Post mortem
OK, game is far from finished, but I submitted what I have as a "playable demo", and will continue working on it for #1GAM (I'm giving myself a 33 days deadline).
I really liked the experience, and learned a lot in very little time, so I wanted to share what I learned here.
Just do it!
It's obvious, but the days I started to work on the game right after (and sometimes during) breakfast proved to be the most productive. I have been learning how to focus for a while now, but participating in this jam helped put a lot of what I learned in practice.
Pixel art takes time!
I'm very new to pixel art, I took an Udemy course earlier this year and had been practicing a bit, but this jam really put my small knowledge to the test, and I have to say that's where I failed the most. I found myself trying to rush it, and getting frustrated because I was never able to make the assets look the way I wanted them to look. So I learned I'll have to take my time with it, and practice a lot more. This is something I want to learn and become good or at least decent at.
Game programming isn't too hard!
Don't know if I mentioned this, but my day job is web development, so I'm coding most of the day. I have been trying to learn how to make games for a couple of years now, and at first the programming part felt quite intimidating because there seemed to be a lot of math and advanced algorithms involved, and a lot of coding seemed to be required for the most basic stuff. But this turned out to be the easy part!
I love gamedev!
I sometimes thought learning how games are made would take the "magic" out of videogames, and I wouldn't enjoy playing them as much. I was so wrong! This makes the experience so much more enjoyable, as now I can look at games with a different, but positive, perspective, and thoughts about how a pattern or movement is coded, or how a sprite or background are put together start popping into my head. This is especially true when playing entries for this jam. I love it!
Anyway, I'll continue working on SharkBlaster. I'll try to keep posting devlop entries, but to it's official devlog now :-)
Thanks a lot for reading!