A couple of weeks back, I talked about how I got the original idea for Aurora’s Nightmare years back.  Originally though, it was going to an ordinary novel.  But, for various reasons, I never actually wrote it and it just sat on my “future projects” list.
Fast forward to spring of 2011.  I was between jobs (having recently returned from my second stint of teaching in Japan) and the game I was working on, Car Washer: Summer of the Ninja, was stalled due to my programmer getting a new fulltime job.  I was looking to start a new game but, since Car Washer had suffered so many delays due to lost programmers, I wanted to make a game where, if necessary, I could do all the work myself, without relying on contractors.  At the same time, I was on a big visual novel kick.  I first discovered and fell in love with the genre a couple years before, shortly after my first stay in Japan, thanks to Type Moon’s amazing Fate/Stay Night.  And, while back in Japan in 2011, I made sure to track down quite a lot of other visual novels I’d been wanting.
With my writing background, a visual novel sounded like the perfect project for me.  Even better, I wouldn’t need a programmer and, if necessary, could handle the art and sound on my own (in the end though, I did hire people who are much more skilled in those areas than I am).  I thought about creating an entirely new story for my visual novel but decided to review my current collection of ideas first and see if any of them would be a good fit.  In the end, I had two stories that I thought could make good visual novels, Aurora’s Nightmare being one of them.  It won out for a couple of reasons.  First, it was the shorter and less complex of the two, meaning it would be the quicker and cheaper one to make, which is important when you’re working in your spare time on a limited budget.  Second, I’d already written the other story as a regular novel (it isn’t currently available, but you can find some of my other novels on Amazon Kindle) and, while I think it could be adapted into a good visual novel, it would be even better as an action RPG.
With that decided, I began the process of adapting what had been a linear story to a more interactive and player driven format.  But I’ll talk more about that another time.