Hello! Here is a mostly rambly post that I decided to call a postmortem. 

As stated on the games page this was meant to be a submission to the Winter VN Jam 2021 back in December. My idea was to make a cute girls' love vn where they go on an ice skating date. But some things happened…right before the jam started I had to go to the hospital and have surgery done. It was my first time having surgery and I was scared and it was all so sudden. 

While in hospital I was still determined to do the jam. But once I got home I got depressed and lost motivation…or it was burnout. Just thinking about doing the jam didn't excite me anymore and I had participated in a few jams before that. 

So after struggling to write the script for a while I decided to just give up on finishing it in time for the jam and give myself a break. I'm lucky my friend Pempille, who I collaborated with on this, was very understanding about it all.

Once again there were many times when I felt like giving up. But pushing through to the end is always worth it. I hope over time it will become easier for me. 

There were a lot of starts and stops. But once February hit I knew I wanted to finish writing the script and release the VN by the end of the month. So I'm glad Pempille and I were able to achieve that together. I couldn't have done it without them. It took like 3 and a half months to finish it. 

I genuinely think the story turned out better than it would have if I had made it in time for the jam. I got to spend more time on it to make the story better. Originally Erin didn't have a crush on Ori in the past, but Ori did have one on her. So it was one-sided. But later I decided to change it because I thought it would be cuter if they both felt the same way back then. 

At one point I considered cutting Tao out of the story even though I love him. My reasoning was I'd have one less character to worry about. But Pempille convinced me not to and I'm glad for that. :)

If anyone was curious, the song names Erin and Ori mentioned aren't real, I just made them up. I thought about referencing real songs but thought it would be best not to. But the band I had in mind when writing that scene was "Waterparks". One of my favourite bands haha. And if I had to pick one of their songs to play in the background then it would be "Stupid for You".

Here are some concept sketches of Erin, Ori and Tao that Pempille did when I told them about my idea. They came up with all the designs. Originally Erin and Ori had more androgynous designs but they changed a little down the track. Tao stayed the same. 

Erin and Ori's final designs. 

Currently, there is no art of Caleb. But if anyone is curious here is how I imagine him to look. I think he'd be as tall as Erin or taller and be in his late 20's. I used picrew to make this. Here is a link to the one I used!

I want to write about him and Tao one day. I think they're cute together. <3

Coding was a pain in the ass. Writing was mostly a pain in the ass.  Though I did have fun writing some of the scenes. Especially the banter with Erin and Tao. Writing dialogue is my favourite part of writing. I find it fun! I hate editing lol…

Writing is just generally hard for me. I'm slow at it and I tend to put myself down a lot so it's not always fun. But I still enjoy doing it. I love to tell stories. :)

Screenshot of me coding in expressions and hating it lol.

Screenshot of all my writing files....the way I write is so dumb and painful to organise. Why do I do this to myself? Haha...

Here are some sappy thank yous from me:

I want to say a big thank you to my friend Pempille! Who offered to do the art for this project after I told them about my silly idea. I really appreciate their help and support! I may have given up if not for them.

Another person I'd like to thank is my friend squidcolas. They've been very supportive of me from the start of my vn dev journey. I appreciate their constant support so much.

To my friend basil! Thank you so much for always being willing to help with proofreading and giving me honest feedback! I super appreciate it and I will return the favour to you someday. 

Thank you to PyrrhaIphis for also helping with proofreading! You're much better at punctuation than me and I'm very thankful! :D 

It's so crazy to know I started this journey alone and met all these amazing people along the way.  

And thank you to all the people reading this.  It means so much to me that people enjoy the stories I write. <3

Honestly, I feel like I could say a lot more but I don't want this to get too long.

So yeah, that's it. That's "It's A Promise"! It's not perfect, but I feel this is the best I can do for this story at this time. I've already spent more time on it than I had planned to. I'm ready to move on and work on other visual novel projects I have planned. 

Thanks so much for reading and giving this visual novel a chance. :)