My First Month in a JEE Coaching is a Visual Novel and my first long term project.
It is the first JEE centric slice of life visual novel set in modern day India! It might also be the first Indian visual novel in the world but hey you never know from where someone may come up and wag their finger at us.
You can join the test release by going to the following link and with the attached password:
Link: https://gartage.itch.io/my-first-month-in-a-jee-coaching
Password: HaveFun2023
The current release is pretty much feature complete, and we only need to polish it further. Once we finish the English translation and some marketing content we should be good for a full blow release!
Biggest Music Project Yet
This project involved more than 29 songs and stingers! It was a challenge covering a ton of different moods such as class quiz, tests, hanging out in the lounge, sad moments, EXCITING MOMENTS!
I used multiple different methods and genres to make the music for the game. It also consists of a wide variety of sounds, from synths to orchestral instruments.
Of course, not all of them are made equal. I myself am not a fan of the Feelin Good track. But it’s barely used in the game and mostly in short bursts, so I prioritised making others better!
My top 5 songs are:
- Rise: The Menu song. It involves a bit a sadness and follows up with an uplifting section but meshes together very well.
- A Ballad of Hopes: This is the minimalist song in the album. It shines because of how clean it seems in comparison. And your ears just won’t want it to stop.
- Game Time: This is just pure ear candy. The trumpets really shine, the strings drive home a playfulness and the drums shake you to the core.
- Everyday: A song that showcases the mundane but lovable parts of life.
- My favourite class: A song with great syncopation.
The others that I listen on repeat involve Did you solve qn 6, afternoons and nights. These never fail to make me energised! Did you solve question 6 was a tough to write track. It plays after tests and should encompass a feeling of oppression if the player fails to do well but also a sense of badassery if the player aces the test.
And then there are some I am really proud of like Triumph and Advance Phase Test. These two songs took quite a bit of work and have interesting orchestral textures.
All these songs can be purchased to listen and chill to on the game’s itch page.
The Programming
We used Godot as our game engine for this project. This is not a popular choice, as we mostly see games like this with renpy. We picked Godot mostly due to the team having more experience with it.
We found a tool called Dialogic which made all the story writing and displaying dialogues manageable!
Most of the programming came in for minigame and the rpg branching aspects.
The game lets you choose your own path. If you want to be a topper, you can! If you want to relax with your friends, you can do that too. People around you will also react to you based on your sanity, popularity and knowledge. So if you do something unexpected such as failing an exam despite being the best student, people will take notice.
Early on we developed the foundation of the game that allowed all the non-linear structures to take place. This made a lot of the developments later easy to implement.
However, we managed to tack on a ton of technical debt in the last week of development trying to add in some features. In any case, for a project of this scope, it should not have any major problems going forward.
The game is working on itch.io for both windows and mac. It’s even playable on the browser! The game is also working on android, with a minor setback with the save system. As soon as it’s ready, it should be listed on itch and playstore for the final release!
The Writing
This project was co-written by me and the artist crackerjack who was responsible for all the sprites and backgrounds you see on the screen!
Writing the project was a blast as we remembered our own JEE prep days. The things that happened, what people talked about and all the little memories.
We tried to package all our memories into this visual novel.
Some challenges involved were around the non-linear aspects of the story.
The player has free rein after school and during the night. So they can do things in any order or not do them at all. Combining this with satisfying side stories was a challenge.
We tackled this by developing a 4 stage journey that all characters went on and made sure the important aspects are decoupled. We bring these aspects into the main story occasionally with conditional dialogue. This makes the side stories feel much more cohesive with the main plot.
Conclusion
This has been a really fun project for me and it would mean a lot if you participate in the testing release! All feedback is appreciated and will make the final visual novel much more fun for everyone!