Happy New Year! This is Melody! 

Man, it feels like January 2023 was only yesterday, and here I am, about to turn 21 this month (hehe, 21 years old on the 21st of January. Go figure).

Anyway, thank you for checking out my second-ever visual novel, Snow Angel and Silver Devil! The Winter VN Jam has wrapped up for this year and Once Upon a Time Jam is also pretty much done with, so I figured that now would be a good time to give a little afterword.

(WARNING: THIS DEVLOG WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE GAME AND ITS THREE ENDINGS! IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY PLAYED IT AND DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED, THEN I RECOMMEND GETTING THAT DONE BEFORE RETURNING HERE.)

Now, for everyone else, buckle in, 'cause I've got a lot more to say compared to Rosetta and the Well. Here we go!

Initial Concept and Joining the Winter Jam

I'd been wanting to join one of these game jams for some time now, but for various reasons (ideas taking a while to form and solidify, motivation, finding a jam with a theme I was into, that also fit into my skills...), I hadn't been able to do so until recently. I like winter, so naturally, I wanted to join the Winter Jam.

To be honest, SASD wasn't the first idea I had in mind for the jam. Initially, my first idea was a fairytale-esque VN centered around a nameable protagonist getting lost in a snowstorm before being taken in by December, a mysterious lady who plays a panpipe and lives in a cabin with several tiny snow rabbit fairies. The protagonist would suspect something about December and would investigate her cabin, and somewhere along the way, it'd be revealed that December is actually a benevolent snow sprite, who arrives and leaves as the snow does.

So, at first, I thought this would be something I wanted to work on, even worked on a recruitment post for it in the DevTalk server. However, as time went on, the concept would gradually morph into something I wasn't exactly proud or motivated to work on, eventually leading to me canning it entirely and issuing some apologies to those who replied to my initial recruitment post.

For some time, I was gonna consider passing on the jam altogether, but then I was lying in bed one night and I thought, "Man, it would be nice if there were more games like Cooking Mama available on Steam", and that's when it hit me (kinda). I felt that I could attempt to make a visual novel-cooking game hybrid, and that could be what I'd submit to the Winter Jam. (The cooking stuff never got implemented due to changes in the script and my own lack of coding prowess...)

As for Catrin and Claus...those two came along from a number of sources, such as me playing through a particular Steam anthology VN that I won't be stating the name of here at this time  and liking the chemistry between the human female protagonist and her monstrous love interest, browsing the Google image section for cartoons like Vila Amalka and O Makové Panence and liking the aesthetics for both, and looking through a particular entry on Yokai.com.

The two aforementioned cartoons (plus a hint of Moomin) would serve as the basis for some of the atmosphere and visuals that Snow Angel and Silver Devil would be based around.

And so, with this new idea in my mind, I decided to give the Winter Jam another go, making another recruitment post for the VN, and the rest is history.

Characters

As mentioned before, I'd taken inspiration from stuff like Vila Amalka and O Makové Panence (funny how the VN takes place in Germany, yet those cartoons are both Czechoslovakian). Catrin's appearance is especially inspired by the former, and its titular Amalka.

Actually, Catrin's name was originally going to be "Karen", after the protagonist of the Red Shoes story, but at the suggestion of the game's writer, Jaqui, I changed it up to avoid unfortunate comparisons to a particular meme. (You know the one). Karen is a diminutive of Catherine, so I figured I'd just browse Behind the Name a bit to find some other diminutives. Ultimately, I went with "Catrin" since it had "Cat" in it, and I felt it'd be a good contrast to Wulfgang's name and also compliment Claus's vaguely feline appearance.

Speaking of Claus, his personality and appearance are modeled after a combination of the Beast from Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, Moomintroll, and an unused Abnormality design from Lobotomy Corporation called the "Jangsan Tiger".  His signature bowtie was originally gonna just be something he always had before it was decided that it would be a gift from Catrin. Claus's name was also a placeholder thing...as in, the player/Catrin would've been able to give a name to silver beast via an input box, with "Claus" being the default. However, what was supposed to have just been a temporary name for him ended up sticking. (maybe I'll be able to experiment with nameable characters another time)

The Loathsome Von Brandt™ is actually someone that came along more recently in the development timeline. Along the way, it was decided that there would be a whole plotline about Catrin being married off to some asshole nobleman that she wasn't exactly fond of. To spice things up, I had thought of said asshole nobleman actually being Catrin's ex-lover, who was trying to worm his way back into her life, much to her chagrin. He also would've originally had a mustache, but because I had trouble getting that to look right, I settled with his beauty mark instead.

