It's here, finally! Deep Sea Valentine is a remake of my very first jam project (fittingly, for My First Game Jam 2019), so it has quite a bit of history behind it!

The original version of the game was made in RPG Maker MV and featured 4 love interests: Triche, Moka, Tae, and Sinus. (Sinus has since been demoted to a mere side character, while Feli, Pris, and Albica were added as new love interests.) The project has a fond place in my heart and is also how I found my go-to composer: Zaxcess! So why did I decide to remake it?

The simple answer is that the art style and presentation simply didn't reflect my abilities anymore. 

The longer answer is that, while I really love RPG Maker MV's map editor and how easy it is to create cutscenes, I was unhappy with how difficult it is to design custom menus. RPG Maker games always look like RPG Maker games, if you know what I mean. I was hoping to find a better alternative, where I could have full creative freedom. So when I discovered Tiled, and shortly after an engine that lets you use Tiled maps in Ren'py, it was a bit of a religious experience, and I knew I had to try it out.
And what better way to test a new engine than to remake an old project and see how it holds up?

The fact that I managed to deliver a finished game should speak for itself; I could replicate everything the original game had, and add a lot more on top! While I think the speech bubbles of the original would've been neat if used sparingly, nothing beats proper visual-novel-style presentation (in my opinion):

Not to mention that Ren'py comes with many essential VN functions built in (saving during dialogue, log, skip, auto, etc.) as well as being more comfortable for me to work with in general. With the tools I found, I'll gladly make more RPGs in the future!

I want to express my sincere gratitude to the creator of the Pink Engine. This game would literally have not been possible without them and their hard work. Their framework is amazing and they quickly fix bugs or add new features if they're brought up. I hope the engine will get the recognition it deserves and be used by more Ren'py users! 

Thank you for reading this far and for checking out Deep Sea Valentine! If you want to discuss the game, stop by our Discord Server!