Posted December 04, 2020 by skrolikowski
#post-mortem #game-dev #process #pixel art
Hello. My name is Shane Krolikowski and I enjoy creating things. Video games specifically. This is a post-mortem for a game I recently created, Nobody Suspects Me. The project took roughly 30-35 hours stretching over 3 weekends for the A Game By Its Cover 2020 Game Jam. I get excited about Game Jams and tend to choose ones that last ~30 days. One of these days I may build up the nerve to do a shorter Jam (~7 days), but as of now I’m still practicing my efficient planning skills. Hence this post-mortem.
A Game By Its Cover is an annual, non-judged Jam wherein you choose a cover from the Famicase Exhibition website and create a game based on the cartridge art. I chose the following:
Nobody Suspects Me webpage.
I started my journey like I normally do. Jotting down notes and gameplay ideas on paper; playing with ideas of a spy/espionage game. Something where the player would advance the main character through each level, while remaining unsuspected. Using my past projects, I like to throw together a quick prototype bed to test ideas.
The first idea that came to mind was a rhythm game. The idea would be to make it through each level keeping a beat. Each beat would make your character do one of 4 dance move that will either damage or heal your Blend Meter. Once your Blend Meter reaches a certain point it’s Game Over.
This idea soon fell apart when I couldn’t confidently get the feature to work across platforms or computers and thought it would create more frustration than anything. It was therefore scrapped for a simpler idea, which I knew I could fit into the now shortened timeline. This idea involved collecting pickups to refill your Blend Meter. Also, the levels would be made in the form of mazes making it a timed-run type game.
Specifically for this game, I wanted to spend more time creating assets, and less time programming. Assets seem to be the biggest influence on the direction of my games. If I can’t find assets that I consider would create a visually pleasing gameplay experience the game will most likely adapt to assets I can find. Of course, this isn’t desirablable and takes away a lot of the creative freedom.
After watching hours of Pixel Art tutorials, and reading several blog posts I decided to finally jump in and just do it. I spent a weekend + a few days using Aesprite for animations and Pyxel Edit for tilesets, I created something acceptable.
Lastly, I created 8 levels using Tiled. I’m very familiar with the map making software and tend to leave it as the last step. My process of creating levels has changed very little.