thank you so much for the kind reception of OMAMORI. if you enjoyed your experience, please consider leaving a rating on the itch.io page - it goes a long way to get more eyes on the game :)
here's a quick rundown for those interested!
OMAMORI is a serirei focused kinetic visual novel. you are a spirit haunting an omamori who helps people that receive it specifically with their struggles in love and romance - and one day, your omamori is given to reigen arataka.
features:
32k words
over 450 character sprites
8 achievements to unlock
outfits, locations, and more surprises!
āØ download OMAMORI : a mp100 fangame here āØ
produced by quiet cabin : ko-fi | bsky | tumblr | itch.io
weāll be chatting and sharing a post mortem in the following weeks, so keep an eye out on the Quiet Cabin socials if you'd like to hear a bit about the making of the game. thank you again for the support and excitement!
To be aware you might be trans but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents. By the time you are a gainfully employed adult, that box will contain multitudes, and the thought of disrupting it will grow ever more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level; you think not of what you want but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves, and you apologize, if only implicitly, for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct, and eventually, you decide the construct is just who you are, and you swaddle yourself up in it, and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isnāt.
This reading of TV Glowās deliberately anticlimactic, noncathartic ending cuts against the transition narrative you typically see in movies and TV, in which a trans person self-accepts, transitions, and lives a happier life. Owen gets trapped in a space where he knows what he must do to live an authentic life but simply refuses to take those steps because, well, burying yourself alive is a terrifying thing to do. The transition narrative posits a trans existence as, effectively, a binary switch between āmanā and āwomanā that gets flipped one way or another, but to make our lives so binary is to miss how trans existences possess an inherent liminality.
Humansā lives unfold in a constant state of becoming until death, but trans people are uniquely keyed in to what this means thanks to the simple fact of our identities. You can get lost in that liminality, too, forever trapped in a midnight realm of your own making, stuck between what you believe is true (I am a nice man with a good family and a good job, and I love my life) and what you know, deep in your most terrified heart of hearts, is real (I am a girl suffocating in a box).
And yet if you want to read the film as being about the dangerous allure of nostalgia, youāre not wrong. I Saw the TV Glow totally supports that interpretation, too! But in tempting you with that reading, the film creates a trap for cis viewers that will be all too familiar to trans viewers. Somewhere in the middle of Maddyās story about The Pink Opaque being real, you will make a choice between āThis kid has lost it!ā and āNo. Go with her, Owen,ā and in asking you to make that choice, TV Glow is simulating the act of self-accepting a trans identity.
See, the grimmer read of the filmās ending truly is a nihilistic one. It leaves no hope, no potential for growth, no exit. Yet you must actively choose to read that ending as nihilistic. If you are cis and the end of I Saw the TV Glow left you with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a weird but hard-to-pin-down feeling that something had broken, and a melancholy bordering on horror ā congratulations, this movie gave you contact-high gender dysphoria.
In an infinite number of possible universes, there is at least one where I am still living āas a man,ā embracing my fictionality, avoiding looking at how much more raw and real I feel when I āpretendā to be a woman. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope heās okay.
Consider, then, my cis reader, that TV Glow is for both you and me, but it is maybe most of all for him. I hope he sees it. I hope he breaks down crying in the bathroom afterward. I hope he, after so many years locked inside himself, hears the promise of more life through the hiss of TV static.
Emily St. James, āI Saw the TV Glowās Ending Is Full of Hope, If You Want It to Be,ā Vulture. June 4, 2024.
Here it is folks! The final Omamori devlog š„¹. In it we'll be taking a look at how everything began, some of the ups and downs we had along the way, including some looks at behind the scenes work, and finally, what's next for the studio!
I'm going to try something a little different here. Normally I link back to the devlog on itch so you can read it there, but I'm wondering if people might be more inclined to read the full thing if they don't have to leave to another tab lol (Although I also worry that tumblr just isn't really great for really long post reading..) But! I shall put the choice in your hands. Here's the link to it on itch.io! Or you can click the read more below to see it here!
I'd be really interested to know what Y'ALL are interested in seeing next š
Hello everyone!!
Itās been one month since Omamori released which sounds incredibly fake but here we are! As of posting this, Omamori is sitting at 454 downloads!! Which is really, REALLY exciting and so much more than I ever thought to hope for. Thank you so much!
Today weāre going to be talking a little bit about the process, how things went, what we learned, and whatās next! This is going to be a bit of a longer post but some of you have been with us since the very beginning, and it might be nice to look back, and some of you are new, and have no idea how it all went!
