Another Jam Bites the Dust

Intro

Another jam finished and another lesson learned. This jam was 2 and half weeks and over the holidays for better or worse. Much like visiting family on the holidays, you don't know what's gonna happen.

Idea / Scope

Right before the jam I played a dungeon crawler. It was integrated into game so as you progressed in the main story, you progressed in the dungeon crawler as well. Overall, it was well-made and well-integrated. However, I used about half of the spells and gear available so I thought about making a dungeon crawler where you have to use everything. How native I was. 

I favored content over balance in this game (rookie mistake) and it's really obvious when I see other people play. About 3 days to the end, I decided to make 4 main areas and make 3 easier. I also implemented the "Summon Perona" spell around this time and balancing went out the window. 

Art

Since the jam was so long, I took a lot of time with the art. I really like how the move animations turned out. They're flashy, and I can see my art slowly improving with challenges like that. The enemies look mostly consistent, which is good.  The backgrounds were tolerable. The forest is my favorite by far, so at least I'm improving and learning new background techniques. I saw a ton of great art at these past couple jams. I might tone down the required art in my next game, because it just eats time and gets in the way of coding for me.

Mechanics

The mechanics in this game are great (in theory). I like how the rune minigame letters spell out something and the player can figure that over time. There is a side cipher the players can do to use a summoning circle and fight a secret boss. The mechanics are great and I still like the overall idea. However, the game really needs to be consistently challenging, fair, and communicate mechanics clearly for the player to want to engage with that part of the game. That was the bigger blunder for this game. Luckily, how I know 1 way not to balance a game. I really should give balancing this game another shot post-jam, we'll see.