Doors and Where They Go

Good evening,

I thought I'd put together a little postmortem post here for this jam game. There were a lot of things from a development perspective that I was happy with on this project. There were also a lot of things from a gameplay standpoint that I felt got left behind during the process. In the end, I made game that worked the way I had set out for it to work, but at the same time.... I don't think the game is "fun". At least not fun enough for a wide enough range of people. 

Its basically a walking simulator. There is a little story to work out, and there are some alternate endings that you can look for, but I feel like I should have spent more time "gamifying" this jam project and adding more levels of depth to the story. Ultimately I think that I work better when I have somebody else to help push me to inject these gameplay elements. You see, I really like walking simulators, so I don't usually realize that a game isn't appealing from a gameplay perspective. Just give me WASD and I'm good to go.  In fact, most of the gameplay type elements that exist in this project were based on feedback that I received from my friends as they watched me work on the project over our discord channel.

From a development perspective, this was the single most complicated project I've put together, and I'm happy with the progress that I've made in learning how to use Unreal engine. I fell that I have come a long way from my first project, and as my first solo project I think it shows more clearly which aspects of game development I could potentially "bring to the table". Did I use a lot of tutorials?: Yes. Did I make some dumb mistakes?: oh yeah. Did I solve my own problems and make the game work as a jam project?: I think so.

With all that said. I call this project a success. I set a goal, and I achieved it. I was very happy to have my work presented alongside the other projects during the jam. I appreciate the people that took the time to try the game and give me some feedback.  I don't believe this game will be getting another update, but I am in the very early stages of another project. When I have a more solid footing on what exactly that project is going to entail, I'll be sure to post the project on itch.

Doc Karl