HOW IT STARTED
(The original mock up I made to help Rob visualize what I was thinking for the main menu screen.)
In the beginning of April 2023 I started telling Rob about a 'totally not real' idea I had for a serirei dating sim. It was very much in the 'haha jk wouldn't that be fun, but it'll totally never happen' category. Then I thought, since it won't ever happen, it could be fun to do a little mock-up. Just a fake screenshot of a character and some dialogue. Then I thought, maybe I could try to animate it to show some additional dialogue. THEN I thought, well if I'm going to do all of that, I might as well just put together a slice in a game engine and just do a screen recording.
So I sat down and installed an entire game engine, learned how to navigate its interface and how to use its visual scripting language, how to create & use variables so that you could enter your character name, how to put in a dialogue choice screen, even made a tiny pixel art takoyaki... all to create a 20 second screen recording of a game that was totally not going to exist.
Totally.
I even shared it on Tumblr! It uh, as of typing this, still only has 3 notes lol. You can see the original post here, but here's a screenshot of it.
I won't lie, it was actually really disheartening to see basically no engagement with it. I know there wasn't much info on the concept itself, since the game wasn't going to be real (I thought), and maybe that would have helped, but it definitely did a blow to the ol' self esteem. (Although I can say, looking at it now, I really like this! I'm really insecure about my visual art and style, but y'know what, this is pretty cool! )
I didn't let that deter me though. I was really excited about this game and the story, and at the end of the day, it was a silly little project with my silly little blorbos. So I kept thinking about it and poking the idea and pretty soon the fixation wasĀ churning full blast. I was developing the plot, I had snippets of dialogue in mind, I was thinking about GUI elements. And all the while I was yelling all of this at Rob. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask him if he wanted to do the art, only to discover he was working up the nerve to ask if he could help out! After that, it was just a lot of excited yelling about this project.
Looking back at this original mock-up, I think it's really great to see how Rob took my original concepts for layout and design and breathed some actual life into them. At some point I'd done some additional iterations on the dialogue boxes:
And from thereĀ weĀ got:
Which ultimatelyĀ gave us:
HOW IT WENT
There were definitely some ups and down on this, for sure. Getting the demo out was a huge accomplishment and we were both eager to just keep working on it. In fact, the original plan, after releasing the demo October 2023, had been to release the full game by the coming March, for Serizawa's birthday. Ambitious? Without a doubt lol. Obviously that didn't happen, and our next hope was to release it for Reigen's birthday 2024. This way it'd be full circle. Then we hoped to release it for Valentine's day maybe. (This is why we didn't announce a release date until it was well and truly DONE.)
Some of you may remember that Rob injured his hand in early 2024 and so we took quite a bit of time off to let him heal. We're not about that crunch life. Even if this wasn't entirely a passion project, there's absolutely no reason to crunch. So we took a step back so he could heal up. While that was happening.. we had the Great Engine Switch.
The demo for Omamori was originally made in GDevelop. An open-source, no-code engine. And it worked great for the demo! But once I started adding in features that people would come to expect in a visual novel, like saving and loading, or a history of the text, things got a little more complicated. It reached a point where I was essentially building a visual novel engine within the Gdevelop engine. Which, while incredibly fascinating and a great mental challenge, wasn't exactly the best use of my time. Not when there are engines specifically made for creating visual novels, like Ren'py. Which has things like saving & loading, dialogue history, text size options and dyslexic font options, all ready to go out of the box. So, I changed engines.
Changing engines was a long process, partly because it took me some time to finally come to terms with the fact that I just needed to do it, and partly because while some things did come out of the box, I did still have to re-do other things all over again, like entering all of the dialogue and choice options for the prologue and part of chapter one that was used for the demo. I was also learning a whole new engine, which isn't no-code (although it IS really streamlined), and I had to find my way around.
We had a lot of plans for some things that ultimately had to get cut. Early on we planned to have more splash screen images for pivotal moments, which would also be accessible from a Gallery page on the main menu. We even toyed with the idea of reaching out to other artists in the community to see if they would be interested in doing guest art to be featured in the gallery! But as we made progress we had to decide what was essential to the game, to telling the story, and what was a Nice To Have. Learning how to nip that scope creep early is an essential skill in gamedev!
Still, all things considered, as a team of two people we made an entire game in only two years, even with the obstacles we faced. And I think that's pretty damn impressive.
Q&A
What was yourĀ favorite part?
