Hello bunch of people that got curious and decided to click on this post!

First and foremost: Thank you all SO much for playing this game, I wasn't expecting this short little visual novel to get the attention it got, and I am grateful for everyone who played on browser, downloaded it, left a review, left a comment or even viewed the game page!! Funny numbers go up, funny numbers make me happy.

Before making a postmortem of the game, there's a bunch of stuff to ramble about, and since this game won't have a continuation, I might as well infodump on you.

THE MAIN CHARACTER

Now, while in the game the main character is left unseen and I wanted to let the player insert themselves as them, I actually came up with a design for the MC while developing this game. Even if I wanted to add them to the game (I didn't), the limitations of the game jam wouldn't allow me. But now, the game jam is over, and for the 2.5 people who wondered about it, here's the main character of Face You Less!

I present to you… *very quiet drumroll*... Mr. Protagonist! Yea, "mister", because the canon MC is a boy! How very gay! We all know only guys can be this miserable jk jk.

Like a good background character, he doesn't have a name, no one in this game does lol. He's in his mid 20s, and is pretty much a twink with some really bad personal issues.

Like the boyfriend, he is a non character, and has very little personally outside of whatever you can count as a personality from what you see in the game. I didn't have the time to develop his character more, but it wasn't that relevant anyways.

THE BOYFRIEND

I've talked about the main non character, so it was natural that I would have to talk about the disfigured stranger that you see throughout the whole game.

The boyfriend also doesn't have a name because names are overrated jk. He's also in his mid 20s, but is a year older than the MC (around 24 and 25 respectively). He's a kind hunk who will always be there for you!! and that's pretty much his whole personality.

I've had a good idea of how I wanted him to look, but I've actually had a hard time coming up with a hairstyle for him. I kept on trying basic anime boy hairstyles, but nothing felt "kind hunk who will always be there for you!!" enough.

And yes, originally there was another face representing a middle school bully, but after a rewrite of the plot, it didn't feel like it fit in the game.

THE PLOT + MEANING

The game has been made in a way that leaves a lot of stuff to interpretation, mostly due to the word limit. Although I LOVE seeing what people thought the game was about (which is very valid and if you have your own interpretation feel free to share it), there is actually a canon meaning to the game. Sure, I made it in the middle of making the game, but there is a meaning!!

Again, since I won't make a continuation, I might as well share it here and now. So, here's the official meaning behind Face You Less!

The main character hates himself (lovely beginning I know). The face contorting is symbolism for the hatred he feels about himself. In the nightmare, he sees people he cares about berating him, telling him he's worthless and unlovable. This is actually him projecting his self hatred onto others, making him think that his closed ones hate him.

In the first ending, he doubts his boyfriend's love for him and won't listen when he tells him he cares about him. His projection made him think that everyone hates him no matter what they say, that everyone is a "broken record, playing a horrible tune."

In the second ending, he ignores his doubt. By accepting his loved ones in the nightmare, he becomes aware of their care for him, even if it's still there or not. He enjoys his boyfriend's love, but the hatred towards himself doesn't go away.

In both endings, his face still contorts, showing how, no matter what, his self hate is still present. The best scenario is him ignoring it for the sake of the ones he cares about.

Self hate is something that doesn't disappear with the power of friendship. There may be good days and bad days, but it might never go away. It takes a lot of work to get rid of it. You have to let your loved ones into your life, even if you don't think they deserve them, even if they look like contorted strangers. Because they love you, and they want to help.

Gonna admit, that explanation was way longer than I expected ;; Pretty sure this post is longer than the game itself LOL. It's not impossible to see someone not figuring out all of that from a 10 minute long game, and that's alright!! Again, the game was made in a way that lets you interpret it the way you want it.

I wouldn't say I made it with my own experience, I wish I had a buff guy comforting me ;; half joking. This is more of a fictionalized version of self hatred. Is it accurate? Maybe not. Even so, I hope everyone that struggles with it realizes that they are loved <3

Now that we're done with some aspects that I wanted to talk about, let's go over the game itself and let's see what opinion I have of it 3-4 days later!!

POSTMORTEM

Art:

I don't think I've actually drawn in black and white before. I mostly came up with some colors then set the saturation at 0. I think shading was a bit of a struggle, since the game takes place at night and the only source from the game is a faint light from the window behind the MC. As such, I wanted to make sure the game is not too bright nor too dark. Did I succeed? Meh.

Writing:

I've actually written the first variation of the script in like 1 hour of the first day! Maybe that's why it sucked.

At first, the game was about prosopagnosia, a medical condition that makes someone unable to distinguish one face from another. Or actually, a fictionalized version of it, that makes you not recognize a person at ALL. The game would've been the same, but it only had 1 bad ending, was a bit shorter and all the self hate metaphors were gone. To be honest, it was kind of bad, I wasn't satisfied with it at all. And so, Over the course of multiple days, while I was doing the art, I rewrote most of it, and now we have the version that we all know and… love?

Regarding the current version, it works for a short little game I guess. It doesn't really have the deep lore of my main game (or any long game), but it just works.

Music:

A bunch of people liked the music, it seems! Apparently it makes for an unintentionally eerie atmosphere. I think it's neat, possibly my best original song yet.

I wasn't sure where I was going with it, really. I just tried to make a "late at night can't sleep who the fuck is next to me" vibe, whatever that might be. I'm actually have extremely little experience in FL Studio, so I kinda just messed around with what I had a.k.a. adding the most intense reverb known to man.

Kinda like the script, this wasn't the first version either! The original had a bit less melody and had some late night background sound. After confirming that having melody AND background sounds is not allowed for the jame, I've made the current version.

I was thinking of posting it on YouTube if anyone would be interested. So uh, if you want some of the spooks to play in the background while you read or work, let me know!!

Programming:

Painful, I have no fucking idea how to program.

Luckly, Ren'py is not the most complicated program out there. I've made a game in it before, but I forgot everything I knew at that point lol.

Big fat huge thank you to "Zeli Learnings" on YT for showing me how to do most of the programming with her tutorials, and for some random threads on the Ren'py forums for helping me with some small stuff.

So, what now?

Needless to say, there won't be a Face You Less 2. I haven't made future plans for this game, actually.

One day while wanting to take a break from my main game, I decided to check the jam calendar for no reason and found the O2A2 game jam just 2 days before it started, and that's pretty much the history of this game.

One thing I would continue from this game would be the 2 main character, the gays, the lovers, the skrunchbobs. I was thinking about giving them actual characters and using them in more game jam games. Who knows? Maybe one day in the future I'll look at this game and think "look how I massacred my boys". Not sure how I could use them though. How obvious is it that I genuinely cannot write healthy relationships (half joking)? Every character from my games is miserable lol.

Well then, this is the end of this post! Partaking in O2A2 2023 was nice, I'd love to participate in more game jams in the future!!

Thank you for playing, thank you for following me, thank you for everything!! I hope you enjoyed this game, and maybe you'll stick around for my future projects.

Have a good night.