Postmortem: Together Alone

Time for a

little postmortem on our story-driven puzzle game, Together Alone!

What went right

• Taking part, and finishing! This was our first LD, and from the outset we’ve concentrated on setting a realistic goal, keeping track of our progress, and actually creating a playable, finishable game.
• Teamwork, roles. The game design was a truly joint effort. Our first idea seemed promising but didn’t really work out, but in a long, productive brainstorm session we managed to turn it around. The other roles were clearly defined: Gijs took care of the graphics, I did the code. I created the ugly programmer art assets first, and Gijs used those as templates for his arcane magicks. All went smoothly this way.
• Story and mood. The game mechanics are not especially revolutionary, but the simple story and the mood we managed to convey through graphics and sound (simplistic though the music and sounds may be) give the game an extra dimension. Turns out people like a little story with their game, even if it’s cheesy.
• Difficulty curve. We took care to introduce each gameplay element in a separate puzzle, and have another puzzle to get more familiar with it. This way, players are gradually introduced to your game world, and each puzzle offers something new and fresh.
• Technology. We went with HTML5 partly because we were curious to see how far we could go with it, and because it’s really simple: the only tools you need are a browser and a text editor. We’re pretty happy with the capabilities of modern browsers and will probably continue to work with HTML5. Browser technology will only get better in the near future. The fact that basically everyone can play your game with just one click helps with judging. Still, this is a double-edged sword, see below.

What could be improved

• Framework. I created a very simple framework beforehand, which did the trick but wasn’t very flexible. I’m now in the process of refining it. Switching to an established JavaScript game library is also an option, but I have some specific ideas for a rapid development framework that I’m interested in working out.
• Sounds and music. While I love both Bfxr and WolframTunes, they are limited in what you (or at least I) can produce with them. Maybe for the next LD I’ll get a microphone and try to do my own SFX. It’s probably not easy to get great results that way, but trying will be fun. Music… maybe I’ll try composing something in a mod tracker, I used to dabble in the 90s. :-)
• Characters and tile colors. For some reason, we chose exactly the wrong combination of which character “owns” which tiles. It can get pretty confusing, and we should’ve made the exact opposite choice (character’s clothing matches their “own” tiles). This will be rectified in a future version.
• Technology again. HTML5 technologies still haven’t completely crystallized and there are some nagging compatibility issues. Some of them we’ve managed to deal with after the deadline; some of them are simply things we’ll have to avoid in the future. Some examples are: sound playback issues in Chrome and IE, difficulties working with canvas text and custom fonts, audio format support (MP3/OGG), a few cross-browser quirks with localStorage.

All in all, it was a great first stab at rapid game development, and definitely something to try again in the future! An updated version of this game is coming soon.