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Biggest Regrets

A topic by dairykillsme created Aug 05, 2019 Views: 903 Replies: 54
Viewing posts 1 to 32
Submitted(+4)

Now that comments and notes from other jammers are coming in what is the biggest regret you've had about how you went about this game jam? What's the one thing about your game that you wish you had spent more time on, or a big bug that you may have just simply overlooked in the rush?

For us it was our movement. Our team designed a puzzle platformer. While I think we did a great job adhering to the only one theme and designing interesting puzzles based on only one player moving at at a time, it was the platforming movement that we really should have spent more time on. We received a lot of feedback noting that it was slippery, and as it's the core mechanic of our game, we now realize it should have been one of the first places we concentrated our efforts in play-testing and programming.

Please link your game so we can all support each other's mistakes : ) Here's ours:

https://bobby123jack.itch.io/quantum-entanglement

Submitted(+2)

Two regrets:

First off, I didn't even find out about this jam until the first 24 or so hours had already passed by. If I had known about it and started earlier, I could have accomplished way more.

Second, I added a timer to my game which vaults you back to the title screen. Then, for some of the levels, I gave hardly any time at all to solve them. Since mine is a top-down puzzler based upon navigating using only sound, this made some parts punishingly difficult. I'm afraid I made it too challenging and frustrating, meaning nobody will play until the end :(

I did, however, add the solutions to all the puzzles onto the game page. That way, if players want hints, they can refer back to it.

My game is called Echolocation. Check it out!


Submitted

Wow I am so impressed that you did this in 24 hours! Though I didn't get very far I could see this being a really strong game if you had more to time to play test and polished. Definitely a five star game to me :) especially given you had half the time the rest of us did.

Submitted

Haha no way, you made that in a day? I wouldn't have guessed that :)

Submitted(+1)

The biggest mistake of mine was not renaming the items from their sprite IDs, which I did to get around having to give each of them an individual name and save myself critical minutes at the last moment - turns out the sprites had stupid names like "planmt" for "plant" etc. but I don't think it gets too much in the way of the game lmao

Here it is anyway, it's called Decrafted - it's an inverse crafting game about attempting to go from multiple items down to just one: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463986

I'll check out yours too!


Submitted(+1)

I'm having trouble playing yours. I'm getting an error that says unityplayer.dll is missing.

Submitted

That's a sign that it hasn't downloaded all of the files, it might be worth reopening the zip file or redownloading it :)

Submitted

Okay got it working now! I like the idea it's like inverted pocket god. Fits the theme pretty nicely too. Honestly your mistake in sprite naming is not that noticeable!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Honestly, I just regret making my game too easy, yet so hard. Mine is a wave based arena shooter, where each wave comes out faster than the last. The beginning is way too easy IMO, but at a certain point becomes literally impossible, as the waves are coming out mere frames after the last. Eventually (I assume anyway) The game just crashes because the time between waves becomes negative.

here it is, in case anyone's interested: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462323

Submitted

Haha I hit a brick wall when a bunch of those large knights came out. Really fun to play though! I think the beginning was actually a good pace as someone who hadn't played the game before.

Submitted

Thank you very much!

Submitted(+1)

So for my game I have a huge regret that comes from the feedback of almost everyone who has played it so far. In my game you have one attempt to slice everything on screen, and if you lose you have to start over. Originally I thought that since there were only 6 small zones that this would not be an issue, but this view turned out to be very wrong. I think that people found it unfair that each zone was too hard to complete successfully on the first try, and didn't like having to redo the game from that point. Played perfectly the game only takes 1 minute to complete so this is where my optimism came from. Despite this I think my game could have benefit a lot from adding a few lives to the player for multiple reasons.

  • Players would feel like the game is a lot more fair 
  • Players that have played the game before get multiple chances and get to experience looping through the levels more

Once you complete the 6 zones, you loop back to the start and the game plays back even faster and gives you a score bonus.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461791
Submitted

Wow first off your game is beautiful given how short a time we had. I honestly felt that because the levels didn't change, and there were only six, that starting from the beginning wasn't that terrible. I got through it on my second try. Excellent job!

