Monday, November 24, 2014

Edgar's Adventure Immediate Post-mortem

I don't even know where to start.

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.