Posted August 28, 2024 by I/O
#postmortem #reflection #design #analysis
Ya know what? I'm actually quite proud of that score. My goal was to make something quirky and experimental as an excercise and it looks like the players found that valuable.
Here's some reflections:
Jammers generally don't spend anywhere near enough time in the ideation phase. This concept was tailor-made for the insane time limit I was working within, and it allowed me to make something fun and polished with very little code.
For a standard two-day jam, I would honestly say don't touch any software for the first four hours.
For me, the jam started when I was outside my home. I'd checked the theme, decided to enter the jam while I was out, started brainstorming on the bus.
Knocking Over It features:
My first ever level creation mechanic.
My first ever car controller (This one took like six hours to get right, physical torque-based tires feel great once you dial in the force and friction)
My first ever game with multiple phases.
Wasted way too much time on trying and failing to get post-processing working, only realised after I was using the wrong version of unity. Should've spent that time kitbashing assets.
Adaptive sound effects were sick, love that I'm skilled enough to whip up a system like that and do the sound design in like three hours.
The game is very freeform, and I wonder if it would've been more fun if it was more directed towards being *either* a fiddly puzzle game or a rambunctious "make a big mess then monster truck over it" type beat. I think the latter would've made for a better jam experience. But for now, it's a low-stakes creation/ destruction toy that can also be played as a delicate physics-based problem-solving game.
Thought I was being cool and meta by not adding a victory screen, but after seeing playtests it just feels meh, should've playtested during production (silly Leo, working with users and making refinemets based on feedback is what defines design)
Thanks for a great jam, Mark.