itch.io

No worries. I do in fact think you deserved the rating I gave you. Trust me, I do not have a problem giving people 1-star ratings.

I find jams to be supportive, and I was just trying to make sure I came across as supportive. I work in software development for a living and have been reviewing code for years. I tend to be clinical and harsh in code reviews because it's not about feelings - just about getting work done. But in that situation the people I'm reviewing code for know me personally and know I'm not an asshole, and that I'm trying to improve their code and create what is needed for the final product.

The thing about game development that keeps me going is knowing that as long as it's fun for me - that's what matters. I usually score low in game jams. The best I've ever done was 20th place and that was for a game I spent a month on. But even though I wish I'd done better, I was really proud of what I had made. In my last game jam my game hardly worked and I didn't even get enough ratings to rank. In this one people have pointing out the same three things to me, and they were all things I knew about when I submitted the game. However despite the shortcomings, I'm really proud of what I managed in this jam.

And yes, that questioning has happened to me. I have learned that when I am upset to look at myself and why I'm upset. Usually it's either because they're pointing out something that I also think is true but don't want it to be true, or I am afraid of losing their good opinion. That's me anyway.

As to the wrong audience, this is really the first game where I made the gameplay central to my work. It was often non-existant or tacked on after making cool cutscenes, intros, or graphics. If you look at my Post Mortem for Prisoner 42 I spent way too much time applying pretty shaders to models the player never even gets to encounter because I forgot to put lights in tyhe dungeon and I had never done a shooter and my bullets didn't work. I like the intro though. and the first level isn't bad. After every game jam I'm in, I play the top like 20 to 30 games. And what I've learned is that gameplay matters more than anything else to voters in a jam. That's why I picked a platformer for this jam. I prefer RPGs with good story personally.