For the Love of Christmas is a game held close to my heart. It initially started in November 2019, when I had plans to make a grand, sweeping Christmas RPG that was also open-world, a Visual Novel, 3D, and with souls-like combat.

...Yeah, so that didn’t exactly happen. I soon realized I was way out of my depth, trying to juggle several things I didn’t fully understand the reasoning behind. Kinda like trying to make a pizza without understanding how dough works. Or er. Something like that. I don’t exactly cook either.

Although I shelved the idea pretty quickly, it never really left my heart. So this year, I was coming up on my New Years resolution to release a commercial game in 2022. And I felt that Winter Jam would be the perfect opportunity to not only hit that resolution but also satisfy that itching in my heart come every Decemeber.

I began to revamp the story a lot. Say what you will about my creative abilities (actually, don’t) but one thing I’m definitely good at is creating and organizing GDDs. I took my old designs and information and began squeezing it into something new.

First, I thought long and hard about the story itself. As cool as a sweeping Christmas fantasy story about literally saving Christmas sounds, I... had no idea where to take it. Like, what exactly would even happen? I just had images of Christmas themed enemies to fight, and not really much else.

So I began brainstorming some more, this time focusing on what I want the audience to feel and less about random cool elements I could introduce. And then I figured—I want the audience to feel cozy and warm inside. Like they just drank a warm cup of cocoa, are snuggled inside a blanket, and watching the snowfall softly outside.

That’s when I began to create the fictional town Celyn (the protagonist) lives in. I don’t have a name yet for it (in development, plus I’m abhorrent at coming up with names) but it’s based a lot off a small sub-area in a city I used to live in. At one point, it was calm and boring, but suddenly became a hub for rich people who wanted to “get away.” This kind of thing is probably pretty common nowadays, and I wanted to capture Celyn’s reaction to returning and seeing how different things are.

In the next devlog, I’ll talk more about how I conceptualized and came up with the ideas for the characters. In the meantime, feel free to drop a comment if you want to see more bloopers from the old version of the game ⛄