. I utilized video game storytelling to tell a story that ONLY a video game could. I made up characters that I myself wanted to see, even if I didn’t know if other people would. I underestimated the time limit, and I made a lot of messy last-second decisions. And in the end, what did I make?

The Buggy, No-Animation, Placeholder-Background, Skeleton of a Game.

Some of you, out of curiosity, may have played the Original 2-Week version I had on the page for a while. If you did, you’d know that Karla had NO walk cycles; she just slid everywhere as a still image. Important story scenes could be casually repeated if you just clicked the NPC again. The inventory bar was a cluttered mess. And oh yeah, Alice’s room was this:

I only had enough time to draw/color two rooms and four character models, ha ha. But the main storyline, with just Karla, Alice, Peter, Jonas, and Isaac, was the same. The unique premise - a 2nd person mystery game - was the same. And so, I submitted my very janky, visually unpolished game to the gamejam. It would be a month until the entries would be rated. So, for that month, I returned to my depressed state, though I did feel a bit better; working on the game was fun, even if it was stressful at times. I had finally made a video game, something I had only ever dreamt of doing. Even if it was small, unpolished, and highly experimental, it was mine.

But before the judge’s ratings came in, I shouted something at the top of my lungs.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

What happens next? I will continue this tale tomorrow. But for now, let me tell you the plans for the future.

• I am currently seeking employment in the games industry. But unless I find it early next year, I will begin developing my new game in January. That new game is LIAR!, though I plan on changing the title. I think I’ll change a lot of things about it, though I do like the core concept.

• I will give peeks to its WIP content for the public, but most of the WIP content will be on my Patreon.

• Also on my Patreon, I will create Who I See comics, such as the page I will release this weekend with Karla and Isaac. I plan on doing these comics for quite a while. Most of the pages will be on Patreon but I will preview certain pages to all.

• My Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/chillingcircuits ! Look at the new game, look at Who I See content, and more, all for just $5 a month! It’s worth it!

• I’ll be posting polls, questions, and hosting streams every so often. I’m not gonna just abandon Who I See now that the expansions are done; I surmise that people wanna talk about it! And engaging with y’all, the community that got me here, is my top priority.

Merry Late Christmas! Happy holidays! And i’ll open up the busted up storybook again tomorrow!!!!!! Thank you for your support!!!!!

Part 2: https://gamejolt.com/games/whoisee/340408/devlog/part-2-of-how-who-i-see-went-from-the-creation-of-a-depressed-brok-bihkuuvd