Submitted(+1)

Hey, great to hear your opinion on the game. I gave your game a try and I think the puzzles are creative. I don't know if you've seen it but GMTK made a video on platformer characters really recently which may contain helpful information.

Submitted(+1)

I completely neglected making sure my game was playtested, which made the game become pretty difficult.

Submitted

We only got two playtesters so we didn't do much better! It's hard to come up with them when you all of a sudden need them really badly.

(+1)

As the artist for Last Courier (https://voidsway.itch.io/last-c If you wanna check it out) I regret not comparing the assets before creating them. I had them all in separate files and it made the game look pretty ununified stylistically and color-wise. I think I did pretty okay for my first game, and its decently fun, I'm just going to make sure I make my games more consistent in the future.

Submitted

Haha our artist had the exact same problem early on in the jam. Fortunately we noticed early on, but the first time we did a room none of the platforms looked like the same style as the background.

Submitted
Deleted 2 years ago
Submitted

Well for 20  hours that's pretty technically sound! Everything seemed to work like it was supposed to.

Submitted(+1)

I regret how big my scope was for this jam. My game ended up being almost unplayable, but I still uploaded it because I didn’t think people would play it. Turns out that some super nice people downloaded it and now I’m sorry for wasting their time :/

Submitted(+1)

Well, we forgot to put the background of the camera back on in our game, and now everything runs together and looks terrible. This pretty much completely ruins the experience, so yeah. Not great.

Submitted

Those kind of mistakes are the worst :( At least you were still able to upload a functional game!

(+1)

I think that I could've spent more time in the first day on it, and I also could have spent more time on polishing up the game. I still think it turned out pretty well otherwise.

My game is called Broken Robot and it is a puzzle platformer where you can only press each button once per level.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462219

Submitted

Your game is mechanically perfect! Great concept and design. Polish is nowhere near a priority compared to those in this competition.

Submitted(+1)

My regret is over scoping and at the end only being able to make just one level for our game. It wouldn't have been a problem if it were any other game but this game's core mechanic revolves around punishing the player for over-extending in the earlier levels since the spells can only be used once.


(It's probably easier to understand what I mean by playing the game: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461352 )

Submitted

This concept seemed very hard to bring to fruition in 48 hours. Good job building it out though. It seems like if you had another day you could have built a good series of demo levels.

Submitted

Thanks! And yea, with 24 more hours the game could've been polished a bit more. Though I'm happy that people are still finding it interesting in its current state.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

My biggest regret is to leave the game as it is after submission. It get almost 0 views and 0 download, with only 1 rating so far. I was hoping algorithm on itch.io will help me on that, but it isnt the case. This is really Steam flooded marketplace simulator. Advertise your game well, as well as be vocal with other fellow jammer and your page view / download will increase.

Not sure about regret during jamming, but from previous skill set and something new I learnt during the jam.
1. Modify existing 3d model, and rigging with paint weight (the robot hand)
2. Modeling, UV mapping and simple texturing (the pad design)
3. Simple probuilder model (basically the cube surrounding level)

I already have understanding on how those stuff work, but already switched to programming job rather than 3d modeling since 10 years ago
New blender 2.8 is kinda good, such a good timing to learn it.

Visit the link if you want to help me out:
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462597

Submitted

Good job building out a 3D game for the jam! That is quite impressive.

Submitted(+1)

I would say my biggest regret was developing some background props that I didn't end up using (lights and things like that). I like to challenge myself and make all the assets during the jam, to have a theme that fits the mechanic, and I think I've accomplished that. But when something goes unused because I didn't have time to implement it, that's when creating that asset feels like a waste of time, which I could've spent designing an extra level, or refining enemy behavior. But all in all, I'm very happy with how the game turned out.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463339

Submitted

That's the tough part of jamming on your own. Fortunately the rest of your game is pretty much bug free so trying to make more assets didn't seem to detract!

Submitted(+1)

Probably the biggest regret I have is that we (as in my team) failed to account for a difficulty-nullifying exploit that can be performed in the game. I don't want to say how to perform the exploit because I still want people to enjoy the game for how it was meant to be played. Thankfully, though, the exploit is something that is completely under the player's control (once they realize they can do it), so it's not like the game forces them to perform the exploit, if you see what I mean.

