This is my 6th LD Jam game. I'm getting better at it. "Untitled Goop Game" feels like my most complete jam game to date. Below are a few things I learned from this experience:

1: GAME IDEA FLEXIBILITY, GOOD: My initial idea was a space shooter with a "sticky" ship, requiring you to attach to guns. But my 2nd idea of a puzzle-centric ball of goop was easier to code, and felt more original.

2: COLLISION OOPSIES, BAD: The gifs (pronounced "gif" or "gif") show a flaw in my collision size/shape design, essentially allowing players to sneak obstacles out of the way instead of solving the actual puzzle.

3: INCONSISTENCY, BAD: It's a puzzle-heavy game, yet I allowed the projectile-spewing enemies to fire at random intervals if the player died or refreshed the level. Bad.

4: BEST DESIGN IS ON THE LAST LEVEL, BAD: This is more 20/20 hindsight. The players who made it to level 9 seemed to LOVE it when they found the solution. A few even claimed to have "laughed out loud" when they solved it. It would have been nice to have that level get more eyeballs earlier in the game.

5: MAKE YOUR GAME EASY: After 2-3 days, "Easy" for you will be "moderate-to-difficult" for a new player. So imagine how impossible your game will be if you made it challenging for yourself? There are hundreds of games we want to play, and none of us will remember the game with the frustratingly difficult gameplay. We always love and rave over the fun game that allowed us to enjoy the whole thing, from start to finish. I believe this is GAME JAM RULE #1, yet I still made a few levels that players and streamers are having a hard time playing. MAKE YOUR GAME EASY.

PLAY IT:

https://unept.itch.io/untitled-goop-game

P.S., I make my games using the Stencyl game engine:

https://www.stencyl.com