In terms of his design, I'd envisioned him as basically "Marisa Kirisame (my beloved), except male and albino + a bit of Jack Sniper from that one Vocaloid song series". Seeing as how he's an antagonist, his Very Pleasant personality kinda naturally formed from there. 

Art and Design

As mentioned in the credits, the background art is done by Lynnasaurus while sprites and CG art are done by myself. Now, I must say that Lynn did a pretty top-notch job with the backgrounds, especially considering she's stated to be totally new to making assets for VNs.  I once again have to commend her.

If you've played through my previous project, Rosetta and the Well, you may have noticed a few things have changed in Snow Angel. Like, how the image sizes are significantly larger compared to my last VN. Well, that's because I took it upon myself to upgrade my art's aspect ratio, thus the game is in the standard 1920 x 1080 aspect ratio compared to RatW's 1280 x 720.

Another thing is the sprites. 

Each individual sprite in Rosetta and the Well was drawn as a single, separate image. Here are a few examples featuring Rosetta herself.

Because I didn't know how LayeredImages worked at the time, this method was the one I went with since I felt it was easiest. But the downside of that was, when I needed to add additional expressions I didn't think I needed earlier, or if I needed to make a few changes to the sprite's hair or clothes, I'd have to manually update every single sprite for that character to make sure they were consistent with each other. You can see how that would get tedious, particularly with larger projects with more characters than Rosetta and the Well.

Now, let's look at the spritework for Catrin to compare.

And here's how that shows up in the game's code.

As you can see, Catrin's sprite is like an onion (i.e, it has layers). By separating her facial features into layers, I'm able to trim the folder's fat and make use of combinations that I couldn't have done if the sprites were their own images. Special thanks goes to tofurocks for this incredibly helpful tutorial on LayeredImages.

Some things, like Claus's bowtie and Wulfgang's hat, are set up as variables, since those don't change quite as often as their facial expressions do. At some point, those variables are toggled from True to False and vice versa once the game reaches a certain point, to indicate whether or not those attributes would be visible at that point. 

This is to ensure that, for instance, once Catrin gives Claus his tie, I won't have to remember to make his tie visible every time his sprite shows up from that point forward.

Lastly, for the CGs, I'd make a simple sketch on how I'd want the CG to look before finalizing those elements as a CG. Here are some examples. Can you recognize which CGs these sketches would become?

Scripting

Now, the programming is fairly straightforward RenPy stuff, but for the more complex ATL stuff, I once again enlisted the help of the RenPy Action Editor.  Turns out the Action Editor defaults towards 1920 x 1080, so upgrading the aspect ratio actually made it a bit easier to work with this time!

When it comes to a certain sequence in the Rosenberg cabin, I had to make use of the LayeredImage technique yet again. The cabin (particularly, the interior of the cabin) is separated into layers for the table and the walls. Turns out that RenPy can only show so many non-scene elements onscreen, so making the foreground a LayeredImage was the best option I could find to get characters to show up behind the window for, say, this adorable scene.

I also got to experiment with Persistent values a bit more, and even some Conditional statements. For the persistence, those are the values that control whether or not you get the choice that unlocks Ending C.

Both of these settings are set to false upon initially starting the game. Once you reach the ending that the respective variables are assigned to, that variable unlocks, and you're one step closer to getting the third end.

Because they're persistent values, once a variable is set to True, the game will remember that for each subsequent playthrough. In other words, once you unlock the third end, it'll stay unlocked every subsequent time you boot the game up if you don't decide to completely wipe your save.

Conditional statements come into play during the scene where Catrin helps Claus feel more comfortable around humans.

Each choice is tied to a variable that is set to "True" once you select that choice. Once the choice is selected, one "prep" point is added to your total counter, and you need three points to continue the scene. Otherwise, some flavor text will show before you're taken back to the aforementioned choice menu to help Claus further.

Setting up that particular scene was a bit more complicated than what I'm used up, but I'm glad I could pull it off in the end.

Also, there would've originally been more gameplay elements (like the previously-mentioned cooking minigames, as well as a point and click segment early in the game). I also would've liked to implement parallax effects if I knew how to code them...But anyway, I digress.

