A final devlog from I.
We're not dead. I was definitely more productive at the beginning of the jam, but I think we're on path to push something out. That something might be different from what we had imagined, but it's there.
Where to begin? We've done a "first pass" (partially a joke at this point) on most of the art assets in the game, prioritising quantity. We have 4 enemies for each area including a boss, as well as a final boss, capping out at a relatively small 13 enemies. It's quite a short experience. I've added equipping and using items out of combat, rest stops, implemented the new areas, there's some status effects like poison and a stun ability, a revival move and item, a boss that continuously summons minions, a bunch of new items, all enemies have a unique skill...
Generally this is more of a pre-post mortem, though.
While the RPG system was partially my idea, and entirely my idea as far as implementing it through Ren'Py - it was a little ambitious for a 2 week project. Just getting half of the basic framework into the game took me a week, and that was at a frankly pretty quick pace. While more content can be added quite quickly now everything is done, the basic workings took most of my time. I hope there aren't too many major bugs, and things look to be fine, but we haven't really had time to do many test runs beyond features breaking while we're implementing something else.
The real killer is all the non-code assets that the now base of the game needs. Every enemy, ability, gui and item needs their arts - although we haven't managed ability graphics, and the enemies aren't animated. We'd have all those things at a decent quality as well as SFX in an ideal world, but there's just not enough time for it, even at a rush. Several features were cut as well. Perhaps we'll polish the game up more in the future, especially when I'm done with my coursework.
That aside, I found it to be an enjoyable learning experience. I have a (slightly) more concrete idea of how long things take to develop, and I've had fun tinkering with how to program a turn-based combat loop among other things. I mean, it's a little wonky, but it gets the job done.
Soon, if things go well, I'll be trying ("trying" being the key word) to develop a short VR shooter with some Metroid inspirations, and I'll be taking many of the things I learned during the jam with me. Obviously not how to program turn-based combat loops, but more general lessons, like knowing the value of sticking to small, easy to achieve tasks is even greater than I originally thought.
This was my last ramble for this jam. Thanks to everyone for participating, making things interesting and letting me see their own creations.