Lord of Lies Devlog #1

September 9th, 2023

Hey hey, it’s Joy! (Flowersforjoy)

Note: This Devlog is split into sections, so feel free to take it all in or skip to what you want to know. If you read any Devlogs at all, you’re a blessing (also you’re hot).

Without further ado let’s talk about my #Once Upon A Time VN Jam Entry:

(Credit to mikalogo for this gorgeous logo!)

What is “Lord of Lies”? A good question, but before we can talk about “Lord of Lies” we need to talk about: 

Okay? What the hell is “Princess Poison”?

In short, ‘Princess Poison’ is ‘Lord of Lies’. In many ways they are the same story, but in many other ways they are two different things.

‘Princess Poison’ was actually my first full length novel I ever finished back in 2019 *gasp*- it is a 60k word, half dark fantasy/adventure, half lgbt romance novel. Written back when I was a young aspiring novelist.

‘Princess Poison’, was a story about Lawrence Bane, a 25 year old man born with a ‘witch power’ the power to track any living thing, given he has DNA to do so. He’s hired by the leader (who only goes by the code name: King) of a witch hunting group known as: “The Noble House Witch Hunters” hence, the code names for the members being: King, Queen, Prince, Princess… etc. Lawrence is hired by King to track his second in command “The Princess” and what they find when tracking her, changes Lawrence’s life forever. Sending him on a wild adventure full of danger. 

The entire story is available here on AO3 (I was bold lol).

Note: I don’t actually like the original story nor do I think you should read it, unless you have way too much time on your hands and/or morbid curiosity. I posted it here mainly to prove that it does in fact exist. For me, this story only serves as a way to gauge my growth as a writer in the last 5 years. 

The Problems with Princess Poison

What’s wrong with it? You may be asking.

Nothing especially egregious outside of just being the first full length piece I ever wrote. Most of it’s problems stem from the fact that it was an ambitious first attempt.

Princess Poison’s biggest problems were, (to name only the major ones):

• Too many characters in the main cast
• Villain was predictable and very cartoon-y
• Too much dialogue and exposition
• Poorly written fight scenes galore
• No sense of time progression
• Lackluster/nonexistent world building
• A poorly explained power system
• Complicated, jarring plot twists
• Plot holes
• Character arcs that amount to nothing

In short, it was a total mess. I had finished the story but, it was too much, and not enough. I was 19 when I wrote it originally (I’m 24 going on 25 for reference) it was a lot for a new author to write a story with so many moving parts. 

I was proud of myself for finishing it, and finishing it in a 3 month period. But what I was left with was a mediocre end product. 

Not to mention the actual writing for the story was lonely and torturous. I forced myself to get up at 5am and write, I forced myself through scenes I didn’t even like (but thought I needed).  It was after I finished writing it that I had a bit of crisis in regards to if I wanted to write again at all because the experience was so miserable. And what I came back with wasn’t even worth the struggle. Worst of all, I was forced to face the reality that I may not like writing as much as I thought I did although I had known I wanted to be a writer since I was 8 years old.

In order for ‘Princess Poison’ to work it would have to be completely rewritten and twice the length.

RPG Maker, The Pandemic, and Mistakes 

Okay, so after writing Princess Poison initially I took 3 months off before I decided to continue working on it. I still wasn’t sure if this was what I wanted to do. But I had convinced myself that writing is the only passion I ever had, and that this was just how it had to be.

How naive I was.

So I got to editing and enlisting beta readers. I actually have always enjoyed this process, it feels good to share your work with others (even if they are critiquing it. At least you know that you are making moves to improve your work.

And as we established this story definitely needed improvement.

The common feedback I kept getting were all the problems I listed before. My solution to these problems…I needed to rewrite it. 

But I didn’t wanna rewrite Princess Poison, I didn’t want to write a whole other novel, because it wasn’t just a couple things that needed to be tuned, it had to be built from the ground up.

So…why not make it into something that wasn’t a novel?

Enter RPG Maker.

Why RPG Maker you may ask?

