O2A2 2026 Post Mortem

Firstly, I highly recommend giving the game a download and play before reading this. It’s only a few minutes long. It’s not exactly spoilable since the game is only max 10 minutes long but you’ll get full context if you play it.

What is O2A2

So the jam this was made for was the Only One of Any Asset Jam or OOAA Jam, often shortened to O2A2. I’ve done this jam once before 6 years ago for —if I’m remembering correctly— it’s very first run. (Fun fact: that first O2A2 project is still by far my most popular project). The rules have changed a bit since then, but the basics remain the same: 1 sprite, 1 background, and 1000 words max across the whole project. There’s an exception for content warnings and a little disclaimer about the restrictions set by the jam, both of which I used.

Why I Chose This Story

The game is about an toxic relationship where both partners abuse the other. The project came to me as a dream first. I dreamt about a smiliar scene to the first one in the game, but the abuse had progressed farther on both sides. I expanded that into a short outline and planned to do that for Toxic Yuri Jam, but due to not being done with my part for my team’s Otome Jam project and due to my life getting insanely hectic I ended up not being able to enter. I still wanted to tell these characters’ story but wasn’t sure when I get to them. Enter: O2A2 2026!

The reason I was so set on using these characters and their story was for a few reasons. Firstly, I wanted to tackle more serious subject matter. It’s not that I haven’t written anything dark before, but I hadn’t had anything like that released to the public. I’ve always had ideas that involved darker subject matter (my projects from back when I wanted to write books were very dark, for example) but I don’t think any of them got seen by more than maybe 5 people. I was also a lot less subtle back then so some of those subjects either came out of nowhere or weren’t expanded on at all. So I felt this was my chance to tell a story that treated things with a bit more depth (ironic considering the strict word limit). I wanted to tell a story where both partners where both perpretrator and victim while also showing their attachment to each other. I wanted it to feel somewhat realistic as if they could be any couple. That wish along with a friends comment when I was describing the idea to her lead to the main title of The Couple Next Door.

The Development

I used this project to finally try out LightVN. I plan to use it for a seperate larger project eventually but needed a test run first. LightVN is a really impressive VN engine that supports 3D models, simple adventure games (think RPGMaker horror type games), and even dungeon crawlers out of the box. And by supports I mean has example scripts showing you how to implement similar features. The simple adventure game features are what I have my eye on for later but I still hadn’t experimented with the more basic functions so this was a good excuse to get better acquainted. I want to emphasize how easy to pick up this was. I think I started scripting on Friday and was able to finish before the deadline on Monday. Although having example files and a wiki (even though I had to translate it) helps with that.

I had a clear concept in my head of how I wanted things to look and had done a quick stream of consciousness zero draft to get the words out. I think this might have been one of the easiest projects to write for me, with the other contender being my other O2A2 project. Scripting however, was a bit weirder for me. I am used to scripting with a more cartoony feel and tend to want to move at least one character every few lines. However, I felt like that would be too much for a more understated story like this one, so I had to hold myself back a bit. I did manage to do some fun things though. My favorite was tilting the sprite when one of the characters was eavesdropping on a conversation. It was a little thing but it made me smile while I was playing back through to test. If I did go back, I use zooms and pans. In my head, the ending scene starts with the character bending over the sink and ends with them hunched over it slightly. I think that would’ve been really good to capture. Maybe I held myself back too much.

Wrap Up

All in all I think this was a great experience. I got another game out and was able to do some writing which I’ve been missing plus being part of a jam means having a whole bunch of new games to play.