VM Retrospective - May 2025

With May comes the hint of a new season and a brand new Vine Moss Game, different from the ones that released before. Getting into a new set of VM Games is undoubtedly exciting, and I wanted to really think through how I KNEW YOU WERE OUT THERE would be a distinct collection from CLOCKS, COPIES, CARDS in terms of narrative content and gameplay. The first set of games were text-heavy experiences using static camera framing, while this new set has already offered a lighter reflection-based narrative with unconventional gameplay input. This adjustment to my approach has led to Remember Me Before Andromeda, a game that discusses memories and regrets through the stars above. Just like with the previous VM Games, here are 3 rights and 3 wrongs that have emerged from this new entry in the Vine Moss Games 2025 series.

3 Rights

Locked in Writing First!

One of my most consistent struggles was writing the narrative for each of my VM Games. For every VM Game prior to RMBA, I would find myself writing the last lines of plot points and dialogue before the end of the game’s development cycle. This kept happening despite my best efforts to try and get all my writing done for the game in the first two weeks of the project. No matter how much I planned, I struggled to write in the early weeks of a game project and resorted to working on other aspects of the game instead. I knew this was a bad practice for many reasons, especially considering the fact that the game’s narrative could be limited and pigeonholed based on the assets that were already created. For this game, I gave myself a strict rule to follow: only the writing that I completed within the first two weeks of the project would be implemented into the game. Any writing I didn’t get done with, I would have to cut from the game entirely, and this new approach - rather, this new restriction - forcibly broke my writer’s block. Remember Me Before Andromeda’s writing is somewhat linear, and much shorter than other VM Games. However, my approach to delivering the narrative felt fresh in how I wrote from a first-person, introspective point of view, as well as my method for delivering text lines in the game itself - specifically the interactive sections in this game.

Interactive Narratives

One of my primary goals for RMBA was to include some complex interactivity that could offer a more engaging feature for a player and replace some of the writing I would otherwise have. Overall, I’m incredibly satisfied with how I executed this goal for RMBA. After a certain point in the story, players are presented with a small hub where they can click on a specific image to play through a memory. Each memory asks for different input from the player as the story goes on, and these mechanical additions are small, easy to perform, and detached from story progression.

Despite their lack of complexity, I found that these subtle mechanical moments added a lot to what the player could do as the story moved. These actions, like the wii bowling memory, gave the player an opportunity to perform the act that the main character is reminiscing about. It is this affordance that makes these sections so powerful, a space and choice to embody the character while reading through a specific moment in their life. I found the combination of the new mechanics and the personal narrative to be one of my favorite moments to replay through, and I know I’ll take this discovery into my future VM Games with excitement for what can be created.

Expanding Toolset: Particles and Notepads

Through making three short narrative games month after month, I developed a solid toolkit that I could use and repurpose for each sequential VM Game. As I worked on each project, I added features to my dialogue manager depending on what I wanted to include and introduce. I was extremely happy with my constant evolution, but I knew I wanted to expand my toolkit even further with this new theme set. One of my biggest priorities was to learn how to use shaders and particles in my games, knowing that both would enhance my visual style. Knowing I was creating a space game, I set out to create a dense, starry sky that would drift and twinkle across the screen. The end result is a smooth, visually-appealing background that would have taken me hours to recreate with my drawing and animation tools.

I was surprised at how well this turned out, and I felt accomplished knowing I now had new digital tools I could use for my future games. In addition to my digital additions, Remember Me Before Andromeda benefitted significantly from my adjusted preproduction features, namely notepad storyboarding. Returning to an analog form of planning was one of the most soothing experiences during this game’s development, and this rougher, tangible form of planning felt easier to build on when I moved to developing in-engine. Seeing the sketch of my car mini-game now after making RMBA fills me with pride because of how clear these sketches were and how useful they were to reference throughout development. The notepad will surely stick around for the rest of my monthly games.

3 Wrongs

Production Planning Derailed

Despite the huge win with my new notepad, it came at the cost of my initial task production system. During the last two weeks of development, I stopped looking at this task board and instead resorted to listing out what I needed to do for the game each day on my notepad. This approach ended in a completed game certainly, but I felt that I lost a lot of the overarching direction and documentation that my notion task board provided for the previous VM Games. I could have easily forgotten a feature or task as I wrote down what I needed to do each day, so I will work toward aligning my digital production process with my new analog tools to create a system that works for me in the present and proves most useful for preserving the past.

Rushed Art

As happy as I was not to worry about writing right before the game’s deadline, I instead found myself with a disproportionate amount of art asset tasks I needed to complete with very little time to complete them. I spent the last day of development quickly drawing art scenes, one after the other, which was not how I wanted development for my visual assets to go. To be fair to myself, this game included a lot of new elements I was working with, especially visually, so these specific images slipped to the end of the priority list. While there were a lot of upgrades I’m happy to have incorporated, I’m not fully satisfied with how the separate scene images ended up.

They’re generally simple drawings, each made to accompany what the narrator is reflecting on. I wish I could’ve spent more time adding a little more detail to each of them, or perhaps better distributing the art tasks throughout development so that they didn’t pile up at the end. I put myself in a difficult situation by planning out so many separate images to make, as well as not focusing on them enough until it was as late as possible. This experience was more unideal than awful, but it’s something to be mindful of as I work on the next game.

Playtest Time Cut Short

As I hit the deadline for this game, I look back on it really happy with how the new gameplay interactions worked out. However, I feel lucky I didn’t encounter any major bugs that would break the game because I honestly wouldn’t have had enough time to address them! Adhering to a strict timeline means that there isn’t a lot of wiggle room to spend more time on one game because it’ll disrupt the development cycle of future games. Therefore, it was a huge gamble to try out these new mechanics and forget to set aside additional time to playtest them. The gamble paid off for this game fortunately, but I definitely don’t want to risk having a future broken game at launch because I experimented too close to the sun. This wrong is also more of a mental note for myself as I continue down this new interactive path; playtesting is integral to game development. As I add more features that I think will benefit the game I’m making, I must dedicate more time to testing those features to maintain the level of quality I strive for with VM Games.

What’s Packed For The Horizon

I can’t wait for these games to get weirder, more polished, and more mechanically intricate as the year goes on, and it’s with your support that I stay motivated to grow Vine Moss Games and keep pursuing this incredible passion. June’s VM Game is already underway, and as the temperature rises with summer beginning soon, all I can say right now is Vine Moss Games is ready to bring the heat. Thank you for supporting Vine Moss Games! It’s unbelievable to say that we’ve made it (almost) halfway, and as the games keep rolling out, I know I’ll have your support to make it through. Thank you also for reading this retrospective on Remember Me Before Andromeda; I hope you’ve enjoyed this new angle for literary games because there’s much more to come.

Take care ~

~ Dev