Here's our game! https://charliechumbuck.itch.io/thevengefulorb

Submitted(+1)

There's a bunch of stuff that I wish was better in my submission, but most of it I wouldn't say is something I regret per se, just stuff that had to be compromised for time reasons.

I do regret making 50-50 grinds worth points though. In hindsight I think it would have made more sense to make them something that will keep a combo alive but not grant points, like I did with manuals. (especially since manuals are actually harder to pull off)

Submitted(+1)

I think one of my big regrets as the artist on our project was not doing more preparation beforehand. Went into the project without really intending to use Unity's built in skeletal animation system since I wasn't familiar with it at all, but it ended up being sort of essential in being able to achieve the visual scope that I set forth in a timely manner. And the system is still a bit buggy, so it kinda ended up being a bit of a time sink.

Still pretty proud of the visuals we have, but it wasn't a smooth process. =P 

https://drizzlegames.itch.io/paparazzi-panic




Submitted (1 edit)

Well, it looks great!

Submitted

Really pretty game regardless! Good job learning new tool and excelling at it in 48 hours!

Submitted

I regret putting too much detail into my main character art, think he would have looked a lot better if I stuck to a more simplistic theme (like the red bad guy :P)

I also regret not making more of the levels easier, because some people come with the feedback of it being pretty difficult, when I really just wanted  a game that made taking a step satisfying on its own!

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462760

Submitted (3 edits)

For our team, it was the fact that we didn't have a minimum viable product ready sooner for others to help us play-test. This meant that we found a number of unprecedented balancing & quality-of-life issues rather late in the jam, and some of them couldn't be resolved before the submission deadline.

As an example, some of the minigames in It's Rude To Point didn't explain the objective clearly enough, which was problematic considering how little time we gave players to react. One way we tried to circumvent this was to give objects differently-colored outlines, which would indicate whether an object needed to be grabbed or flicked. Though it was implemented without any issues, we never really explained it in-game, instead bargaining on the notion that perhaps the player could figure it out themselves. Since there was only one minigame involving grabbing, however, I can definitely understand how some wouldn't have quite caught on.

I guess one could argue that participating in a jam is about forming an MVP in as little time as possible, but I think our game could've really benefited from some more polishing and tweaking. That being said, I'm still very proud of what my friends and I managed to accomplish in just 48 hours!

If you'd like, you can check out our entry here: 
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461113

Submitted

I regret a lot not adding a way to postpone a switch, and also not adding a way to know how much time you have until the next switch.

If you want, here's my game: https://nitai99.itch.io/twisty-chess

Submitted(+1)

Biggest regret was not building a web version and only a windows version. Seems like with so many games, being able to access them fast helped to prove player engagement. I ended up making a web build and linking it to the submissions page, but anyways, I'll do web focused for the next jam! 


You can check it out here: https://mikeyren.itch.io/onlyone

Submitted

Same story here, mate. I was using Love2d and there was a possibility to make the web version, but I neglected it, providing just Windows and Linux builds. Now I think I most definitely should have the browser playable version. Still, you can play it on those two platforms, and the download size is tiny :)

Here's my game: https://awkravchuk.itch.io/backpackless

Submitted (1 edit)

Turns out the mechanics i made were way to complicated for the very brief intro i made before expecting them to climb a wall. I wish i had made a proper difficulty curve instead of a right angle, teach players slowly and by design ya know.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462355

Regret making it an html game.... rather than downloadable  windows only https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/431948

Submitted (1 edit)

Oh why is that? I heard from a lot of devs (and we felt this way as well) that browser based games had a huge advantage in accessibility and therefore getting played.

Edit: Oh huh did you mean the opposite? Because your game is a windows executable.

1. People don't like to download more than 100 mb game.

2. People don;t like to extract the file...

3. People don;t like to waste time in above two...

4. People are in hurry to move on to the next game... 

5. If its a dev they need to reply there notifications... hence there is a small window of it...

6. Window game is susceptible to player's system requirements. Hence, for some it will work..for some it will not...hence, after going through 1-5 if it didn't work then gonna receive bad or no ratting at all...

