After four months of development, I’m glad to say that I’m completely satisfied with the final state of the game. While we may not have been able to implement our final stretch goals, and we could always make improvements, we have managed to implement everything we could reasonably have working within this short development cycle.

After adding the final touches on the game, we ran into one last hurdle the night before the showcase: version control. Somehow, we had forgotten to merge the branch containing bug fixes and misc. features with main. We made some efforts to merge the two branches, but quickly realized that this wouldn’t be an easy fix. Begrudgingly, we decided to roll it back to an older version of the game with less features and polish, and call it a day.

I believe this was a smart decision. It was already past 12, and the changes required to merge the two branches would probably have involved ripping up a ton of the scene and code. You need to know your limits, and that working in a sleep-deprived state will only make things worse. Sometimes, you need to call it quits for not only your own good, but for the sake of the project.

Image: Fish game

Even with the dated build, we still managed to showcase a relatively stable, bug free demo of the game. Though not all of the game was able to be shown (e.g. certain upgrades, and the ending), we still believe that the core message came across quite well, for what we had.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the final stages of development, and how our project, charter values, and the health of our members was maintained. I am glad I was in the group I was, and am happy with all of the new team management and programming skills I’ve picked up from working with them.