At this time in my like I’d been a humongous fan of Dan and Phil for many years. And one of my favorite videos on their conjoined gaming channel, one I would rewatch a lot, was this gem: 14 YEAR OLD PHIL’S GAME - Dan and Phil Play: The Mark Of Oxin!

Basically the video is the two guys: Dan and Phil playing a game Phil had made himself when he was 14 years old in RPG Maker 2000 (I think?)

Something that stuck with me about this video was how Dan was so impressed by Phil making a game so young and finishing it. 

Phil’s game made me feel a little better about Princess Poison was it good? No. But, it existed, it was finished and best of all I’d done it all by myself, that alone was impressive. 

Had Phil kept making games, he’d have gotten better. What mattered though, was that he had fun. He shared it with his school friends, then Dan as an adult, and then the world. 

So again, why not make Princess Poison into a game?

I mean let’s go back to some of those bullet points.

• Too many characters in the main cast

Perfect for RPG 

• Too much dialogue and exposition

If the dialogue was optional, it would add to the experience, not take away.

• Poorly written fight scenes galore

Didn’t need to write any fight scenes, you could just play through it.

• No sense of time progression

The time progression in game feels a lot more tangible.

• Lackluster/nonexistent world building

The world I’d be forced to build, the environments, the people that lived there, the culture, etc…

• A poorly explained power system

The power system could be the battle system!

There were still obviously plenty of story related problems that still needed to be fixed, but if I wasn’t being bogged down by descriptions of environments and the logistics of fight scenes, I’d have more time to focus on the characters and plot.

So I’d started learning RPG maker, somewhere in late 2019-and all throughout 2o20, the perfect time to learn it since a little thing went around, that you may have heard of… 

COVID 19 and the pandemic! I had gotten my first apartment and had ample time to learn the program.

And boy did I! It became my hyper-fixation I put in easily 500 hours in the coarse of a couple months. I learned, and then it was finally time, nearly a year and half later to make-

Princess Poison: The Game or PP Game as I childishly called it…

At first when working on the game, I kept pretty much everything the same, whole scenes from the book put into game format. It was fun figuring out how to translate the world in my head, to a visual space. The environments especially. Then creating my characters in RPG Maker MV, developing their classes and fighting styles, etc…

I was having so much fun! More fun than I had writing since I was a middle schooler. I’d worked, and worked, rewriting a good portion of the story putting so so many hours into the game.

But I made a mistake, one many devs/game makers know to avoid.

Backup your builds.

I hadn’t, a file got corrupted, and just like that. All that work- POOF!

Gone.

All my hours, for nothing.

I was devastated. I was so angry, so tired. I mourned the loss of the game I loved so much.

I took another break, but- only for a month.

Because unlike novel writing, I did enjoy working in RPG maker, and though I’d lost basically a third of the total game. It wasn’t all lost.

I just had to work again, but this time smarter.

So I did. I somehow managed to push my grief aside, and work again.

I backed up every save, every time I made a huge addition.

I organized my maps better, I made the story more concise, I worked tirelessly until I was able to catch up where I was, and surpass it.

But another thing happened. 

Not as tragic as before, but another thing all devs know.

Burnout.

I was exhausted, I got to the point where opening the build was enough to make me feel ill and I’d close my laptop. I couldn’t stand it.

Not to mention, had I not lost the initial build. I might have been done by now.

It was 2021, and I worked on it but very slowly. Almost not at all.

I wanted a change. I had to do something else.

While looking for assets for PP Game (yes we’re still calling it that), on Lemmasoft forums, I discovered some forum posts asking for visual novel writers. I’d applied, created discord, starting using itch, and fell into the world of VN dev.

I’d done some contract writing for other studios and solo devs, but nothing really ever came to fruition, frustrated I decided to join a jam, met a programmer, and started to make my own visual novels. A boy’s love story you may know as ‘Tattoos and Tulips’, something simple for Yaoi Jam 2021. 

I failed initially with Tattoos and Tulips development and so put that aside, and turned my focus back to Princess Poison.