Writing and Story

Unlike Rosetta and the Well, the writing wasn't a solo effort. Rather, the script was written entirely by Jaqui Lee (who seems to have been quite busy with the two jams I'd submitted SASD to, actually).

I once again have to thank Jaqui for her efforts on writing this script because writing is definitely not my strong point. Yeah, I made a few tweaks here and gave some feedback there, but besides that, it's Jaqui through and through. A lot of the ideas for the story came from Jaqui, actually, and I simply accepted them as I saw fit.

Also, fun fact:  She's also where that list of beta-readers came from. Thanks for that.

As for the story and its conflict...As mentioned before, Wulfgang was only a recent addition to the story, and the conflict would've centered more around the society Catrin lived in, and her trying to convince the people that Claus was actually a very friendly fellow instead of some terrifying monster. Overtime, it became less about how the townsfolk of Wolkendorf felt and how Catrin herself felt, and the prejudices of the town were condensed into a single character: Wulfgang.

Another idea I had would've been to have the narrator be a separate character, in the form of a dapper crow gentleman. To further compliment the cozy winter and fairytale themings, this feathery fellow would've introduced himself sat in a chair next to a warm fire inside a cabin, telling the story as a bedtime tale of sorts.

I had also originally planned for the story to be a kinetic novel (as in, no choices or branches, just a single story with a single ending), but Jaqui came up with some ideas for potential other endings, and I liked that concept, so I went with it. This game actually has one less ending that Rosetta and the Well did, and they're not stated to be Good or Bad ends, either. (In my mind, the ending where Catrin is forcefully married to Wulfgang is most certainly the bad ending. At least she and Claus could escape him, in the end)

I also would've originally taken cues from The Shape of Water (which I haven't actually seen and just read summaries for) and have Catrin and Claus---*snip*

...Hmm, maybe another time. Possibly as a fandisc or something.

Music

This section is a bit shorter since I ultimately ended up having to use royalty free music, but this is going to pertain to a certain name in the Special Thanks section.

Benji was originally going to be the game's composer, and provide an original soundtrack for the whole thing (with the music currently ingame being reference stuff for him to base his own compositions off of). I'd known him for quite some time as a fellow composer in the Touhou-style music scene, and he'd offer to make music for my next project even before SASD was a blip in my mind. But then things happened (he had to leave for a roadtrip, I had to take a vacation to this hotel on Christmas Eve) and here we are.

So...yeah, there's that. Moving on.

What now?

For those of you who stuck with my (somewhat disorganized) autistic ramblings for this long, thank you.

In the end, despite the hiccups and such, I was able to submit Snow Angel and Silver Devil 2 days before the deadline. Even with my vacation and general motivation, I was fortunate enough to be able to make the deadline.

Overall, this game contains a lot of first times.

• First time joining a game jam
• First time organizing and releasing a game with a team
• First time using LayeredImages
• First time making use of Conditional Statements
• First time working in 1920 x 1080

Overall, this game born out of love from my monster-loving heart. I'm someone who's into monster dudes (but in an asexual way), and I would love to see more interspecies otome visual novels based around a female protagonist getting together with an adorable monster dude (I'm talking really monstrous, the less humanoid the better), and I'm glad I'm in a position where I can sorta make that content for myself.

This game hasn't got a lot of feedback at the moment, but from what I've seen, people seem to really like Claus (can't blame 'em, he's super cute. Catrin's got good taste in men).

Will I join another jam? Is this game set in the same continuity as Rosetta and the Well? Will this game get a browser release, or even full-on voice acting? The answer to those questions? ....Maybe.

Having a deadline does help in keeping my procrastination at bay, but at the same time, I like doing things at my own pace. 

I don't have anything planned currently. I may just sit back and indulge in my interests for a bit (even if they're all so incredibly obscure they barely have fanart...), possibly try and find games to spend my Christmas Steam money on (too bad there's still no Cooking Mama-like games on Steam...). The new year just got started, so there's still plenty of time to get those things sorted, but for now, I'm just gonna go with the flow.

To those that have travelled with me this far, and to those who are just seeing me for the first time, thank you and nice to meet you. I hope that this angel and devil's tale was a wonderful read.

- Melody (Y'know, Big Man from Splatoon 3 is kinda cute...)