:arrowscounterclockwise: Cave of no Return :arrowscounterclockwise:

Greetings fools. This is my postmortem for Cave of no Return, the game I made LD39 in the format of the Jam. This was my second time participating (the first being with Pieni Saari for LD38), and I think I am pretty happy with the result. It features a tiny cloaked skeleton, searching a dark cave for his grave. In order to get to your goal, you must find terminals, which let you turn the world around, so you can traverse other parts of the caves.

:bulb: The Jam :bulb:

I got the idea for the turning level mechanic when I tripped off the stairs and fell on my face. As I lay there on the floor, regretting my decision to use the stairs in the first place, I thought "well from my perspective, the floor is the wall now". What followed was a 3 minute long attempt to walk on walls. I'm glad nobody was around to see it. I guess the idea stuck with me. I took out the embarrassing "falling on your face"-part and kept the turning of the perspective.

Since my core mechanic is pretty simple, I got the basics working fairly quick. Admittedly, there's a few bugs, but I think that on a technical level, everything works okay. I mean everything is functional right? Something I regretted last time when I was working on Pieni Saari, is that I had to divide my attention too much on the many different subjects of development (game design, code, art, etc) so that I was not able to focus on level design as much as I wanted. Well I'm glad that this time around, most of my time went into designing the cave. I made some cool sketches on paper (I wish I could show you but I ate them) which helped me visualize how the player would be able to access the different halls of the cave, from different perspectives. There are certainly a few things I would change (make the caves less linear, especially the second half), and I feel the tileset for the cave definitely could use some variation, but it's finished and I don't like coming back to a project that I ended.

For the music I have the amazing Daniel McCulloch to thank, who jumped in halfway the jam and composed me those sexy bleeps and bloops you hear while exploring. The game certainly wouldn't be the same without the track and for that, Danny goes on my nice-guy list.

:thumbsup: What went good :thumbsup:

For the duration of the jam, I kept a cool head. Feels good, to not worry about whether I'll make the deadline or not. Just a weekend of relaxed working on a small game. How did I not get stressed out like usual? I have no fucking clue! If you think you might know, tell me! It could be the key to becoming a more focused developer.

Adding the cool shit like a seamless transition from menu to game, and easter eggs (did you find them all?) was the most fun, and I think that those will be things that people remember after playing the game. I certainly will enjoy them when I replay my game in 10 years.

On the second day I spent quite a lot of time thinking about the ending. At first it involved a puzzle where you tried to climb the branches of a large ash tree. It proved to be a lot of work both art and design wise and I'm glad I realized this early enough to scratch what I had and rethink the ending. The fade out at the grave is much simpler, and somehow fits the game more.

:thumbsdown: What went bad :thumbsdown:

"Well I've been going type-type for a while, now let me just take a little break and-WHOA I JUST TOOK A 3 HOUR BREAK WHAT?" I'm sure a lot of people have had this happen as well. Side effect of feeling so relaxed, is that I didn't feel pressured enough to shorten my breaks. Time spent laying on the couch or playing a video game could have been spent working on the game. I can definitely improve at structuring my time better.

Here is a tip directed towards future-me. When it's the second evening of the jam, and you're pretty focused on your work and actually getting some stuff done, it's okay to say no when your friend shows up at your doorstep with a bottle of wine. Trust me, you are not getting any more work done for that day.

Next time I should plan in some time for testing and potentially reworking parts of the game. While I am working I am constantly testing, but in the end there are a bunch of issues that I know off, but end up not fixing. I don't like going back after the jam, so I should make sure I tie up as many lose ends as I can.

:coffin: Conclusion :coffin:

Wow, what a fucking piece of shit postmortem, don't you think? Reading this thing probably takes longer than playing the dumbass game. Still, it's nice to reflect on things through writing for once, and I had a lot of fun working on the game. If you haven't yet, you should try playing it. Or else I'll come haunt you when you get up to take a piss at night.

I hope to be around for LD40. It would be cool to be able to participate three times in a row, you know? Until then, I'm staying away from the stairs. Peace out.