7. People can easily share it on Facebook or twitter community to get more eyes and get more ratting. 


Hence.... 


reply to your edit: my bad punctuation actually reverse the meaning i wish to convey.... 

I meant that i regret that why didn't i opted for html rather than windows exe

Submitted

Ah yes that is what we were thinking as well. Thanks for the in depth reply!
I'll go play your game now :)

Submitted (1 edit)

I regret not compiling my game earlier. It took way too long time to compile and I was very worried all my work would be for nothing. If I had compiled the game earlier it would have gone faster to make the final build (it would be able to reuse some compiling steps). Fortunately the deadline was extended due to the server overload, so I could finish building the game in time.

But then I found out that the title screen looks bad in some resolutions (like in the browser build), which I would've found out earlier if I had time to test the build before uploading.

Here's my game btw:

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463448


Submitted

A lot of people have been saying that I made my game too hard and I have to agree. I should have added a level thats easier than the first level to kind of ease into things. Also while I was making the game I thought it was going to be too easy so I programmed a diamond enemy that teleports to your location and worked a while on the mechanics and animations for it, then decided the game was already hard enough and I never added that enemy in. Other than that I think I went about this jam pretty well and dont really regret anything else!

Heres the game for a little context: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461217

Submitted

Gameplay-wise, our biggest regret was not making keeping the camera static on one particular level - it really made the puzzle more punishing than we intended!

Other than that, we really regret how we handled our priorities in some cases. We *really* didn't need a custom font for our game, and as it turned out we didn't even use it enough to justify its creation!!

Still, we're pretty proud of what we made, and we'd love if you folks could give it a shot (currently going through the thread to give you folks some rates as well!)
https://catscratcher.itch.io/you-are-the-only-one

Submitted

I added these tentacle sprites as decorations but they look like they are hazards so everyone thought they would hurt you. 

Submitted

My regret? Only having about 8 of the 48 hours to actually jam, because… Life. Still uploaded it anyway:

https://doctormikereddy.itch.io/thomas-was-a-line

because the idea intrigued me of a 1D platformer. I’ve now (well after the jam) got a few clearer ideas of how this might work. At the time, I was more exploring than developing 

Submitted

My biggest regret is not spending enough time on enemy spawning mechanics and enemies in general. I could have done a lot more there if I wasn't so fixated on the physics of the disc. I'm definitely going to address this in future post-jam updates, if I do any.

Game can be found here: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461473

Submitted (1 edit)

Ours is starting on the marketing front way too late, which resulted in us struggling to get over 10 ratings, now we are hoping for 15 :P

This turned out to be a big lesson for our team, since it's been hard getting a game which got a lot of positive feedback into anyone's hands. Our solution for future jams is to have a dedicated community manager who will post about the game as we're making it and try to get the hype going.

In case you want to give our entry a try, it's a game about hammering your way to inner, or outer, peace.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463231


Submitted

My biggest regret is spending too little time to teach the players how to play:
-I was planning to make a nice "tutorial" with some GIF images to teach the player how some of the interactions are.
-I spent a lot of time polishing the interactions so they felt more intuitive (at least to me).
-Finally I only had half an hour to add quickly some cryptic sentences that don't really help the player to grasp what he needs to do.
-Being my game a weird puzzler, I think a lot of players haven't really seen the depth of it, and with a little scratch of the surface they decided to rate it as a simple unoriginal group breaking puzzler score attack game.

I had this issue in a couple of gamejams already and it's something that can really ruin the experience to a majority of players who will only play for 5 minutes or so. I'm happy that at least some people took time to understand the game and, supposedly, they liked it. I hope this time I learnt the lesson.

https://le-slo.itch.io/monologue


Submitted

Biggest regret is creating a game too large (always do this every jam!) This led to not being able to fully test and play the game until too late and leaving some horrendous game breaking bugs and it also not being clear on what to do. Also made an isometric game which meant that we had to create a bunch of animations when we should have went side on, top down or 3D. I'm super proud of what we have achieved in the time (and seems like people are pretty shocked too!). Feels like the scope of the game was more for a week jam rather than 48hrs. Love for people to check it out though!

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461633