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Jon B. Honeycutt3 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the thorough comment. As for the thing you are missing, it might be that you can also go left from the start location (after learning to Sneak, there is something you need just to the left of the campfire). I tried to indicate this with background art, but in retrospect I should have swapped started the player in the center with the fire and bunny on each side to give more of an indication that you can go both ways. Maybe also an arrow shaped bg art asset. I do also that my design as is can create frustration, and if given nore time would have found some way to keep the UI minimal, but indicate taht you are performing the correct action (perhaps with a particle effect creating a growing “glow” around the target.  But the is the difference between game jams...  sometimes you just dont realize if something is going to work or not until you are in the middle of the project and you don’t always have the time to fix it and still meet your scope.  


...and thanks for reading the post mortem. I felt like I would need it to remember my feelings on  this project in the future.  I’m glad someone else enjoyed it. 

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gamesitwatch3 years ago

You nailed it, having played a million games that only play from left to right (and having made one myself a few years back) it never occurred to me that I could go the other way too. I played your game again and got to the end this time. I'm still impressed. :)

I also understand what you're saying about game jams. Believe it or not, this was my first ever game jam, which is quite the "achievement" considering that I'm 43 and I actually made my first game 35 years ago - on a system that had a 2.5 MHz CPU and 16K RAM... The final entry I submitted is barely a shadow of what my original idea was; life got in the way and I lost 3 days, leaving me with a whole bunch of half-baked features. I basically spent all of Sunday cutting stuff from the game, just so that I actually have something to submit that more or less works.

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Jon B. Honeycutt3 years ago

For your first jam, getting anything accomplished is a feat, even if you have been making games for a while (my first was in QBasic on a Pentium 90MHz, and didn't start jamming until about 5.5 years ago).  In the end if you can make something that compiles and is more or less playable, that is good.  My first jam team had 6 people.  Me, another programmer who merged changes that broke all my code half an hour before the deadline, a person who literally did nothing, a 3d artist who made 3 different small models of asteroids, a 2d artist who made a single 2 frame animation for a 16x16 pixel character, and a writer whose content never made it into the game.  So yeah... having anything is good.

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gamesitwatch3 years ago

Haha, that was both reassuring and discouraging at the same time when it comes to my own performance and to joining a team, respectively. But I hear you, I certainly should try and appreciate it more that I did in fact submit a more or less working game.

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Jon B. Honeycutt3 years ago

Team's aren't usually that challenging.  That particular game jam was my first and everyone on the team's first.  None of us knew the tools (that was all of our first time using Unity and no one had experience with any other engine.)  All of my teams since then (6ish years) have been mostly good, and part of that is experience on how to lead a team when they need direction.  I love to work with new people and teams as much as possible and usually try to work with someone that is their first game jam.  I see a lot of developers in my local area that work with the same teams every time, and that works for them.  I like to work in the community to give new people a chance and invite them in and try to see that they have a positive and enjoyable experience.  The number one thing is communication, with trying never to be negative about ideas and thoughts.  This often means being a bit fluid with the design to accommodate whatever comes up.  Next just make sure that if someone makes an asset, try to get in in the game somewhere.  If nothing else, flatten it out, put a cube behind it, remove the colliders and call it a poster on a wall.  So... I am rambling... but what i am trying to say is teams are very valuable and important to me.

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