I love deadlines. They are my best friend and the only thing in the world that keeps me accountable. I love Michael and Olivia for creating a deadline I can force myself to stick to because heaven knows I can’t create one for myself.

Originally, Celestial Signs was going to be a short 10,000 word project for Ace Jam 2025 (Aries is an ace king <3 ). With a deadline to follow, Val and I both were on track to release the full game perfectly completed and polished. Then a family emergency meant we’d have to drop out of the jam. With no deadline to grip us by the throat, the scope gradually grew bigger and our work on it trickled to a near standstill. Now the script is 20,000+ words, and there’s still scenes I want to write and sprites Val wants to draw (and possibly CGs???) with little writing and drawing actually occurring.

Enter Jam Jam. The most beautiful of the jams because it lets you do Whatever You Want and with a gorgeous deadline to do it. Val and I knew with how big the project has grown, it was unlikely we’d be able to submit a polished game for the jam. Instead, we chose to focus on the first act only with the script as edited as I could get it and the sprites in their sketch phase. By focusing on the first act, it allowed us to focus on smaller things like making the itch.io page pretty and adding more reactivity to the player choices—things we would have foregone if we had tried to push the full game.

As a player, I dislike demos and tend to avoid them. If I play a game, I want to be able to play the full thing at once. I don’t want to wait for who knows how long to possibly have the chance to play the full story. I’ve seen too many dropped projects to have any love and energy left to invest in demos. As a game dev, however, I’m learning they’re another great accountability tool and sometimes the pressure to get anything out is overwhelming. There were many points during Jam Jam where I wanted to try to convince Val into pushing out the full game instead of a demo, but, overall, I think I’m glad we went with the choice we did.

Art

I can’t speak on the process of making the art other than Val did a phenomenal job. She’s a pen and paper artist trying to make the transition to digital art, so making digital sprites has been a learning process for her, but I think she’s nailing it. Aries is my love forever and always, and his sprite has gone through many, many changes before becoming what it is (and, still, Val has ideas to redo it and make it even better). She hopes for everyone to have fully colored sprites with multiple expressions and outfit changes in the final game. I think she’s going above what’s expected of an indie vn, but I love these characters so much and will not complain one bit. I cherish every piece of art she creates, regardless of what makes it into the final game or not. I will say, Val is intentional about everything she does when it comes to character design. So much life and history reside in every small detail of the characters.

Writing

For the writing, Val largely gave me control of the script. They’re her characters she's had since she was a teenager so I do involve her in the scripting process and turn to her when I have doubts, but I’ve mostly been left to my own devices. As I’ve mentioned several times, Aries is so special to me. I enjoy him as a character, and he’s so different than what I usually write. He’s calm and collected. Others look to him even as he does not feel confident in his capabilities as a leader, problem-solver, or authority figure. He lets himself get pushed and dragged around because putting up a fight is too much effort. In Val’s very first iteration of him, however, he was angst incarnate. Over the years she gradually moved him away from that to a chill and mellow character. I begged her to let me thrust him into angst again. I want this man to be suicidal. I want none of the characters to realize he’s suicidal. I want him to be burdened by a guilt so suffocating he wants nothing more than to choke on it. For a visual novel especially, I want most of Aries’s problems to come from an internal battle no one else realizes he is fighting. He can be mellow and chill on the outside but I want him half-dead on the inside. Val, the angel that she is, encouraged me to push it as far as I want.

For Jam Jam, much of the writing was just editing what had already been written for Ace Jam. The biggest change was the opening nightmare scene. Instead of writing the memory as it happened, I decided instead to write it as Aries remembers it: a brutal nightmare where he is the source of the catastrophe. I then tried to focus on the more visual and audio aspects of the game as a medium. I’m still learning in that regard, but the jam let me focus on the smaller things I usually overlook. I fear there’s too much exposition in the game (mentioning Lydia, I believe, was a step too far into the great confusion that is Aries’s past), but I’m not sure how to avoid that. I cut it down as much as I felt comfortable doing and tried to spread it between multiple scenes, but if it’s a slog I’m sorry. I’m not a fantasy writer, but I’m trying my best and hope to keep getting better as we work on the rest of the game.

Future Plans

The plan going forward is to finish the game, of course! I’d like to release the full thing at once rather than act by act. There are really only three more scenes I have left to write slapped into the middle of the game as an intermission of sorts, so releasing act by act wouldn't even give me more time to write as the ending is already written. With the majority of the characters already introduced, Val just has to edit the sprites to her satisfaction and draw a couple more. Whatever she decides in regards to CGs, I fully support. Alas, I have no more deadlines to hold me accountable, so the game will come out when it comes out.

A lot of the people found our game through the romance tag, which I feel guilty about because the demo has negative romance. But I promise the romantic aspects will come when the time is right. While Aries does fall in love during the course of the game, I do think the focus always remains on his calling to help people in need and his tangled emotions surrounding his past. His relationship with Mari, for example, is just as important to the narrative as his developing relationship with Shellsea and plays just as big of a role in the climax of the game.

Jam Jam

If you've never heard of Jam Jam, you should go check out all the games that were edited/uploaded for it! Some of my favorites include Proud Blossoms (the script haunts me because of how perfectly intentional it all is. I want to write like that so badly wtffff), Leatherbound (a delicious BDSM story with a love interest that's as sweet as he is spicy), and Grassman (a cute and fun puzzle-platformer with the most adorable player character). Sometimes we just need a space to return to projects we'd rather not think about, so I'm incredibly grateful to Michael and Olivia for creating that space!

Val and I are so honored by the love that Celestial Signs has received so far, and we're eager to share the complete game with everyone! 

Now, here's some misc sketches of the gang as thanks for reading this far <3