ROB:
Getting to work on a passion project with Jace! Getting to see this through to the end with them was very rewarding. Like, did you know you can just make cool things with your friends?? It's awesome and makes for a unique blend of cheerleading, flexing, and teamwork. Definitely recommended.
For the art, I got a kick out of trying to develop a visual identity that was as much our own game as it was a Mob Psycho fangame. The first season opening sequence was my main touchpoint. This poster was a source of inspiration too, notably for the paper cut out look for the sprites. It was fun and a nice way to appreciate the series from a different perspective.
JACE:
This is actually a tough one lol! Part of what I love about being an indie dev are all the different roles you play. Jumping from writing to programming to creating mockups to resource sourcing for background music or sound effects, I think that's the part I enjoy most. It's hard to get bored when you're wearing so many hats and that really appeals to me.
If I had to pick a favorite part, I would say sharing the original drafts of the script with Rob and getting to see his reactions to Reigen's impressive levels of fumbling was a lot of fun. Also, figuring out a piece of code that had me stumped for days is nothing short of euphoric.
What was theĀ mostĀ challenging?
ROB:
Mostly mental hurdles. Like, accepting that āgood enoughā IS actually good enough was sometimes a challenge. On top of wanting to tweak old sprites (we started this two years ago after all!) I had wanted to make more splash art and character poses, and add silly details like giving the face on Reigenās pj outfit different expressions. But as it turns out, if you want to finish something then at some point you have to stop working on it. Great lessons for battling perfectionism.
JACE:
Changing engines and learning an entire new one was definitely a challenge. I'd dabbled with Ren'py before so I wasn't completely in the dark, but I hadn't done more than dialogue and some choices. With this I had to learn how to navigate Ren'py's screen language so I could build my own screens, I had to learn how to create and manipulate variables in the engine, I watched a LOT of youtube tutorials and got real familiar with the Ren'py subreddit lol.
Something that was really, really challenging for me was learning, and re-learning, how to start. I would work on the game for weeks and be doing great, really have a nice groove, and then Life would happen andĀ I wouldn't touch it for a little while and suddenly the thought of opening up the code was terrifying. I was convinced I couldn't do it, I had no idea what I was doing, and that I was going to get stuck. And it got harder and harder to just start. Even when all signs pointed to that I maybe DO know what I'm doing!
What helped a lot was that I kept a mini-devlog. Every day that I did gamedev work I journaled about what I worked on, how long I spent on it, and what my next steps were. This helped in SO many ways. For one, it was just really nice to see a calendar view of my productivity. Time is fake and its easy for me to think I haven't been productive "enough". Then I look at my calendar and see this:
Not every month looked like this of course. There's a couple where it's pretty damn barren. But that's where the other data points came to help. It was really helpful to see how long I worked on something as well.Ā For example:
It took me literally twenty minutes to create all of the idle and hover images for the icons on the corkboard. I remember I did this quickly before running out to work. And this became a point of constant reference for me. Every time I felt myself getting caught in the swirl of, I can't do this, opening the engine feels scary and overwhelming, or I only have .. two hours... three hours... before I have to go to work or go to an appointment or go to bed, what could I get done in that time, I would think of how much I got done in just twenty minutes. Because ultimately, any time spent on the project is productive! But having these little reminders helped a lot. And each mini devlog also had a section for my reflections and what I hoped to work on next. So if it was a few days, or a month or two, before I was able to get back to it, I could reread the most recent devlog to see what Past Me was planning to do!
What might youĀ doĀ differently?
ROB:
Oh man. Organization. I frequently moved the working files between tablet and desktop and ended up with duplicates all over the place. It was a pain after we came back from that long break for my hand injury because I had different expressions and sprites spread over a mess of nearly identical files.
The worst part is this was not the first or last time this happened. Why? Don't live like me.
JACE:
Well, if we're talking about Omamori specifically, knowing what I know now, I'd of course just start working in Ren'py from the start. I'd had the thought that I could learn one engine (to rule them all). Because I have ideas and plans for other games, and had hoped to find one engine that could do everything, and I wouldn't have to jump around, potentially learning a bunch of different coding languages. But, there's something to be said for using the right tool for the job, and in this case it was definitely Ren'py.
If we're talking about future projects and what I might do differently, that's a toughie. I think every project is going to require different set up and preparation. If I were to do another visual novel, I think I'd start tackling any special screens or gameplay mechanics as early as possible. Writing is one of my strengths and I know I can do that. And I'm familiar enough with the engine that I know entering in my writing and dialogue is pretty straightforward. But making those custom screens and troubleshooting them always takes much longer than I think it will.
