This project's design decisions, albeit over-scoped or ill-thought-out for the jam, gave it a unique charm and aura which I have already praised quite a bit in discord servers and comment sections abound. I encourage your desire to learn better game design, but I also must ask that you work to maintain memorability in your projects.
Learning how other's make games, as well as commonly accepted practices for design are helpful, but only so long as you use those lessons to better explore the unique personality your work currently already has. If you begin playing it too safely, or too by-the-books, your upcoming games could go from being janky but interesting, to well-made but forgettable.
For you especially, I would see that as a real shame.
Granted, your final statement hints that you in no way mean to begin making drab slop, but it also attests that games have to be fun. In response, I would simply like to emphasize that the best, most unforgettable games often balance aspects of themselves which are fun, and aspects which are very much not so. This doesn't even have to be weighted towards the enjoyable side to be... well, enjoyable, as seen in Pathologic.
That's a lot of waffling to just say, in your endeavor to make better games, I ask you to never sacrifice memorability for simple entertainment.
I can't wait to check out the Director's edition, and I really can't wait for your Petscop-inspired piece, whenever it is released.
Viewing post in Premonition: post-mortem after the storm. comments
(sorry for the late reply but) thank you sooooo very much for your sincere feedback!
You helped me clear out a looot of conflicts I had about the results, and to be honest, this is why I loved doing this jam. You can’t know how your strengths or weaknesses in a vacuum.
I have this newfound idea that I should harness more of my own personal strengths to make games memorable. Maybe gameplay needs a lot more research and testing for me to achieve the same result, yet I have a complete newfound sense of direction of where to aim for.
Gameplay is hard thing to balance. Right now I have a genre: Earthbound/Undertale-inspired RPG; and I am in the process of macerating these ideas I have in mind into something more cohesive and concrete.
My main lesson for this new project is to start from the gameplay up, whilst having a goal in mind: making it memorable. And I hope that with time I can post more about them.
Thank you sooooooooooooooooo much for your feedback, before now and hopefully in the future. You’re one hell of a good dev and I can’t wait for your next endeavours into this amazing world.