I worked slowly on Princess Poison for a couple more months, leading into 2022, before rebuilding a team for Tattoos and Tulips. 

I’d finished writing TNT (a story with more words than Princess Poison somehow lol) in a 3rd of the time (I wrote TNT in 3 weeks). And the kicker… I adored writing TNT, and the final product (back when I only had the script). I had realized I did love writing stories in a novel format. It was possible!

So after I had finished writing TNT I continued running the team and when I had some free time I decided what Princess Poison needed was what I had with TNT- it needed a team. 

So I started building one, a small one. Tattoos and Tulips had artists, composers, beta readers, etc…  Princess Poison had only me. So I hired an artist, I got a co-writer, and I brought on a composer, and unsurprisingly I fell back in love with it. I was going to finish Princess Poison the game finally, and under my new studio! It was all going to work out.

But then one last thing I forgot to account for happened. I backed up my saves, I took needed breaks, and had others to share my enthusiasm and breathe fresh life into the project, but life happened. 

My mental health took a horrible turn, (I’ve dealt with panic disorder since I was 6 years old and have been medicated since I was 17) I didn’t know it then, but I had stupidly avoided my medication for so long that I had started to go through withdrawals, very strong withdrawals. Leaving me anxious, depressed, and laying in bed most days for 3 months. In addition, my teammates had their own mental health issues, and personal life interferences and they had to abandon the project. I was all alone with Princess Poison again

I didn’t start to feel better until the start of 2023, I didn’t work on anything during that time other than my own health, and at that point I’d gotten a full time job. 

It was starting to feel like, even if I wanted to work on my games, I didn’t have the time. This proved to not be true. I wrote all of Crabs and Cocktails in February. Then got really involved in the indie dev scene during Otome Jam 2023, releasing Tattoos and Tulips during in April. 

I was finding my footing as a studio and dev for the first time.

I met other devs, played their games, and fell fully in love with the community. I was constantly inspired by those I spoke to and worked with. 

My development with Tattoos and Tulips, Cassie, and Crabs and Cocktails just felt for the most part second nature to me. So the problem might have been that solo developing a game just wasn’t for me…or was it?

Once Upon A Time VN Jam

Then a little jam came to town sometime in 2023 and I knew immediately I had to join, mainly because it was ran by two extremely talented and wonderful friends of mine Chimeriquement and Len. 

This jam’s premise brought up old feelings however, though Princess Poison was never a Fairy Tale or even a retelling, there were many allusions to Fairy Tales in Princess Poison, and a little seed got planted in my head. But I pushed it back, I’d tried so many times to make this project happen and it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t meant to be. So I wanted to participate but with my own new original fairy tale story.

But for some reason my brain would not leave Princess Poison. And I hated that.

That original fairy tale story got shelved, and I wondered if I was going to participate in OUAT at all…

But… I am the type of writer that goes where my heart leads me. I learned from TNT that if I wrote what my heart wanted, it would go well. 

So I did a crazy thing. I decided, I won’t do something original for this jam.

I’ll give Princess Poison one last chance.

I work a lot. And my job is the perfect place to brainstorm and one afternoon I got a lot of stuff together. 

It was as if all my years of experience writing, deving, living even- helped me develop a story that was much better than the original. Sharing a lot of it’s foundation, but with a whole new structure.

The ideas were firing on all cylinders, the characters were making sense, the plot was compelling, exciting! My playlist I made for the story made more sense now? What was going on?

The story changed, a lot. Some of the key things were the same, but so many things were different. Better.

The title even changed. Princess Poison was too juvenile, too edgy, too misleading- not what this project was.

I outlined the story, and though not perfect it was the best it had ever been.

The main thing that changed, and is directly responsible for the biggest changes in the story is the protagonists’: Lawrence’s power. Instead of tracking any living thing, he could tell verbal lies with 100% accuracy. It was the missing piece, after that everything just worked, and “Lord of Lies” was born.

Redemption Arc/Plans Going Forward

So why do you think its going to work this time? Put simply, I don’t. I am taking a leap of faith. I am solo developing this project, the only outside help is an artist I commissioned, and the support of my friends (and potential beta testers). 

