Post by quetzal2 in Postmortems

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Hi!

First game jam submission, and it was a lot of fun! Having 10 days allowed for some work on free time, even though most of it went into deciding on the type of game, the theme and the story behind it :D .

I found the jam shortly before it started, so everything was done during the jam, concept, specification and implementation. One thing I was really careful of was to keep it as simple as possible, and iterate over it, because I knew that I'd never get to do anything in time if I didn't follow this rule. Pretty happy with that, because I did manage to start simple. The submitted version is really basic however, and I spent some time this week to add the base features to the game.

I had some issues submitting my project, as it's the first time I used Itch. I had a surprise issue exporting the project for a web version too, because I moved to Godot 4 and only had some experience with exporting Godot 3 projects. Also, first actual Godot project! 🥳

Thus first time for many things, and happy I got the chance to participate. I'm actively developing the project to add to it the many features that were thought about. So I think that I'll keep working on it as a fun side project.

quetzal21 year ago

One thing I'm kind of sad about and I forgot to mention is that I ended up focusing on the mechanics only, to be able to have something in time, and thus strip out all the visuals like nice sprites and animations, an introduction screen explaining the situation and putting the whole game back into context. As it is now, I can imagine that it kind of feels like a random game, almost disconnected from Pepper & Carrot. I didn't realize that until now, since I've got in mind everything that is still missing, so that would be what I'd want to improve on for a next jam, make sure to not make the game look generic while trying to aim for the minimum viable game for the submission, if time is short.

Perita1 year ago

Hello quetzal2,

Just so you know, i did not think your submission felt “like a random game”. Looking back at it, i now realize that maybe my comment about your game being an “abstract map” made you think that this is the case, but the truth is that i liked your approach, mostly because last year i also tried to do something in the same spirit as you, i called it “abstract map”, and, retrospectively, i should not have said it in a public forum without proper context. Sorry.

(By the way, i ditched that idea because, unlike you, i was unable to make it work. So there, you bested me.)

I do not have data to back up this claim, but i think that this “i focused too much on just a part of the game in the detriment of everything else” is a very common complain among jams participants. For me, at least, is something i say about all jams i take part in, no matter whether it’s a 48-hour or a 10-day jam; i always have to cut down a lot of features. And, in fact, and much to my shame, in my first ever jam i also focused exclusively on the mechanics, just like you, but was unable to even finish the “first” level. You bested me, again!

In short, you did what every engineer worth his or her salt does: you choose the best trade-off to be able to deliver within the given deadline. And deliver you did. ^_^

quetzal21 year ago

Hello Perita,

Thank you for the kind words! I didn't come to that conclusion with your message, no worries ^^ . It's by playing the other games (and I liked how there was a nice variety of game types and gameplays, that's pretty cool!) that I realized that. And to be fair, I think it's the first time (in my side projects) where I manage to get to a minimum viable product and iterate on it, finally! 🥳 Learning to do that was one of my goals taking part in the jam.

Now that you say it, I can imagine that it's a pretty common problem, indeed :D .

One priority was the random maze generation, which would allow for almost free variety, and thus the little I would have the time to make would have less repetition, and be more replayable.

itch.io

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