Hi!

This is just a devlog to talk about the 'results' for All There as part of the May Wolf 2025 Game Jam!

Depending on the two ways used to calculate the overall rating scores, it placed either 6 or 5 - a huge accomplishment as this jam was filled to the brim with amazing entries. Thank you to everyone who have given my game your time, rating it or not. And to everyone who have resonated deeply with Remi; you're why I'm making games in the first place.

The jam also had superlative awards, of which All There got 3!

Getting the silver award for Best Veteran Developer for my second jam game, and having put out the first build of The Red Ballet in April last year, makes me very hopeful for what I'll be capable of in the future. And of course, congratulations to the golden Best Veteran Developer (amongst other awards) Erebus, the creator of the jam's winning entry Geiger! The accolades are very well deserved <3

The second award is for accessibility, an often overlooked facet in not just VN game development, but all areas of life. I did not have the know-how to implement it well when I started The Red Ballet, but it is a glaring fault I'm working on to fix retroactively. During the development of Stars In Your Eyes - my entry for The NovemBear Game Jam - I made it my number 1 priority to make sure it would be an equal experience for players with the same disabilities of the game's protagonists. I don't want to create things that slap in some caricature of one part of real people for a feel-good hour to the benefit of players who wouldn't even see themselves in it. I want to write stories for, and with, and about multifaceted people, with many parts that affect their lives and make them who they are - so making sure that everyone can take part is very important, especially when it reflects something in your own life. For All There, Remi's experiences are very close to my own and I wanted to portray them in a way that are as accurate as I can make it in the visual novel format. One of the things used are buzzing noises, which I know very well can be triggering. So to make the game accessible for people with similar issues, these can be turned off (including playing an alternative version of a song as I realized in the last second it had such sounds too, oops) - in addition to the sound captions, audio descriptions, and sound warning system found in Stars In Your Eyes. I will end this section by just urging other devs to look into designing games with accessibility in mind. Does not have to be super detailed like I tend to do it; a simple audio caption or short alt text for images during moments where their absence would harm your stories for people who can't take part in those aspects go a long way!

Finally, the third award is Jerbear's favourite. He is one of the artists behind the jam's sprite assets that anyone participating was free to use. Not only that, he has his own entry for the jam: Falling For AI, a funny but also quite haunting tale of how AI is permeating our lives. But wait! He ALSO made music for Sunrise Fang, another jam entry with a fantasy JRPG aesthetic, alongside a whole bunch of skilled and passionate people. Jerbear's been even busier than I have! He even designed the trophy he awarded me. Actually, where's his award for being a constant MVP?

That was all I had to say about All There for now, but there will be a long Developer Commentary coming soon. Until then, I was also the sprite artist and musician for The Wolf in the Wardrobe, made with a team of wonderful and talented people. This jam of course has a whole bunch of entries I've loved getting to play. Here is a list of some, but far from all as that would be a VERY long list, that I loved: AV, One Last Week,  In The Spotlight, City's Light, Curtain's Call,  Depiction of Pleasure, Your Eyes.

See you next jam, unless you're a player of The Red Ballet because then it'll (hopefully) be sooner with the coming update!