As usual, I was rushing to make the submission deadline, and I had to cut most of the juiciness-features that I needed to really make this game feel great.
Failings:
- Dragged my feet when starting, losing a ton of time.
- Spent time making barrel rolling animation, that isn't even visible because of the lack of color contrast.
- Music is hard.
- Creature animations are REALLY hard.
- Bugs, bugs everywhere...
- I really wanted to add barrel explosions, score multiplier, Edgar's rotation, and maybe shadows.
- The GUI is ridiculously plain.
- Starting to submit 4 minutes before the jam closes is a really bad idea, especially when you have to turn your account into a developer account, add screen shots and a thumbnail, and a few other shenanigans before the game can be made active for the jam.
Successes:
- The game is technically finished and playable. My third public game.
- It was successfully submitted for the Indies VS PewDiePie game jam in time.
- It has animations! I haven't made pixel animations since... college?
- The art isn't too bad. Some of the best I've made, and certainly the fastest I've made.
- The music is pretty good, and not just the usual wholesale borrowing from incompetech.
- The game is surprisingly fun.
Lessons learned:
- Music and sound continue to amaze me on how vital they are for a holistic experience.
- Sound effects can be skipped if absolutely necessary, but music cannot.
- Smaller and simple pixel graphics are better than more complex ones, it just doesn't look like it when making the graphics, because I have the image blown up to the size of my monitor. Everything looks weird when magnified by 2000%.
- Stub out the game submission page first. You never know what surprises you might find.
- Take more development screenshots. It's fun to see the evolution of the game.
- Youtube is my greatest weakness.
- Game mechanics are generally the easiest thing for me to make, so front-loading my work with them is a good way to get myself invested in the project.
- I always feel great when finishing a game.
- I need to do more game jams.
- And take them seriously.
Overall it was a positive experience, albeit painful. Now it's time to find out what other people think about my game.