The Heart of Our Lagoon - Postmortem July 2025

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I finally finished a game! I finally finished a story! I never expected to properly publish anything, so I'm quite surprised that it all came so much easier than I thought it would. It wasn't easy but still... As a result, I've never really written a postmortem before and I don't really know what they're supposed to contain, so I just went at it with random thoughts. Beware of spoilers.

With this game, it was horrifyingly natural to lay out what I needed to do and get to doing it. I'm not normally good at this sort of thing -- being given an open ended task, coming up with my own ideas, and executing them within a deadline. In fact, I think most of my life has been filled with anxiety for deadlines from school, government papers, or payments. I've actively avoided such things, but with the toxic yuri vn jam I just hopped on it very quickly. I guess that's the power of yuri and this loose idea I've had stewing in my head for over a year. Or having a vacation and a shit ton of free time.

Why did I decide to participate in the toxic yuri game jam when I'd never really written anything before, never made a game before, and admittedly don't really read a lot of yuri? The toxic aspect I guess. I dunno, it sounded extra fun and fit my force-fishification fantasies.

The story had a lot of changes throughout development. My original idea for The Heart of Our Lagoon was going to be more adventurous and half focused on other Fae/Fairies. I've always been in love with the idea of mermaids, but I wanted it to focus on horrifying aspects of change that may come with a vampire or werewolf story. After reading The Last Unicorn, I was enamored with the fairytale aesthetic. The Last Unicorn is about, well, the last unicorn trying to find other unicorns. I wanted to make my story about a lonely, forgotten mermaid. Not the last of her kind, but the last of her friends and family. I wanted her to latch onto a girl who desperately needed someone else as well, and have them travel together across the continent to find the ocean... a vast sea filled with tasty fish and possibly other mermaids.

The main character would be a princess escaping a horrible fate at the hands of an enemy nation, and stumble upon the mermaid, who gives false promises of wish-granting powers in return for aide in her desire to find the great ocean to the east. Once on their quest, they'd flee from hunters and other playful Fae who would put them into mystical conundrums, trying to swoon the human away from her original desire to fix her life to how it used to be. The girl would be slowly transformed however, into another mermaid. She wouldn't be aware of it until it was too late, and the mermaid would have a new friend to be with in her new home. If they could survive long enough.

Very different from what happened in the actual game, right? The deadline for the game jam really made me re-evaluate what I needed to make this all happen. I was going to have a hunter wielding a demonic sword with a mouth hunting the mermaid for her magical scales, I'd have dryads sending Abigail into mystical dimensions of endless food and play, I'd have all this extra crap bogging down what I REALLY wanted to tell: a horror story focused around changing into a mermaid. Talking with my girlfriend made me realize I should just get to the meat and potatoes of it all, which is the incredibly descriptive psychological horror. This was originally just a loose story bouncing around in my head, but I had to cut and cut and cut until I had something that I could make in a month with art and backgrounds and programming and music. I'd never even made a song before! How the hell was I gonna pull this off?

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Since this story was adapted from a previous idea I'd never properly developed, I had a lot of random attempts at writing it that just failed. When it came to adapting it to the game jam, I was pretty quick to change things over and over again. I started writing out a script, and I got stuck putting it all together in the first act. I was spending a lot of time worrying about how I'd get the girls from point A to B, and what would they do at cities X, Y and Z, and blah blah blah. I tossed it out and started with a general outline, this time with it only taking place in X village, with Y boy and Z mom.

I thought I could sneak in a run-away segment at the very end, where maybe the girls get found out, run away to some village to eat people, and an angry mob finds them and ends the story. But, I really saw that deadline ticking and cut that too. If I had the time I might've added it, but it didn't really happen. The decision to even have Adam be the one getting eaten at the end was made like 3/4ths into development. He was supposed to be part of the angry mob, disappointed in Abby and her newfound love.

Honestly, how it turned out is good enough. I enjoy the messaging a lot more than I originally had it. Sometimes the best story beats come as spur of the moment, and I feel like 90% of the story in the Heart of Our Lagoon was spur of the moment. Once I planned a general outline and started working the script out line by line, I'd just change things to how I felt at the time. It was fun.

With all the positive changes I made the story, I became increasingly alarmed at the lack of art I had made by last two or so weeks of the jam. I think my biggest regrets for the game was with the art. If I had a lot more time, I would've liked to have every image in my game be taken by myself, as well as double the amount of drawn pieces. Many of the backgrounds are actually taken by me, all done in that last portion of the jam and replacing the stock photos I was planning on using. I worried SO MUCH about that pond. Mae's pond was nerve wracking.

