Hullo again and welcome to the Postmortem for Dear Devere. A postmortem is a document made after a project is completed, going over what worked, what could have been better, and what was learnt from the project.

This postmortem will contain spoilers for the game Dear Devere.

With the intro out of the way, let's begin.

Meta Analytics: Itchio

Itchio's analytics page gives information on downloads.

(Image: Screenshot of Itchio downloads from 1st April 2020 to 1st May 2020.)

(Image: Screenshot of Itchio downloads from 1st May 2020 to 21st June 2020.)

On the 13th and 14th of April, you can see a large spike in views/downloads. This was around the time Dear Devere was first released (12th June) and when NaNoRenO2020 ended (14th June).

*Note that there might be a 24 hour or so delay with the graph: It detects no downloads on the 12th, for example.

Dear Devere had 100 downloads within the first 2 days of its launch.

By 10th June, the game had over 1,111 downloads between Itchio and Steam.

Downloads by Platform

Total downloads on Itchio: 720 (as of 21st June)

Downloads by platform:

• Windows: 520
• Mac: 96
• Linux: 37

*Note that the numbers add up to 653, not 720.

Incoming Visits From Other Sites

While it's difficult to determine exact Tweets/posts/etc that produced the most traffic towards Dear Devere's Itchio page, Itchio's analytics page showed me that the top URLs that people clicked on to find Dear Devere were:

• Itchio itself (451 people over the past 30 days since the 10th of June). Specifically, the NaNoRenO2020 submissions page, the romance tag, and "If you like this game, we recommend Dear Devere" links made by Itchio's algorithm when people downloaded other NaNoRenO2020 entries.
• Google.
• Gaming On Linux wrote a review article on the 15th of June brought in a lot of traffic.

Itchio only tracks these URLs as far back as 30 days ago, but I also recall the following websites producing noticeable traffic:

• Twitter (I posted about Dear Devere most often on Twitter.)
• Reddit (I posted links to devlogs on visual novel-related subreddits.)
• Lemmasoft Forums (I made a thread about Dear Devere on the forum.)

Meta Analytics: Steam

(Image: Screenshot of Steam downloads from 27th May 2020 to 21st June 2020.)

*Note Dear Devere was first released on Steam on 29th May.

Total Steam Wishlists: 596 (As of 21th June 2020.)

Total First-time Downloads on Steam: 461 first-time downloads total. That is 77% of the total Wishlists.

With these numbers, we can see that making Dear Devere available on Steam really boosted its amount of downloads. On Itchio, it has 720 downloads, while on Steam, it has been downloaded 461 times. 39% of all Dear Devere's downloads came from Steam.

Reactions From Players

There were some reoccurring reactions I saw amongst players. Here are some that stood out to me:

Dear Devere received overwhelmingly positive reactions from people who played it.

When Devere mentions a way of "getting back at Eliza," many players who recorded themselves playing instantly voiced their interest.

Players hate Cailin, even more intensely than I had predicted. Which I'm glad about, since that was the intended response when I wrote his character. In video playthroughs, I would hear the player audibly scoff when Cailin describes himself as a "calm and reasonable man."

Players had fun interpreting what exactly Devere is, both as they played, and afterwards. Some of the theories included: A demon, ghost, werewolf, wendigo, fae, vampire, or something totally unique. I love seeing people's fanart interpretations of what Devere and Angela look like.

Players visibly hesitated answering the telephone after the first telephone event.

Some players knew immediately that Devere was lying to Angela in his last letter, some didn't and were on the fence, deciding to wait for the rest of the game to unfold.

Some players knew the found body wasn't Devere's, while some didn't.

Most people chose to lie to the Bureau (during the ending-deciding choice) to protect Angela and Devere.

What Went Right

A small, manageable scale: Dear Devere is one of the least interactive visual novels I've made. It is very linear. It has no character sprites. This made finishing the visual novel within the time frame of the 2020 NaNoRenO game jam possible (with the two-week extension that it was given because of 2020).

Weekly devlogs: Usually, I post one big behind-the-scenes article about my game development process after I finish making the game. For Dear Devere, I did something different: I made weekly devlogs on Itchio as updates on what I was working one, what I had accomplished, and events that had happened that were released to Dear Devere (such as someone posting a video playthrough of the game). This ended up being a good idea, as it made giving updates to people easier, and made making the big behind-the-scenes article a lot more manageable.

