2019 closing letter
Originally shared: 2019 December 17
Hello all!
As I wrap on Chapter 2, I would just like to extend a humble thank you for joining me on my journey in telling the Danganronpa Lapse story. It’s certainly one of my biggest projects to date and I’d like to provide some history on starting this endeavor as I express gratitude to those who are supporting me in this feat.
As is implied in the name, Danganronpa Lapse is a fan story based of the main series Danganronpa games, presented in the form of a kinetic novel. Story inspiration for Lapse came from all sorts of mystery media, specifically much of the DS-era games (Ghost Trick, Hotel Dusk, and the Ace Attorney games, as well as Uchikochi’s works (Ever17, 999, VLR)). A particular element I added that isn’t exactly in the main DR games is the element of Echo’s memories, presented in a Hotel Dusk-inspired manner. For those who don’t know, The main character of Hotel Dusk finds himself interrogating certain subjects after enough events have occurred, causing the player to answer questions based on how well they’ve been paying attention. It’s not difficult in any way but I enjoyed the mental involvement of it. Certain elements in Lapse are very deliberate, as much of Lapse is meant to take place in thoughts. I don’t punish the player for picking any of the incorrect responses as those reponses are meant to answer a reason why something wasn’t possible, causing the player to reassess. I would like to encourage readers to select all the discussion points to get the most out of the trial, as they trickle some additional info about the trial and the characters.
What finally made me feel comfortable enough to push through and begin the game proper was my participation in two game jams prior to this project. A game jam is defined as so:
A game jam is a hackathon for video games. It is a gathering of people for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 72 hours, and some even longer. Participants are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields.
- Game jam, Wikipedia
I participated in two jams as an individual within the same month, back to back: Friendship Jam and My First Game Jam Summer 2019, both of which lasted two weeks.
My goal for participating in these was to learn the workflow involved in game development. I had participated in MFGJ Winter 2017, but the program I used then (Unity) was a whole other beast to contend with and, to be frank, not a particularly friendly engine for someone starting out with no knowledge of programming (I have pages on pages of C# notes and I STILL don’t know how an array works! help!!). I managed to muscle through and create something I was satisfied with, but despite that, I yearned for more. My first game, A room for thought, was meant to be a first-person narrative but I wrestled so much with the ‘first-person’ aspect of it, that the narrative aspect fell short. Taking a step back from game development, I used that time to work on my illustrations, as I think of myself as primarily an illustrator.
My desire to create a fan story was reignited as I FINALLY purchased and played V3 earlier this year (yes, I was extremely late to the long-awaited third installment but I was Something-Awful-forums-early on the first and second so… it maths out, right?). I mulled over the atmosphere I wanted to invoke which ended up being, in a word, unnerving. The building the students reside in is rather luxurious, but to what purpose? The main character has no awareness of the phenomenon of ‘Ultimates’ (and yet, we as the players do so it’s rather disconcerting). Much of the set up is very intentional in creating a strange atmosphere of questions for the onlookers of this story… I hope to have invoked this sense as best I could with my available tools…!
I feel sincere enjoyment working on this story, as it encompasses many of my favorite inspirations all wrapped in a personally flavored package. I really don’t make an effort to advertise my story around, as I am very timid to the amount of scrutiny it could face foremost, but also because Lapse is very much a personal project that I just like to do for fun. I hope similar minded mystery-enthusiasts enjoy Lapse as much as I enjoy writing it!
Thank you to all those who enjoy the story, I truly appreciate anyone who takes interest in my hard work!
Here’s to 2020!