Submission and Post Mortem
Well, I just submitted my game! Again, I apologize for not writing much over the past week or so. This last leg I was really focused on getting the last few essential things in before the deadline and didn't have time to write about what I was doing. I wanted to write up a little post mortem, though (also because it's apparently a required part of the submission process).
What Went Well
My main goal for this project was to use this process of making a 2D platformer as a means to getting some experience working in Unreal, and by that regard it was an overwhelming success. I’m obviously still no pro, but I’m way more familiar with Unreal than I was before and, more importantly, I’m not intimidated anymore and now feel empowered to try experimenting with my own game ideas.
I’m also happy with the amount of the game I was able to put together. It is not a “full” game as we’ve come to expect of commercial releases, but I wasn’t expecting to achieve that within the one month time limit of the jam. I feel like it’s a pretty decent vertical slice, and I could show this to someone and they would get the gist of what the game might be like. Beyond adding more than one level there is other content I would have loved to get in, but the product as it stands now is playable and has a start, middle, and end, and I feel pretty good about that.
I also got to try another program (Pyxel Edit) and get some more practice doing pixel art, which was another area I was not very experienced in before this project.
What Could Have Gone Better
I would have loved to have implemented some dialogue and cut scenes, but after spending a few days researching it I wasn’t finding the answers I needed and needed to move on to other things. That being the case, the “how to play” screen was an addition I made because I felt I needed to put it in, but ideally I wish I had a more elegant way to teach the player in-game what to do.
Obviously the project could have more content, as I mentioned before, but as I also mentioned before I don’t feel like that was the point of this game jam, and I’m happy with the progress I made.
One thing I do wish I’d gotten in was setting up keyboard support. I don’t think this would have taken that long, but I was too excited about other aspects of the game and never looped back around to this. Sorry, people that don’t have a PC gamepad!
I think that’s about it! I had a lot of fun with this project. I would love to come back and work on it more, but for now I need to step back and take a break from it for a while. Here’s to my first Devtober in the books!