I first discovered the (YOU)RPGM Jams towards the end of the first event. I considered joining but felt there wasn't enough time, and I didn't have much experience with RPG Maker at that point, so I ended up deciding against it. After that, I haven't really given /vrpg/ that much thought (and went back to shitpost on isekai threads on /a/), and I kind of forgot about the whole jams thing. After some time, though, I decided to check the board again and see what was happening around those parts, and I came across the winter jam thread. Since it had just started, I decided to join, as there was enough time to make something.

While I was trying to come up with ideas for the game, I randomly remembered an old idea for a book I had years earlier: "Anon Ruins Christmas." The story involved my self-insert character going on an epic quest to kill Santa Claus, accompanied by my fictional childhood friend and the real-life singer INNA. I hadn't really gone much in-depth with that idea besides a scene where INNA would castrate me by running over my genitals with a motorcycle, as it was just a "have a laugh at it and forget it" type of thing. However, recalling it inspired me to adapt it into a game, but without the self-insert part. I also replaced INNA and the childhood friend with a cat, mostly because I thought it would be funny.

Once I had the basic gist of the concept, I opened RPG Maker and started by creating the first two enemies: the Mafioso and the Prostitute. After coming up with the Ice Shogun and the Snow Man enemies, I finally started working on... the shooting star mechanic. Yes, I had this idea for a shooting star mechanic where, randomly during fights, a shooting star would appear, allowing you to input a wish that could be granted. Some of the wishes included "money" to gain some extra money, "level" to increase your level by, "win" to defeat all enemies in the fight, and "death" to kill both you and Kitty. And naturally, if you typed something that wasn't recognized by the text parser, it would spawn a DefenseBot 2.0 to kill you. I eventually gave up on this idea because I ran out of time to create a decent text parser, as the game was a bit too ambitious as it was, considering my experience at the time. However, from this, I came up with the gimmick of having enemies randomly enter and leave fights, such as the migrating birds and the hibernating bear. I implemented this gimmick better in the sequel...

Finally, I started working on the actual story. As with all my games, I used the "make it up as I go" method of storytelling, with most of my thought process being, "wouldn't it be funny if..." With the first area, I just thought it would be funny if a giant robot was blocking the way on the bridge, and you had to go to a nearby witch's tower to get the password. Originally, I wanted the tower to be like a dungeon with some puzzles. The main puzzle there would have been a room where you had to guide four little girls to a spot in a maze without letting any of them fall to their deaths in holes in the ground. I ended up not adding that because I simply didn't know how to implement it. Another idea that I got was to add an Eskimo society, where you'd meet the Eskimo king and have to complete some quests for him to progress. This idea came to me very late in development, so I didn't have time to add something like that, though it's quite a dumb idea anyway, it's probably better this way.

The next zone is the Ice Cave, where I thought it would be cool and thematic to have sliding + lever puzzles. They were cool; too bad I can't design good puzzles to save my life, though. There was a mapping error in the original release that made it impossible to backtrack to the original area after you left the caves, soft-locking you (it was actually intentional; I meant for there to be a puzzle to backtracking, but I forgot to design the actual puzzle). I fixed that and created a clock item in Emsey's house that could be used to cheat so players that already played the game could go back to where they were before updating - because at the time I didn't understand how RPG Maker saves work and I thought that changing a map's layout would invalidate older saves. I originally planned to add a girl at the end of the cave who was kidnapped by the Yeti and would join the player's party after defeating the boss. I abandoned the idea because I didn't know how to integrate her into the party gameplay-wise. I did consider an alternative of adding her as a secret when whishing for a 'girlfriend' upon the shooting star, but when that idea got canned, this did as well.

Then there was the town area, where I ended up putting the Mafioso and Prostitute enemies. I actually wanted the town to be enterable and have some purpose to the story, but I was too lazy to design a whole town, so I decided to add the police officer there to gate the player out instead. While I was at it, I added police officers as an enemy too. I don't know why I kept the town there if I decided to not do anything for it; I probably just thought the police officer joke was funny enough to warrant its inclusion. After that was the area with the snowstorm. I think that was quite cool still, actually. I like the gimmick of the characters being blinded during all fights due to the snowstorm as well. When I got to working on that part, though, I got a grave case of "fuck! I got this far, and I still don't know how to end the story!" so I just threw in an old lady that gives you a special item, and then she turns into a butterfly and runs away.

I obviously wanted to make the last portion of the map more Christmas-y and with some more cool puzzles to progress. I was running out of time though and frankly didn't feel like searching the web for some Christmas tile sets, so I just made a simple labyrinth with barely anything in it. I thought a boss rush of all the bosses you fought up to that point would be cool (it was) and that finally getting to kill the DefenseBot 2.0 that cockblocked you at the beginning would be satisfying (it was). The final boss was also surprisingly beatable at only level 24. I totally thought he impossible to kill without grinding to level 40 (or cheating), but I guess I was wrong.

There are a shitload of problems that the game has; here's a list:

Though there is probably some more that I'm forgetting about (or didn't notice while playing through it again).

Overall, it is a better game than I remember it being, though obviously not good. Over the years, I've kept trying to go back to it and update it to fix its issues, but my attempts always felt through for some reason, mostly because I am a lazy fuck. It isn't my first game by a long shot - I made a few games in Game Maker before it - nor is it my first RPG Maker game - I made a shitposting game for /agdg/'s Demo Day once that I never uploaded to my main itch account - but this game is still my baby, probably because I really got attached to the Emsey series, although I haven't done anything with it for some years since Catches 'em All. Maybe I should get up my fat, lazy ass one of these days and start working on Emsey 4. I know what I want it to be; I just don't feel like starting to work on it.