Idea:
The theme for the game jam is ‘Ritual.’ We thought to make a game on “Fake baba who is fooling people around and making people as follower, which is his daily Ritual.”
What went right?
Art:
Our artist did a pretty great job in the terms of visual. He made the whole thing look beautiful. And especially that cow. 😛 Most of the players wants to convert cow.
Music:
Our sound designer did an awesome job. When he sends us the background music we are shocked by listening to it. That was so pleasant and relaxing. We loved it. He was so dedicated and humble. Guess what level of detailing he had, he was trying to fix the 0.1 second glitch in looping the sound. We have to say sorry to him we failed to fix that thing.
Play testing:
I always love this part in the whole development process. This is always the best. When we play tested the game with 2 – 3 people we easily figured out the problems. The first thing is player doesn’t know what is happening in the game. They had no idea what to do. We had some time in improving feedback to the player.
Showcase:
Every year we give presentations at the end of the jam but this year it was great. Instead of presentations, all the jammers showcased their games. We had fun time playing each other games and got a constructive feedback. Thanks to the organizers.
Team:
Working with random people is always a good thing. You’ll get to think in a lot of different perspectives.
What went wrong?
Execution:
We poorly implemented what we have thought. We made the core working within 8 hours but we had a lot of problems even after that. And we programmed the whole thing again after 24 hours because I messed up everything.
Design:
Some of the decision we took are pretty bad and we didn’t realized it till the end.
- Making the people disappear after you made them your followers.
- Implementing a different control system for the mini game.
- And there is also no negative impact in the game. We thought about some people who are against the player and try to hit him, but again we didn’t implement it.
- We should also have added some sound effects and some text in the mini game which is making people as your followers.
After playing the game for 30 seconds you didn’t feel the challenge anymore and also there is nothing new happening in the game.
And stupidly I totally forget about the high score. I realized it at the end and we didn’t have time.
Collisions:
That was pretty bad. I never thought collision will create this much big problem. Characters are getting stuck in the corners.
What we learned?
Write it down:
At the starts of the project write down everything about the game. How it works? How should it feel? and how it progress?
Title of the Game:
Picking up the name which communicates what the game is about is one of the most important things. I saw it most of the times people won’t decide it till the end, but I felt this is should be done at least in the middle of the development. Because the name of our game which we thought at the end changed everything we thought about it. From the Fake baba who is fooling people around to Atheist who is converting Theist into Atheist. I don’t know whether it is good or bad to the game but it changed how we thought about the game.
Play test:
Playtest the game as soon as possible. It is the best way to know how the player is feeling and how can you improves it.
Akhil Nivarthi 