astra's garden - postmortem (Patreon)

astra's garden released today! which means it's the perfect time to look back and talk about how production went... (some of this stuff is repeated from the art collection, so sorry in advance!)

also, this post contains plot spoilers!! i don't know why you'd read a postmortem for a game you haven't played, but i wanted to give that warning just in case.

LET'S GO!!!!

timeline + thought process

after releasing starry flowers (late feb 2021), i could not stop thinking about plot stuff related to that cast. including more of periwinkle's backstory and how his first meeting with astragalus would've gone!

at the same time, i've always wanted to make an idle game, and i realized astragalus would be the perfect fit for that, since her magic wasn't really defined before. NOW SHE GROWS PLANTS!! which is why she's suited to running an apothecary :)

i knew i wanted to have a similar setup to Hungry Hearts Diner (that game was my main inspiration, but in retrospect what came out is even more similar to A Hero and a Garden), where a storyline unlocks per character as you give them what they need.

so i decided to have 3 characters, each representing a different phase of a plant's life cycle (seed, sprout, and flower). i knew the flower was gonna be periwinkle, and i knew i wanted one of the new characters to be related to astra. i also knew i wanted one of the characters to represent death or dying (as part of the life cycle)--originally this was gonna be some witch doing a cool illusion spell to look all skeletal and neat, like a weird grim reaper. but the idea wasn't really coming together, and i was busy finishing bad end theater anyway, so astra's garden was left to simmer for a while as something i could maybe do for a game jam in the future.

but then in november, i suddenly realized vinegar could fill one of the roles. spooky soiree's stories were all very short with not much to each one individually, so there was a lot of room to develop vinegar as a character--when did she get her zombie virus? how did she end up doing the spell to split her soul from her dying body? what if she gets her diagnosis at this point in the timeline and goes to astragalus for help?! and how exciting is it that we already know how this turns out for her?!?!?? the potential was insane.

after that, everything else fell into place. astra should have past experience with vinegar's illness. WHAT IF IT WAS HER BROTHER AND HE WAS DEAD ALL ALONG. all the pieces fit together so well, it was like the game became fully formed in my head and it went from something i'd like to do at some point, to something i absolutely needed to make RIGHT AWAY.

i wrote the full script of the main story all at once, over the course of a few days. here are some of my archived tweets from that time:

i also got the basic plant growing mechanics prototyped in, and hooked up the cutscenes to the number of each plant you collected. the first test build is dated november 30... here's what it looked like!

the npcs weren't clickable yet, and there was no money required to buy seeds. it was super barebones! but even in this state it was satisfying to play through, and it felt amazing to be able to share the story so quickly with my friends. and because the main script was completed, i was able to send it out to some of my translators early and get a headstart on that, similar to how i did with bad end theater! (i got to release with 4 extra languages this time! nice!!)

i finished all the character busts and backgrounds during december (excluding cassava's), but then i ran out of energy... bad end theater was starting to get a lot of traction during that time, and i had to work on adding translations for it too. i knew trying to finish a new project so soon after such a huge release was a mistake, but i was so excited!! hubris of man, gets me every time.

(the state it was in for a while... lol)

i thought i could heal from my burnout and get back to it soon, but my life got completely derailed in january, and i wasn't able to return to this project until late march. which... is actually maybe for the best, because it meant i didn't have any reason to rush it out. and no more day job to hold me back!! think of how many games i'll be able to put out now!!!

i eased back into things by drawing the ending illustrations first. then i took my time adding all the little npc animations that i wanted to do, and finally made it so you could collect money from them and buy the seeds. the soundtrack (which i had struggled with even trying to start) miraculously got finished in 2 days, i finally added sound effects (my least favorite task), and then i wrote the epilogues and drew the final illustration!

and now it's done!!!!! so technically 5-6 months from start to finish? with a long gap in the middle. that's not too bad!

~ * aesthetic * ~

because this game is related to starry flowers, i went with the same general artstyle--big bold lines and patterned backgrounds with flat colors. i generally tend to make style choices based on what's easiest for me to draw for the amount of art necessary (so that i can realistically finish everything!)

for this game in particular, i wanted everything to be easily readable at a glance. since it's mainly meant as a mobile game, i expected a lot of players to be on a smaller screen; so rather than drawing super detailed stuff, i went with large shapes and clear silhouettes.

the cutscenes were styled differently than normal (the character busts only take up a small part of the screen!) partly to differentiate from the gameplay segment, and partly because it was faster to draw it that way. it was super nice to only have to do one background! wow!! the colors were lifted directly from starry flowers too, so i didn't have to spend time fussing over those. it's a pretty unique color palette to me, so it was really fun building a game around it.

i mentioned in the art collection cassava's colors used to be red! here's the comparison:

red isn't really used anywhere else in the game... it clashed a lot!!! and the purple makes him look more like astra's sibling anyway. (i also added the daffodil to his hat since it felt like it was missing something... small foreshadowing haha.)

the idea behind his design was like a flamboyant bird, i guess i was thinking phoenix-y? periwinkle has feathery fluff under the brim of his witch hat, so i wanted cassava to have a similar thing going on.

the rest of the cast were redesigns of existing characters, so i don't have much to say about them. seeing how vinegar's colors changed so much is so tragic...! as mentioned in the art collection, her fashion sense is based on the type of clothes i would've liked as a teen. that applies to current vinegar too! i always wanted a cat-ear hoodie...

