phew, o2a2 done again for the year! i had a ton of fun working on this game and was able to spend a little longer than i did on last year's entry too.

my concept this time was "cute hacker and comically-incompetent but pure hearted computer user falling in love." i hope you guys like the game and find it fun, even though it is short!

it's small, but i had fun trying to add in things i hadn't played around with before, like using text shaders and trying out "voice boops" as well. i think it was fun, and i enjoyed trying out NVL mode as well for the online chat segments of the dialogue and the simulated terminal sequences. the fun thing about o2a2 is that it kind of puts you in the mood to try things like this...

i wanted to make sure the game had a "hacker-like" feel, so i didn't really aim for realism with the UI- a boring old realistic terminal just isn't fun enough. it's gotta be hackertyper or nothing!

here's some of the original concept art i had made for gav. i really wanted to give him a charmingly nerdy vibe, but ideally give him a little edge as well with some jewellery and long hair. i hope that you enjoy his (hopefully?) cute and endearing awkwardness. of course, it wouldn't be right for me to have a leading man without including my favourite qualities of "terrible eyesight" and "terrible smoking habit".  this time at least the "terrible person" part of the trifecta doesn't seem like it applies...?

making a game about a cute guy who isn't evil was fun to try out for a change, though. maybe it'll even become a habit...🤭

maybe a "behind the scenes" of how i made his room would be interesting? i'm no skilled BG artist, but i wanted to try photobashing/overpainting this time. i had to paint over the pictures and cut them up so that they wouldn't look too "real", but i think doing this and adding some halftones and textures as well as scratch-drawn servers and walls, desks etc made it feel more cohesive.

here's how it all would look in the cold light of day in the first rough draft.

...and finished properly, minus the Large Obstacle in the middle.

thanks for a great response so far in the launch day, i'm always so terribly flattered and overwhelmed to see it nowadays and i'm really glad if i could make something that would give anybody a fun little coffee break of a game.