It's been a bit over a week now since Creating Paradise was finished, and a bit over a day since Spooktober VN Jam 2025 closed, so I figured that now would be a great time to post a few thoughts on the development of it! I’ll try to keep my thoughts on it and the process of developing the project short, since last time that I wrote down my thoughts on project development it spilled out into an entirely new blog post. Let’s keep it short with some dot points, both to keep myself restrained, and to allow me a less formal way of writing, yes?

(Also, if you haven't played the game and plan on doing so, you probably shouldn't read this yet - there are some spoilers for the ending, so consider yourself warned!)

• Holy crap, I hate drawing sprites and backgrounds. I spent a lot of time in one week drawing, and the majority of work needed additional updates later on for one reason or another. I don’t know what the next game jam entered will be, but it will almost certainly involve a dedicated artist who isn’t me because drawing is just far too exhausting for me.

• I would have loved to have had a way to play the game through the character Ben’s eyes, but there wasn’t really time to implement it, and I also don’t really know what the story would have involved that could have justified its inclusion. Still, it’s a fun idea; maybe I’ll come back to it down the line when I need a break from another project.

• I also would have loved to have included a joke ending, or some sort of comedic mode after you’ve gotten both endings, but again, I didn’t really know what I could have done and didn’t want to experience scope creep. Such is life.

• When I was planning out the game, Fiona’s death in the corresponding ending would have had her burned at the stake, but I decided to change it to a drowning once I actually wrote it out since I didn’t want to have to draw flames. Of course, both the church and forge scenes ended up having fire in them anyway. Go figure.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the game - I was worried that some of the scenes with Fiona showing Ben around hurt the pacing a bit, but upon asking my playtesters (i.e. friends who I rope into playing the game for me) what they thought, all of them thought that they added enough to justify their conclusion. I do feel like after the opening scene in the cell, the game lacks a good bit of punch until the ending, if that makes sense, and I definitely cheated a bit by going, "Wow, look at how ominous this big door is! Spooky spooky spooky!" But hey, that's why we're making these things - so that I can try and improve, and fix flaws like those.

Thanks for reading, playing (if you did so), and following on Bluesky (if you choose to do so). Hope that you have a good day, and remember to check out the other Spooktober entries!