OH, i did animations this time!!!!! here's one of the early progress gifs:

it's time consuming work, but since i could do them all as 2-3 frame loops, it wasn't so bad! i simplified the designs a lot (like you can't see astra's braids) and didn't bother with shading because they're pretty small onscreen, and they popped enough without it. i used the same line color for all the customers so that the main characters would stand out a little more (in a subtle way). i'm getting really used to clip's animation tools, so i wanna try to do more stuff like this for future games!

i initially wanted to do something a little more ambitious for the intro scene, but i left it blank instead since you only see it once for a few lines anyway... i never even drew the outside of her shop, except for the hint of it in the final illustration.... (oh and for the ending art i went with a lineless style to differentiate it from the rest of the game, and because it was easier to draw, but that style is also kind of a callback to syrup, which is fun!! but now i'm rambling...)

the last thing is music! i really wanted an acoustic sound for this game, but i didn't have very good guitar VSTs that i liked, so that was a major roadblock for a long time. i use fl studio, and it updates with new VSTs sometimes, and i happened to find one called FLEX that gave me A TON OF FREE INSTRUMENTS!!!!!!! and they all sound really good?!?!?? like, just by default?????? so that's mainly what i used for this soundtrack :)

i feel like once i pick a good instrument as a starting place, actually composing the songs goes really fast... oh my god i was so excited when i found out slide notes work with these guitars (they don't always work with some VSTs!) so i had fun putting those in (most obvious in Way Back Home)

i really love getting to do remixes of existing themes! periwinkle's song is a shorter and more chilled out version of the one from starry flowers. and comparing vinegar's song to her track in spooky soiree, it's like... girl are you gonna be ok...... it's a great feeling. very happy with my soundtracks :)

experience + takeaways

the main development troubles (as with most of my games) were external factors...

in the past few years especially it's been really easy for me to burnout from overworking myself. juggling industry work with personal work while also managing a household has always been a recipe for disaster, but i cared about all those things! it really sucks to have lost one of those, but since in the end it meant i have the actual space to focus on my own projects, i'm ultimately happier for it.

this is a complete tangent (and pretty personal) but if i don't go into it here, i'm not sure i'd ever find a space to talk about it. sorry for the wall of text, but...

i'd been feeling really torn between what i wanted to do, and what i felt obligated to keep doing to earn a good living. i started getting overambitious with industry work too, because there were finally real opportunities available to me there. i thought one day i could make a big budget nomnomnami game that everyone could be excited about, and do some good for the industry which has been mostly straddled between "no queer rep, fuck u" and "wholesome only! uwu" ...and i know a lot of people say my games are wholesome, and i do think in a sense that yes, there's a lot of lighthearted feel-good stuff in them. but i'm trying to go deeper than that, and get into the heavy shit too. based on the backlash queer games that reach a large audience have gotten for being even a little bit messy, though... maybe it's for the best that i'm forced to go the solo route. the people who need my stories may or may not find them, and that's okay. maybe i'm being way too self-important thinking about all of it this way too, but like... when i think of the positive impact the disgaea series has left on my life, i want to make something like that and give that feeling to everyone. disgaea is also a series that is relatively niche and doesn't reach everyone. even though the stories in disgaea resonate with me so deeply that i want everyone to know them... idk, i just want to write things that i love, and for people to gain something from those things. i wanted to try to reach everyone i can, but maybe it's better to be passive and let that happen on its own. it already has been, the entire time i've been sharing my work online.

anyway... it feels nice to make a small game that i'm really proud of, and to know that i can keep making stories like this in the future. i hope i can ultimately do good in the world. i've thought about that a lot these days.

final thoughts

I LOVE THIS GAME.......... i said everything i wanted to with it, and it leaves a deep impact on the soul... i don't think there are a lot of games that really tackle these topics, which is part of why i was so motivated to make it.

i think all my best games are the ones i'm most nervous about releasing... and i was pretty nervous about this one, considering the subject matter and my current life circumstances. some of the days leading up to release i was honestly consumed with anxiety, feeling like i was about to get attacked (but that's just trauma-brain...). everything went amazingly well today. i couldn't be happier.

i didnt expect to write such a long post, so thanks for making it to the end ;o;

see you in the next one...!