Ok so, Day 7 final update + post-jam thoughts?
I finished a game worth submitting (well, more of a demo), thats the first thing I guess!
Certainly far from 100% happy with it and it was quite the rollercoaster on that final day, but thats just how gamejams go sometimes.
So before I talk about the gamejam overall this is what I did on the final day:
- Added in the bear creature. This guy shows up in the first area, he was very quickly modelled and animated. But actually turned out ok. Setting up the intro to learning how to bark by scaring him took longer than I wanted. I wish I could have included more moments like this, its a very retro-gaming moment that throws me right back into games of the 90s with the cut scene and silly setup & payoff.
- Added in more skill progression. There was meant to be a few more abilities in the game, but I had to cut them in order to focus on more important things. Below are all the abilitis I had planned. The only ones that didnt make it were 'Floof Ahoy' (glide ability), 'Very High uwu' (double jump) & 'Best Shiba!!!' (mystery final ability)
- BATTLED with the dialogue and tutorial system. The tutorial system itself was pretty solid, but I think the way it worked in with the dialogue system was just problematic. This caused a lot of lost time in that final day since I had some very game breaking bugs on my hands, which I didnt realize until I playtested it a few times.
- More work on area 3: Now this is where I was starting to really stress out. I had level 3 designed to some degree, at least as far as the concept and layout went, and how it would work in with unlocking and then utilizing the final abilities. Its a shame because I had some really cool places I wanted to make, and characters to add. But it ended up being far too much. By the time I fixed the dialogue system I'd burnt through too much time and had to cut my losses. Thankfully I think I saved it a bit and managed to find an idea to give players *something* at the end of the game....
The final pivot - with only 2 areas completed, I knew I needed another area to give players something else to do. Luckily I had a great idea come to me. I cant remember when or how, it was during the final night of gamedev when I was completly mentally scattered. But I realized I had that entire dev-testing area sitting around. So in the final 30mins of the gamejam I made a final shiba character to meet you outside area 2, who would thank you for playing the game and then give you the option of travelling to this develoment area. At least that gives players something else to check out and do in the end, rather than cutting the game short at that point which would have felt like a massive let down.
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