It’ll be the first project under Meant to Bee Studios that isn’t made by a team. And that’s terrifying for me.

I think I am a decent writer, I can cast voice actors, I can even market a game. But to have practically everything else be my responsibility. To be creating alone again…

Except I am not alone, I have so many dev friends, many of whom solo develop themselves: Snakkiez, Lacydigital, Chattercap… and so many more! They don’t feel alone, I can learn from them. I have what Joy of the past didn’t have.

Now that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing.

I’ve joked on Twitter and among close friends that I feel like Lawrence- thrust into unfamiliar territory with a couple tools to guide me. I’m a young knight leaving their village to slay the dragon.

The jam is generous at 3 months, but this is a really big game. Even with all the stuff I have from last time, lots of it has to be rewritten or taken out completely so in some ways I am working from scratch. 

The cast is still large, and I worry some of them may slip through the cracks.

I’ve never balanced and RPG before.

I have to make sure the story takes as much precedent, if not more- than the mechanics and gameplay.

It’s nerve wracking and I honestly question myself every day if this is the right thing to do but, something in me is just saying it is. 

That this time will be different and that, if I just apply all I’ve learned from this journey I can finally put a cap on this project for good. 

I can beat this boss.

I’ve succeeded with every other project I have worked on, but Princess Poison was the one that got away. 

It has the most potential now than it ever has. I’ve spent so much time with these characters, so much time in RPG maker, so much time time managing, running teams, making/playing games, talking to people, living life.

If I felt like Princess Poison/Lord of Lies was beyond hope I’d have dropped it in favor of something else but I can’t. I have to see it through, I have to finish it for my own sanity. 

((I do want to note that it’s fine to give up on projects- some you just outgrow and that’s fine.)) 

But this story has grown with me: this most recent outlining process came together in a way it never had and I loved it again. For the first time, in a long time I believed in this project! And the theme, which I cannot say for sake of major spoilers, is the biggest reason this project must see the light of day. This game has the potential to be my best story to date. And that’s saying a lot since all my stories are super near and dear to my heart. But Lord of Lies can outshine them all, only time will tell. 

So here we are….

For the past month or so I have been working on this project, I have character concept sketches, in game maps, a full outline. Now I just need the strength, time, and willpower to see it through to the end. So I decided, let’s make a devlog, let’s document and make others aware of this project, let’s hold myself accountable. In addition, I’ll be reaching out to friends, streaming in discord servers my work process, and having fun with this project.

Because, in addition to some of the mistakes I had made, the biggest one dev’s make- is not having fun with what they are doing, myself included.

It’s good to get things done, there is a culture that is romanticized of ‘the grind’, and yes working hard is great! But it’s not sustainable, it’s not conducive to a project filled with passion. At least for me.

I cannot create my best when I don’t love my project. So I am going to love Lord of Lies in a way I never loved Princess Poison. 

I’m going to have a memorable 3 months with this project and right my wrongs.

I hope you’ll follow my journey, and soon playthrough Lawrence’s journey on December 31st 2023 the official release day for Lord of Lies!~

Next Week’s Devlog Sneak Peak

For next week’s Devlog; we will be taking a closer look at what Lord of Lies is, now that I’ve talked about my journey with it’s predecessor: Princess Poison is.

Next week I’ll be talking about the cast, world, mechanics, etc… in a non spoilery fashion. Giving you a glimpse into what to expect from this LGBT Romance/Dark Fantasy/Grim Fairytale/Adventure Visual Novel/RPG.

If you like the sound of that please check back in every Saturday from now until December 30th for all devlogs during development.

Credit to the wonderful: Gisselle! My sprite and CG artist! You’ll be seeing more of this cast and her work next week!

Final Note:

Unrelated but still important! Crabs & Cocktails my yaoi/bl kinetic visual novel just came out! It’s full of sex jokes, beach puns, and a silly/flirty romance between a lifeguard and a bartender! Please go check it out if you’re interested!

Until next Saturday!~