Post-mortem of Tales of the Underworld – Lessons learned

Hi, these are the lessons learned for Tales of the Underworld: Rebellion of the Souls, a retro platformer for the compo. You can play and rate the entry here, and also read a step-by-step log on how the development process went.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with my entry. As explained in the log, I almost gave up on Saturday night, but still managed to pull out a finished game. That said, there is a lot of stuff I need to improve for next time!

What went wrong

• I didn’t do a brainstorming with possible themes in advance. I could have done so and save a little bit of time in Saturday’s morning. It took me many hours to decide what I wanted to do.
• I couldn’t have a very resting sleep. On Friday’s night there was way too much noise in the street, and on Saturday’s night I got some giant mosquito bites that were really itchy.
• A level editor. Please someone kick me if I think on doing that again in a jam.
• I overscoped and had to cut off a lot features. If I knew these features wouldn’t be in, I would probably have chosen a different game to implement.

What went right

• Lots of feedback and support on Twitter. I think putting screencaps and a URL that people could play instantly helped a lot to get this.
• A friend managed to stop me from quitting on Saturday night.
• No nasty bugs <3
• I found a simple, cute art style that really suits the game and allowed me to produce animations (unlike in my last Ludum).
• I manage to cut off features and I still ended up with a playable game –although not as cool as I wanted it to be!

Tools and tech

• Phaser as a JavaScript game framework.
• Atom text editor with vim key bindings.
• My gamejam generator for scaffolding the project.
• Gulp for automation.
• Bxfr and Garage Band for audio.
• Pixelmator and a Wacom table for drawing.
• Git and Github for version control.
• Lots of rock & roll and heavy metal!

Play & rate makes Hades happy <