Author Commentary
The year comes to a close, making this a fitting moment to reflect back on how this game's development got started in the first place.
For a few years before The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, I had been dabbling in making visual novels as a hobby by entering visual novel jams. These were month long jams with no specific goals other than to create a visual novel from start to finish. I entered maybe once a year for... uhhh?? four years? I don't remember, and you don't care. My point here is that it was enough so that I noticed a pattern...
If a jam allowed additional gameplay in the visual novel, the entries utilizing it were often among the most played ones. "Huh." thought little ol' me, and schemed a wicked scheme. The next jam that came around (and I had time to enter) was Nanoreno, and time had come to test my hypothesis.
I only had a month, so I knew from the start the story had to be a "bottle episode", as in the whole story must be contained within one location to save time, and limit how much art I needed to make.
So who were the characters, why were they there, and why wouldn't they switch locations? The easiest answer was the classic "they're locked in and must escape" which is a story everyone and their dog has written at some point. Whatever, it's just a game jam I thought, and carried on.
Then came the characters, at first Ashley was going to be a silent protagonist named Player (yeah, you read that right). I wanted to toy with the idea that players tend to do the most unhinged things when allowed. So there'd be the Player, and one support character whose sole purpose was to spout exposition, and react to the player doing player things. Oh, the humor that would ensue.
There is one small remnant of this idea still in the game. It's at the very beginning when the player wakes Andrew up. He explains something, and "Player" responds with an emoji bubble thing, and Andrew then says "Quit your complaining!" despite the fact that Ashley hadn't really complained out loud. Now, imagine if the entire game was like this........... It would've sucked so bad. I dropped the concept pretty much right away.
This original concept is also why the narrator addresses "you" (the Player), instead of being in pure third person or first person point of view. I did enjoy this game master type format though, so even after making Ashley an actual character, I kept it.
Since Ashley was now a character, she needed to have a story. Cue the whole childhood incident (again, generic, but whatever it's a game jam). This also elevated Andrew to a character status, rather than a mere exposition spouter. Great! Now I knew who they were, and had a story to tell other than "unhinged room escape". (Which is a game I'd still want to play, as long as it isn't made by me.)
This is the first ever sketch I made of the two. Almost final design straight out the bag lol.
This was me still figuring out the UI. I don't remember what was the idea behind having the names off to the side, but thankfully I decided against it.
I drafted rather lengthy character sheets for the duo, as the more I wrote, the more they revealed themselves to be curious little jerks, with a lot going on between them. The story formed almost on its own after that. I knew I couldn't go too in-depth though, as the game jam imposed a hard time limit. So I shelved most of it thinking "well maybe I'll tell this story later on my own time", and left a sequel bait at the end of the story, to give myself an opening to get back to it "one day" that I assumed would never come. And also to give myself time to see if there really even was an interesting story to tell, or if this was one of those "really cool idea!!!"s that emerge out of the blue, but rot away as soon as you sit down to write them. If you're a fellow storyteller, you know what I'm talking about.
Leaving an "in" to continue later is something I've done plenty before. I might very well get back to my other game jam novels one day, which is part of the reason I took them down. For now though, there is no room for such endeavors, as The Coffin of Andy and Leyley must be completed, and will remain the sole priority until then.
Back to my "visual novels with gameplay perform better than pure visual novels" -hypothesis! I entered the game jam with my corny-ass bottle episode organ harvesting edgelord romp, and lo' and behold!!
It did gain more attraction than my other (gameplay-less) visual novels! In fact, it gains enough momentum to leave the visual novel scene. The new influx of people turns my data useless, and the hypothesis goes out the window. So in the end, was it the gameplay that attracted people? Or was it purely the oh, so scandalously unhealthy relationship the duo has? You tell me.
Somehow the game got caught in a shitflinging contest between the self-appointed morality police, and the people sick and tired of being told what kind of fiction they're allowed to read.
Suddenly, life gave me two choices, much like a visual novel would.
Do I take the game down to appease the people telling me to kill myself?
Or do I create the story I already wanted to create and get paid for it?
Boy oh boy, what a dilemma. I contemplated it for all of two nano seconds!
I dug out all the stuff I had shelved, and soon had the draft of the full story all ready to go. I went over it a few times, deemed it to be a lot of fun, and begun production of the full game. Episode 2 released on Steam in October 2023, and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley wrecked havoc across social media! And I thought there was a shitstorm before? HAHAHHAHAHA!!!!
And here we are now.
I want to thank you, my dear audience, for all your support. And I also want to thank the people who tirelessly pissed and moaned about some crappy indie game for months and months and months, helping it gain popularity beyond my comprehension. I would've never, ever gotten this far if it wasn't for you! The kinder thanks goes to the audience though, obviously. Thank you for weathering the storm with me, I hope you'll like the terrible little story you've helped to subsist.
The development continues, unchanged. I can't wait to show you the next episode. It's just awful, I really like it! Hope you will too.
Have a wonderful end of the year,
- The Author of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, Your Least Favorite Person.