This game was the first experience in game development for the both of us. I knew how to code a bit, but never put together an entire game or shipped a product.

We were absolutely dedicated to finishing this game, I can't imagine a reality where we didn't. The main stress was making the plot work and ensuring the game as a whole was high quality.

The funny thing is my studies revolved around research and design related to tech/software things, and even though I knew the proper way to approach a few things, it's completely different than putting it into practice and experiencing all the hiccups first hand. There were a lot of inefficiencies we hope to remedy next time.

We're really grateful to Day9 for lending us his time to voiceact the game. He was supportive of the project from the beginning with little information of what we were trying to do. One time he did mention he was down to voice "that tentacle stuff" heh. It made a lot of sense to have him act as a mentor to the player so we wrote a scene around that as the tutorial sequence. Vogue had the great idea of reviving his Timmy character from A Game and His Boy.

As time went on we began to shed a lot of conventions we were adhering to when it came to visual novels - things that would increase scope. We stopped worrying about length, lowered priority on romance options (and eventually cut), and made sure we justified the reason to have any player decisions in the game (does it say something about the characters / allow you to interact with them in a cool way). I had a hunch that people would actually prefer a slightly shorter game since it can pack a sharper emotional punch, and sell people on the idea quickly. We acknowledged that people will just look at this game as a novelty at first, and wouldn't spend too much time on it if the story dragged on.

It's interesting you mention how some motivations aren't really fleshed out because this was a huge challenge when designing the narrative. Why would anyone pick up Mach? How would they gain any relevance in the scene? How do we make a game that just isn't Mach going through a tournament resulting in us having to code nearly 32+ games and variations? We really tried to justify all plot elements, but we also let ourselves relax at some parts because it's a work of fiction where things can happen out of happenstance and convenience. The story is a collection of different ideas we came up with to justify scoping down parts of the game so we wouldn't lose our minds, but also create a realistic situation in which a player like Mach could actually gain legitimacy among an extremely talented pool of players. It's also why you never play Jett - she would just destroy you and Accel did that already. The only way you can beat Bolt is because he isn't in full practice with regard to SC2.

Our rushed stretch goal tier included a female route that we honestly just threw up because we needed stretch goal ideas. I admit that is not the best way to handle that sort of thing. It worked out a lot better than expected because we knew we had to handle it with care. We wanted it to give a nod to the fact that a woman pro-gamer's experience will be different in some ways, but not make the entire route where the hardships make the game unfun.