Working with proofreaders and playtesters: Both the proofreaders and playtesters (Rowan, Lunaterra, HusbandoGoddess and Jacob) was a positive experience. They were very professional and were able to send in notes for me to correct the game's script before the deadline. The setup where I made a copy of the game's script in Google Docs for the proofreaders to comment on seemed to work out well.

Working with a musician: I enjoyed working with Paul Robins. There was fast communication between us, and I love the soundtrack he created for Dear Devere. As I wrote earlier in my behind-the-scenes article, I gave him some sources of inspiration (The Oh Hellos' Dear Wormwood album being one) and some descriptions of what tones I wanted the songs to have.

Working with voice actors: Dear Devere is the first game I've made where I hired voice actors to read lines, and working with Chintarmanya Vivian and Mike Young was a pleasure. Following Ayu's advice on finishing the script within the first week and making a voice acting spreadsheet on Google Spreadsheets really saved me with managing time. When I wrote about the context and subtext of each line, Chintarmanya was able to provide all of them. When Angela was trying to be brave, despite feeling fear, you could hear it all in her voice. When Angela talked about the events unfolding, you could feel so much from the tones of her voice. I told Mike that I wanted Devere to have a voice that was easy for Angela (and the players) to fall for, and he delivered. It was brilliant to see them bring Angel and Devere to life.

Promoting and marketing the visual novel: I've never put so much effort into promoting a visual novel I made before. It took effort and time management (and it's still an ongoing process), but it feels worth it from the results I've seen. It feels more like a marathon, than a sprint.

Reactions to the visual novel: I'm very happy with the responses to Dear Devere overall! It's great to see people's thoughts one the game.

What Could Have Been Better

Fixing text that was different from the voice actors'  recorded lines: It is normal for voice actors to sometimes word a line slightly differently than how it's written in the script. As I describe in greater detail in this update post for version 1.1, I changed some of the wording in the game's script for these changes, after the game's initial release. I wish that I had made those edits sooner, before the game was first released. Next time I make a game with voice acting, I need to remember to play through the game more thoroughly after programming in the voice acting files, before the game is released.

Making the falling in love more gradual: I wanted the complete Dear Devere before NaNoRenO2020's deadline, so I wrote the game with brevity. One of the criticisms I could find for the game was that some players found the romance between the two protagonists to unfold very quickly. Next time I write a romance that includes how the characters fall in love, I should try to make it more gradual.

What I Learnt

I gained experience on voice directing: This was my first experience in being a voice director, and I learnt so much through Chintarmanya and Mike. I hope to make more games with voice acting in the future.

I learnt the process of Steam Direct: Uploading a game onto Steam's storefront is so different from doing it on Itchio. For Steam, there's a lot of programming involved, but fortunately, I found a 4-part video tutorial series that walked me through it. I only needed to directly contact Steam with questions once for confusion I had regarding uploading Dear Devere's soundtrack as DLC.

There is a jump in traffic on the day of the jam ending: I think this is because a lot of people who were following the NaNoRenO game jam wanted to check out the games as soon as they were available, so it led to them trying out the game during that point in time in particular. This means that when I join future game jams, I should try to finish the game by the jam's submission deadline.

You don't need to unveil/release everything at the same time. In fact, it's better not to: Usually, I'll release a game, post about it on my social media accounts, and try to post everything related to it (articles, updates, postmortems, links to my Weebly website, etc) on the same day, or as early as possible. With Dear Devere, I posted updates, screenshots, and links over a longer period of time. It requires more pre-planning, but it felt more manageable than trying to do everything on launch day. It felt less stressful, seemed to lead to traffic towards Dear Devere's download pages over the course of several weeks and months: Because I kept posting about it, people kept being reminded about the game (or introduced to it for the first time).

Steam can give your visual novel a considerable boost in downloads. I still don't know what the expected amount of downloads on Steam would be for an indie visual novel that costs money, but for a free game, if you're able to cover the costs of using Steam Direct, you may want to consider doing it for a game that's available for free.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Dear Devere was a project that didn't just result in a completed visual novel. It was an experience where I learnt so much about working with voice actors, submitting a game to Steam, promoting visual novels, and other aspects of game development.

Turrah,

-Katy133