The entirety of Meteor Shower was a pitch Skai presented to the dev team at first. At the time I was already working on Snowfall, the sequel to Meteor Shower but also the studio’s ORIGINAL project. I was a little preoccupied then, so naturally I said “g” before I even finished reading what the game jam was.  

It’s been four months since and I’ve yet to regret that snap decision. So for this month I’ll just be talking about the demo and the first update’s progress.

THE DEMO DRAFT

With more or less only two months to finish the demo, one of the major sells that Skai brought up when they pitched joining the Otome Jam was that they’ll give me the outline to work with. And I wrote. Like a motherfucker. Because what else was there to do? This project wasn’t gonna get a move on till words showed up on that document. And words sure as hell weren’t gonna magically appear out of nowhere. 

For the most part, what you see in the demo was more or less what was included in the outline. I’ll give a brief overview of those chapters and the intent we had with the decisions we’ve made. SPOILER ALERTS ahead for anyone reading this who hasn’t read the demo. Respectfully, WHATCHA DOING. GO GIVE THE DEMO A READ! PRETTY PLEASE?! IM BEGGIN-

As I was saying,  Chapter 1 is all about introductions and misdirections. “Introductions” should already speak for itself. Here we get to know Lori along with the variety of characters who will be sharing the ups and downs of being a highschooler. The usual pilot episode stuff. On the other hand, “misdirection” is more interesting and less apparent unless you read the synopsis. If you thought Reese or Cody was gonna be the love interest and were disappointed… Well, we meant to do that. 

In Chapter 2 some stuff went down. I won’t say what but it’s the typical highschool cringe/angst/sorrows that most of us have probably had the displeasure of going through ourselves. Press F if you’ve personally gone through what happened yourself. And oh yeah, it’s only at the END of the chapter that our ACTUAL LOVE INTEREST shows up fashionably late and honestly more than a little high. 

Other than that, I don’t really know how I got the first draft for the demo out. I akin it to a blackout phase fueled with the serotonin rush of “this is a creative space to get away from my internship!!!” and the primal manic energy of “YOU GOTTA FINISH THE DRAFT OR ELSE -”

Refusing to bring dishonor to my cow, I managed to finish the demo’s draft in a month or so. It wasn’t very good. But I had gotten the job done. The draft was done. 

In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “The first draft of anything is shit.” I know he’s not a good man, but I’ll pick and choose what’s convenient to me. And this quote pretty much encapsulates my approach to writing which is “we’ll fix it in post.” 

And we did. Well Skai did. Hope you liked it.

FALLING STARS UPDATE

Currently, the whole team is hard at work to get the first installment of the game: Falling Stars out this December. The direction that the story ended up going in was a ways off from the initial outline scrounged up by Skai. The whole process of writing for the most part had practically taken on a life of its own, it almost felt like whatever happened to the story was out of my hands. 

So what happened? 

The whole team likes to joke around with the story and its characters. Some of the gags make it in the script, and some don’t. Simple as that. Somewhere in that chaos and spontaneity of going with the flow, it took on its own shape to tell its story. Gag-decisions piled up and quickly snowballed into significant shifts with regards to where the plot was headed. Some less gag and more cutesy moments were added into the script that wasn’t in the outline. Of course it would take up precious resources: time it’d take to write it, page count, and coding. And as much time as we still had, it was an important decision to have decided to cut out some scenes that just seemed to not be important towards the story’s narrative direction, its conflict and its conclusion. 

And I think it did work out. The first update will revolve around a central conflict that happens to involve Lori and Taylor… And Scarlett and Reese. What it’s about, well you’ll have to find out for yourself. But yeah, initially, this wasn’t as much of the “conflict” as it was a thing that just happened in the outline. I just felt giving it more attention that it would call for had it happened IRL would help make the whole update feel more cohesive and put together. And for the most part, I think it did just that. And I feel good about where the story is going with in terms of the story progression and pacing. 

Rest assured that all the scenes that had been cut out in this update have been conveniently re-organized to happen later in the story. They’re mostly Taylor being a stupid, lovestruck puppy. So the cute, dumb moments like drunk calling someone just to tell them how awesome they are won’t happen just yet. But be on the lookout for that. 

Here are some other, MORE IMMEDIATE spoilers to look forward to in the next update: 2 new characters are being introduced this time round. Love ‘em. Hate ‘em. Or maybe even both. I already have my favorite.