SeedStory – Post Mortem

So, I finally managed to finish my game yesterday !

I’m completely burned out but satisfied with the result. You can check it out here.

What went right:

– art: letting my girlfriend do the art for me really was a brilliant idea ! I had to switch to the Jam category, but I needed the extra day anyway.

– coding: apart from some head banging against the wall and swearing (BitmapData.draw(), I fucking hate you), the coding part went alright. FlashPunk is cool but I really should have taken some time to play with it before the contest.

What went wrong:

– conception/planning: I had a really hard time with the theme at first. Then I thought about a bunch of concepts that would fit well with the theme, how cool it would be to have this and that, and I started coding stuff. I built a complex system and then tried to figure out how the player would interact with it… I ended up removing a lot of things and wish I had time to remove even more things.

Lesson learnt:

Next time, I will try to organize my time like this:

1. Think of one concept of gameplay that fits with the theme. Make it SIMPLE.
2. Code a playable prototype as fast as possible. If it doesn’t work or won’t be fun, go back to 1.
3. Think of ONE thing that would make the game better
4. Code it.Test it. Go to 3.

Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy the game !