After I decided I wanted the game to present similarly to Tsukihime, the rest of the game's aesthetics fell into place pretty quick in my head. As I drew one set of sprites for Mae though, I knew this was completely undoable. I'd never drawn characters on real backgrounds, I'd never drawn so many naked people, and I'd most certainly never drawn any sort of sex scene before. It was really awkward and frustrating at times. My artistic perfectionism made each piece require an entire day of straight drawing for hours. I had to cut the sprites or else all of the things I wanted to do would crumble under the ever-present deadline.

After getting incredibly lucky finding the PERFECT image for Mae's pond and starting to draw the girls over it, I felt really relieved. The visual style was achieved! I almost wanted to cry looking at the first meeting at the pond image. Nearly exactly as I pictured it in my head for so long. Abby reaching her arm out to Mae still gives me shivers. The little grass even comes out on top of the characters a bit. It's really something I'm proud of, as I've never done anything like it.

It's too bad I couldn't stuff my game full of CG, but now I think it owes well to a more traditional book style if I don't draw out every little thing (coping). I would've loved to have double the amount of art in the game, and I was really sad when I had a week left and I counted the actual amount of unique drawings I had. There was only 7 unique drawings before I did the fingering scene during the last few days of the game jam. I didn't even want it in the game, but I felt like I needed something for such an important turning point in the story so I just did it anyways. Before submitting I nearly threw it out, too. My game felt a bit anemic in terms of visuals.

With the music, I put it off as the very last portion of dev work. I had wanted to only select Nocturnes for the soundtrack, but there were still those few songs I felt fit my bill quite well, so I left them to not fuss too much over music. I hope the famous songs didn't detract from the vibes too much for people. When I hear really famous and emotional pieces placed in games, I sorta raise an eyebrow. It's easy to try and be evocative with these songs but it can feel flat a lot of the time unless it's done with a lot of care. Lagoon might be in that ballpark of 'not so much care put into the selections', but I hope others enjoy it regardless. It had to be done for such a short jam anyways.

I've never written anything before, but I feel like I managed to hit a stride with my writing style part-way through. The beginning of my story was never really rewritten though, and I find it a bit overbearing. You can sort of tell my wording gets a little less flowery once Abby is pulled into the pond. Despite this, I'm overall satisfied with my prose. If I had a lot more time I would've toned down some of the language. I'm aware that amateur writers can tend to over-describe things and I think I still have a lot to improve on the 'less is more' idea of writing.

Leaving a lot to the imagination can be really hard when you have such a vivid and specific image in your own head. My favorite detail about books is their ability to look completely different in each person's head. A visual novel sort of strips this disparity away by providing many of the described images on the screen. I hope my visual novel still had that disparity in it. I intentionally used close-up photos to provide a simple baseline for the reader to interpret the scene I wanted to depict. I hope people's minds wander as Abby walks through the hallway to the kitchen, or when she strolls through the forest and arrives at the pond.

Speaking of pond, isn't this game supposed to have a lagoon? Where'd the lagoon go? The Heart of Our Pond doesn't really sound very cool. I just rolled with it, especially since mermaids are usually associated with the ocean, a stranded mermaid in a forest felt closer to a lagoon than a pond anyways.

Other possible names included but are not limited to:

Love's Bleeding Heart, Serrated /// Reverie, Water's Memories, Our Silent Sinews, Your Blood Yet Lingers, Baptism of Froth and Blood, and The Siren Song of the Forest.

If you think any of these names are cool as hell... yeah.... The Heart of Our Lagoon felt like it was a little more true to the themes and vibe the story turned out having, even if Our Silent Sinews is fucking awesome. Maybe I'll use that one some day.

So how did people react to this? Well, all my friends really liked it! I've gotten a few glowing reviews and it's a very new feeling. Although people seem to start the game predicting what's going to happen. I hadn't really focused on what I thought the player's reaction would be by the end of the story, I kind of just focused a lot on what I wanted to write, and what gets me excited. Reading through my own work this time was oddly really fun. It's the exact sort of indulgent subject I wanted all this time. I like to think I injected meaningful stuff in the middle, but I really just wanted something to fantasize about. Sometimes I'd just be reading over my work and get really excited and drawn in. I think I'm most happy about that aspect, even if some people will find it predictable or indulgent or not very complex. Hopefully more people just like me can read it and get excited over it too.

This game felt completely built on cut after cut after cut, but I managed to do it. Thanks to my friend Edgeworth for helping me proofread and give suggestions when I needed it most. This was basically a solo project aside from their input here and there, as well as reading over everything so I don't go insane staring at my script alone. The script would definitely have a lot more typos without them... Also thanks to all my friends who playtested.

Thanks for reading. I don't really know where I was going with all this. But I guess that's what's fun! It was probably too long, but whatever!

Thanks for playing my game too. If you haven't yet, well, damn dude. Hopefully you'll forget any spoiler I gave you by the time you do end up reading it.

-Joy