Compulsory Jam Postmortem

I've been torn about wether or not to write a postmortem for this game from the day I released it. On the one hand, I really got some ideas that I would like to write down somewhere about the process and result, but on the other hand it does seem a bit self-servient and conceited. I wrote this game in about 30 hours of work, and most of it was done in a bit of a rush. Although the jam was two weeks long, I still have many contractual obligations, a pregnant wife, and a very convoluted work situation going on, so I could only chip out at it for a few hours at a time in a few selected days. This left me wishing I could have done a lot more, but deadline came, and I was happy (if anxious) to release it as it was.

Game Design Postmortem

Here's my first and final thoughts on the game. I wanted the game to be atmospheric, and haunting. The main idea behind it was to explore the feeling of forcing the player to lose control to avoid being overwhelmed.  As the game progresses, you become less powerful each time, and to get your strength back you are forced to let go of control. This, in theory, should force the player to try to wait for safe spots and becoming secure, before jumping back into action. On paper, I want this to feel like a frantic bullet-hell extravaganza where you need to very carefully plan when to get your stats back. In the end, time constraints made the game much shorter and simpler than I wanted to, but I am very happy that all the features I wanted got in.

I did this by creating a few buttons outside the main screen, as I wanted the game to be mouse only. I regret that decision now. I think this could be really fun, and allow me to explore a different difficulty curve if I used traditional WASD or arrow movements, and assigned the power-ups to a button, both on screen and as an UI element. To represent the loss of control, this could integrate a short cooldown that leaves your ship dead on the water.

This could also make a lot of sense thematically. The game includes an element of loneliness. Our character used to be part of the Earth defence armada, and used to have friends and colleagues, but he is now on his own. As such, you can have a failing ship that keeps falling apart, and forces you to leave your pilot ship while you tinker with the motor and turrets to jury-rig them back into working condition. The question then is if I want to keep the declining speed and rate of fire in a costant state, or make it more discrete. From time to time, something breaks on your ship, and you can always kind of expect it to happen. It would be interesting to test that out.

Lastly, the game needs more enemy diversity and different bosses, as well as a ton of polish. That's definitely the first on the list if I keep working on it. Different enemies, new bosses, more animations...

Emotional Postmortem

This is the bit where I speak of why I wanted to do this game. As a game designer, it's very hard for me to be truly happy with my own work. This often leads to mental fatigue and dissatisfaction, as I drop projects after hours of work because they don't really come together the way I want them to. Recently, however, I am (and I feel like this sentence has been written millions of times already) trying to let go. Trying to get the project finished and released, no matter my feelings on it.

That is very jarring. I feel like I want to add a disclaimer in front of my game (and every game I've released) saying THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT WHO I AM AS A DESIGNER!, to warn people that they shouldn't jugde me too harshly. This is just a fun little thing, a silly little experiment...

Except this does really represent who I am.

See, I feel like design, in all it's disciplines, sort of works in three stages I like to call the Punk/Rock/Pop stages of design. First you start by only caring about the shape and energy of your project; what does it feel like to play it? what story is it telling? This stage is frantic, usually messy and DIY, you don't care about what the assets look like, you might even not know how to use the tools you are using... It's punk, and not everybody likes it.

Then you move to give everything a patina of polish. You start to worry about the technical details. You not only know your tools in and out, but you are free to take them to their limits. You add the equivalent of a six minute epic guitar solo to your game... You are in the Rock stage. 

After that you start using polish as a tool. You focus group, you do market research. You start manufacturing your project for your public, rather than yourself. You are in the Pop stage.

I was thinking a lot of these stages while working on this game. Part of me wants my games to feel like Pop. I would love to sit down and improve everything until my game looks like something you would play on a Nintendo Direct segment. Another part of me would love to be more Rock, to feel like those epic designers who toiled away and came out with games that felt like fully complete pieces of art. Games like Bastion or The Binding Of Isaac feel like games that mastered that Rock stage, that just chipped away at what they had until every single item was polished to perfection and interacted with every other item in a brillant symphony of gameplay, narrative and art.

But, alas, my mind is better attuned to the Punk stage. I read recently a writer who claimed that rewriting is easy and writing is hard, so he just wrote a first draft really quickly and then moved on from there, and I was really confused. Rewriting (AKA polish or editing) is not only hard and emotionally taxing for me, it's also kind of boring. I want the flash of something new, and I am not at all afraid of pushing a new idea into existence. Writing is easy for me, as opposed to other people, but rewriting is hell.

So, if I'm being honest with myself, this game represents who I am as a designer. I am a punk designer, and I will throw thousands of ideas to a project to see what sticks, what is interesting and a good foundation.  I didn't know that about me when I started this project. I always wanted to give the impression that I am a Rock star, giving you a massive six albums sci-fi opera with orchestral arrangments, but it turns out that I am closer to someone who screams at the mic while playing super fast in a crowded basement. 

And I kind of like it.

Final Thoughts

Don't get me wrong, I still want to be a Rock star. One of the key takeaways I have from this project is that I wasn't fighting Unity as much as I had to with other unfinished projects. There were still some moments of frustration, but I felt myself being able to translate my ideas into code easier that I've ever been, and  I do get the impression that with another 40-60 of work I could take this game into the Rock stage, and have a nice, little game. I can be a Rock star, it will just take a bit more time and dedication, and for now, I am happy to scream at you if you want to come and mosh while I sing about how everything suck and fuck the goverment.