In terms of organization, I have a Notion template I created for my game projects, and Omamori largely served as the trial run for what I would and wouldn't need. The mini devlog calendar is absolutely a keeper. But the way I organized the programming vs writing task lists definitely got reworked in the final month of Omamori, and I've already started updating my template and other already existing projects to reflect the new workflow!
I think with every new project I'm going to do things a little differently and, for me, that's part of the fun!
DoĀ youĀ think you'd work on a game again?
ROB:
Yes! I'm currently taking time off from commission work, but I really enjoy creative collaboration in general, so I would definitely work on a game again in the future.
JACE:
Oh honey, I already am š.
What's next for you?
ROB:
Iām looking forward to diving in to some original work this summer. Not sure where it will take me yet, but I've been itching to get back into making comics, so that might be next! If you'd like to keep up with my work, I update myĀ Tumblr most frequently.
JACE:
I'm so glad you asked! While Rob moves toward exploring comics, Quiet Cabin is also going to shift gears. I'm going to focus on games with original characters and stories. I don't have any plans to make another fangame but I do have a LOT of other ideas! (Some of which were hinted at in Omamori š .)
So what can you expect? Stylistically, I've always had a love for pixel art so there will be some of that going forward. Depending on the project I might seek out another artist to collaborate with for things like backgrounds or character sprites, especially if I do another visual novel. So if you're an artist and have read this far and would be interested in collaborating on a future project, definitely reach out! I have a lot of ideas, a lot of different vibes and genres, so don't worry if your style is different from what you see in Omamori! And who knows, I'm finally reaching a point where I'm happier with my artistic abilities so maybe for one of these projects I'll attempt the art myself!
As far as genres go, I've got more romance, some horror, some fantasy, maybe some monsters you can date.. š
I know we all came here for the blorbos but I truly hope you'll stick around for my next projects, I've already started writing one of them and I'm really excited about it!
Up-Coming Projects include (in no particular order):
Garage Sale Skull: A short, in-browser text game where you find a weird skull at a garage sale. Itās fine, itās not real, itās just some weird art project.
ā¦right? (Romance with a sprinkle of horror.)
Untitled Dating Sim(?): A visual novel dating sim. Maybe. The dating part is up in the air. It's VERY fresh conceptually and I'm still ironing things out so I don't want to say too much but I will say: time loops. Sorry. Wait. Maybe you didn't hear me. Time šš¾ Loop šš¾ Visual Novelšš¾
Apartment 102 : There is something wrong with your apartment.. A very short top-down pixel horror game.
Reyna's Remedies: As a young potion and remedy maker, you open up a new shop on the side of a busy road in the kingdom. There's a lot going on, there's a monster in the Deep Woods, a monster the Princess went missing trying to hunt, there's a constant flow of adventurers in need of healing potions and everyday townspeople with mundane needs. With the help of your animal assistant, you have one month to raise enough money to secure another month of rent, to prove you can do this, and in the process help the different people that knock on your door. (A time & resource management game with an overarching plot. Queer romance with a bit of horror.)
My hope is to release Garage Sale Skull this summer. Untitled Dating Sim(?) is new and uncooked, but rattling around my head pretty loudly. Meanwhile Reyna's Remedies and Apt 102 are games I've been brainstorming on for literally years.. Ā Either way, there are two more steam next fests this year and I'd really love to submit a demo for āØ something āØfor at least one of them. We'll see!
Once a new project launches I will of course be posting devlogs here on its project page. I'll also be sharing quick updates & general gamedev thoughts on ko-fi, bsky, and tumblr. At the end of the day I'm still just one person, and I may forget to crosspost to a platform, but itch.io will always be the first place to get updates. I'm also considering making video devlogs in the future that will showcase more art and gameplay, especially as I shift toward games that have more action, so you can also follow the YouTube channel!
Again, I cannot thank everyone enough for their continued support and enthusiasm!! I'm really grateful to Rob for jumping into the abyss with me on this one. The game wouldn't be what it is without his help! All the cheerleading from followers as we worked on it and now, all of the comments about how the game has touched or inspired folks has been so, so amazing to hear. Thank you everyone!!
Signing out of Omamori feels so cool and bittersweet, getting to play a part in making a game Iām genuinely proud of and just happy to have made with my incredibly cool and skilled friend is bizarre. It wouldnāt have happened without Jaceās drive and patient and skilled leadership. Thank you to everyone who has hyped us up along the way and left such sweet notes and comments after release, it has felt truly gratifying in a way I didnāt anticipate. Youāre awesome!
