Hewwo evewywon! (Hello everyone!)

Thank you for all the love and support given to Loser Named Hana! I'm surprised so many people have played it and found some sense of enjoyment out of it.  So, I felt I should talk a little bit about the game's creation and my thought process!

As some of you may know, or are about to discover, Hana is originally from my game "Repurpose". The game is set in the afterlife where people who died an untimely death are sent to Limbo and must decide where they want to go, be it Utopia (Heaven), Hell, or remain in Limbo. Yes, this does (unfortunately for some) mean that Loser Named Hana is a prequel to that game along with being a spinoff. However, I imagine if I were to extend this game, I would allow for an ending where the MC/Player character can prevent Hana's death and that can exists as it's own timeline separate from Repurpose. Though, I'm getting ahead of myself there.

Loser Named Hana was made both for a game jam and to relieve burnout from my main project Repurpose although I also imposed my own time limit of a week to draw, write, program, and voice the game. It took me a little more time than that in the end but I completed a lot anyway for the time I gave myself.  I always wanted to try making something a little more immersive in the visual novel genre that chatsim type games brought to the table so when robobarbie made their code open source I simply had to play around with it.  I'm still a novice when it comes to programming (I really wish I could figure out how to have the MC's screen name display in the chat UI but I am big dumb and was on a time-limit)((It's probably so easy I am just stupid)) so I relied on my artistic prowess and the fact that Hana is a character I voice to really "sell" the experience to the MC. Yes, my voice can naturally get that high and I had to record Hana's line over the course of 2-3 days because I kept giving myself a headache after an hour of hitting those high notes lol. 

Side note, my pronouns are they/them , I'm nonbinary, and Hana is the first and only character I've ever voiced!

I had several idea's for a friendship/romance chatsim featuring Hana at the back of my mind. One of those was that the MC themself would be a "loser" and join a group chat with other losers, including Hana, and get to know her from there. I scrapped that one as  I wanted the MC to have a more personal connection with Hana from the start and to avoid any one wanting a "route" with a different character in the future. Another idea I had was  simple: the MC would just randomly receive a friend invite from Hana, and  it would have played out from there. That one was a little too boring in my opinion even if most players, from what I can gather, choose to become Hana's friend without getting paid the $100 a week and the other would probably need more time to make than the allotted 2-ish weeks Loser Named Hana ended up taking. I think the poster ad for a friend was, in the end, the better premise that sets LNH apart from other games along with being funner to write. I've always had a taste for the unconventional.

With only needing to write two character (MC and Hana) I could offer a more personal experience by giving the MC more dialogue options to choose from to further make it more immersive. Granted, it's still a somewhat of a "nice to her ending" and "mean to her ending" sort of deal, but how you get there can be different in multiple ways and have different meanings!

Speaking of "meanings", for LNH I didn't have one in mind going in. In all honestly I still sorta don't? My main mission was to present this really bizarre and lonely girl, flaws and all, and the MC could be as mean or as kind to her as they wanted with little repercussions because Hana is just THAT desperate for someone to call a friend. It's a lot different from how I do my other projects where I have themes and positive messages I want the audience to get from it. With Hana I was more out of my comfort zone in that I had to portray a rather pitiful character where there is no "good" right to wrong way to treat her given the kind of person she sees herself as. Which is an annoying loser with no friends and the only way she can have some companionship in life is to pay for it (her thought process, not mine). Hana doesn't try to hide her more unusual qualities straight off the bat because she's and incredibly honest person. Perhaps to a point where she shows so much of herself to anyone both as a plea for her to be accept for herself but to also repel people that eventually would leave her? It's a little bit a both I think.

That being said, if you're looking for a wholesome feel good story from Loser Named Hana then you're better off playing another game because Hana is a mess of woman with many, many,  flaws. Sorry guys, you can't fix her. But maybe you don't need to make her life (and yours) a little better. Or worse! Worse is an option!

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Should I have plans to extend this game will have to wait till my team finishes our current project, Repurpose, but I will always have Hana in the back of mind. I have a few vague ideas of what an extended Loser Named Hana could look like, but I leave the pencil in the hands of you, the fans, for now.

Bye, fwiend!