I wanted to try adding a coop mode. But, modelling even my simple 3D assets was a lot more challenging than anticipated, especially as it was only my second time doing so. The very positive feedback I've received makes me glad I didn't spend time on such additional features.
What feature were you initially keen on but later dropped due to time constraints or other reasons?
I was going to add another tool (a frying pan, seeing as there's already a mixer, cutting board and oven), but I realised that the spiriting required for all of the new recipes and coding in a unique mechanic for using it was going to take too long considering it was still a placeholder on the second-to-last day. Plus, I thought it would be quite tricky to create a lot of recipes that could only be made with strawberries, bananas, and grapes on a frying pan!
Originally additional levels, but after playing through other submissions I most regret not adding music. This was the first game jam where I got something out that wasn't completely broken and unplayable and the first one where I also had time to look at what other people made, and I hadn't realized before how common it was to use free music assets for jam entries. I'll probably do the same next time. I did play around with an online synth for a while a couple days before the submission, but didn't have time to commit and make something decent with all the missing features and bugs that needed addressing.
This is an important one that always gets mentioned when you leave it out. I spent hours finding and downloading music off of itch and categorising it for games. Many musicians make this easy by adding tags like horror, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. to their songs. Now, I can just get a playlist together quickly.
Also, don't forget sound effects. They're just as if not more important than music.
That's a great idea! Sound effects I've already tried to add when possible, but I do put off working on audio in general mainly since it's by far my least experienced game development field (music in particular), so I never know how much work it will actually be and am afraid it'll take up too much time. I should probably build up a library like that too.
We planned to have a collection system where the player collects by eating different types of fish. We thought the system required more than 20 different fish art, 3-4 different fish movement AI, and perhaps additional spawning logic so that smaller fish would spawn in groups.
We decided to scrap this on day 2-3, and it was a good call because we were still debugging and implementing key features 2 hours before the deadline.
