As of this development log, we are now at the conclusion of the game jam. I have now completed the first 15-20 minutes of my game Nothing Can Ever Go Wrong. I think the jam was great. It was definitley a ton of work, but since I really love video games and really wanted to make a game of my own, I really decided to really push myself beyond my potential to make something really good, and I must say, I am truly proud of the prototype that I created. While I was never able to complete the full story of the game, I was able to get in the first 15-20 minutes of story done in this prototype.  But even though I was only able to complete 15-20 minutes of story, I am truly amazed and pleased by those 15-20 minutes of gameplay I created. I thought that I was gonna have an impossible time making this game, but it actually turned out to be way easier than I expected, and I actually had a lot of fun making it. Of course, it was still a lot of work. But in the end, it was completely worth it, as I am very pleased with the final outcome, and I am impressed with my game. 

I used RPG Playground for this game. And while using it,  I noticed that I needed to heavily balance narrative and mechanics. When it comes to games, you need to always be doing action. Whether it's destroying, fighting, building, matching, or jumping, some mechanic needs to be there. If a game is just a bunch of dialogue, that's going to be a very boring building. Of course the narrative is very important as well as the dialogue, but I understood that I couldn't make the dialogue too long, or else I would be able to get no mechanics in. So I ensured that if I had a lot of explaining to do, I would  split the dialogue piece by piece in different places , so I would also be able to utilize the mechanics to tell the story, and make the player do things, like fighting enemies, or talking with other NPCs, before reaching the important NPC for an important piece of dialogue.  I think I could utilize this in my everyday life when it comes to trying to balance things. If there is ever a time I need to combine two things together, and it ensure that they both have meaning in something, I think working on the game jam could really help me solve that problem.

 If I were to make another level in my game based on my feedback, I would one hundred percent make a level that involves overthrowing the king and queen of my game. I was intending to do a level similar to this, but I unfortunately ran out of time to do so. I ended it off at around the halfway point of the game. 

I used many elements from my portfolio, but I also left out many. The country of Joyland was the setting I planned from the very beginning, and I sucessfully incorportated it into the game. The main characters of Richard and Sarah were also incorportated into the game, and their personalities remain the same as in the portfolio. I also added three locations from the portfolio into the game: Joyland Township, Freezing Forests, and Delicious Desert. The talking animals from my portfolio were also added into the game. While many portfolio elements were added, I did leave out many. The original antagonists were supposed to be aliens from another planet known as "Everywrong", and the country they lived in was was named "Miserableland". I scrapped these ideas, as I thought the idea of an evil dictator from the country within was a better idea.  Juicy Jungle  concept was renamed to the Restricted Area in the final game. The textual artifacts were letters as in the portfolio. However, the text is completely different from the portfolio. There are also a couple of other changes that I probably didn't mention.  

What I noticed about the narratives of other students' games is that many of them had an escape theme.  A lot of them were about escaping a certain building, land, or castle. Some games also had puzzle solving and mystery themes.

My favorite games was Noah Safar's Maze Runner. The reason why this game was my favorite is because this game was unique compared to the other games I played. I really loved figuring out the mazes and fighting the enemies. I also loved the seasons theming, and the different enemies for each season. I also like that it used RPG Playground, a platform that wasn't really commonly used by everyone else.

For my feedback, I was mostly praised for the use of the NPC's, the use of RPG Playground, the worldbuilding, and making Joyland feel like a real community. What I was criticized for was not going far enough with overthrowing the king and queen.  They felt like it could have added more to the story by doing that.

I think the biggest surpise to me was how easy RPG Playground was to use. I was expecting that these programs were going to be very hard to manuver. But after using for awhile, I realized that it was incredibly easy and simple. It made coding feel a lot easier than it actually is. 

Overall, the game jam was very fun and productive, and I really learned a lot while making my game and presenting it to everyone else.