Hey everyone! 

To all of you who put something out there for the world to see, congratulations. For all of you who tried to get something ready but didn't quite make it to the finish line, also congratulations! No matter what you made, you should be proud. Just putting yourself and your creative skills to the test is hard enough, but showing it to the world is a whole other brutal challenge.  It took me nearly 40 years to finally choose to just go for it, and every stumble on the way has been worth it. I was able to get through almost half of the games submitted before heading out on a camping trip and there were some absolute bangers in there!

Now, to the topic at hand, what did you learn this year? Any tips, tricks that you figured out along the way? Any eye opening revelations you had? What was your overpowered skill that saved the day?

I'll start: 

Don't hard-code yourself into a corner right at the start. Being flexible can save you days of working on something you grow to resent. For example, my first two days were spent putting together a puzzle platformer that I just didn't feel was working after about 10 hours of working on it. Luckily, I had been focusing on the overall necessities of a platformer (movement, collision, interactions, all as external event sheets), rather than the tiny details of the design document I had put together. So when I started some testing and didn't like where it was going, I was able to replan and re-use what I had done already into another platformer scenario. For me, scrapping the first idea after a failed prototype gave me the freedom to expand into something much larger than I expected to be able to get done. 

If you're curious what the first idea was: The title was 'Too Strong to Hug', and it was about a Demon Dad that was coming home from work to give his kid a hug, but on the way he had to lose all the powerups he had gained throughout the workday (ex. if on fire, walk through water) and take enough damage so that he lost his massive stature. Then after that you'd have to go back to work and battle in an arena, where each hero you get hit by can add status effects you'll have to work back off on the way home. So there'd be a balance between the health you need to survive the arena, and the health level you need to be able to give your kid a hug. That idea of balance eventually turned into the core of the rage mechanic in my final game (overpowered by rage = higher damage dealt, lower vision, damages you over time).