Juipter II - Postmortem
:largeorangediamond: Play Jupiter II Here
It's been a few days and thanks to lots of feedback I feel I've already learned a lot about what worked and what people had issues with. So for anyone interested, here's my ~~short~~ postmortem write-up.
The Good
Endless Tunnels
I had never implemented any sort of 'endless' system before, which is a little scary going into a game jam, but it turned out well. I have become pretty familiar with noise and procedural generation from previous projects, and I used a ton of simplex noise with a chunk system to create the endless tunnel. All things considered, I thought it turned out well. This was the very first thing I worked on for the project.
Mood
For the first time in Ludum Dare I consciously decided to go for a slow-burn emotional experience. I tried to focus on creature design and the music to invoke emotional responses, not something I have ever really prioritized before. I think this was successful on some level. I am especially happy with the music, creating three separate tracks that focus on three different emotional segments of the game was daunting at first but it went pretty smoothly.
As an interesting side note, I have tried to do music outside of Ludum Dare and had much less success. Something about the frame of mind LD puts me in seems to be an important ingredient.
Light and Darkness
Related to my goal to "set the mood", I knew contrasting light and darkness would be an important part of the game. I got the idea partway through to involve light more directly into the mechanics of the game by letting you scare some types of creatures away with your flashlight. I'm happy it occurred to me, the mechanic is pretty central to the game and adds a lot.
The Science
I had a few ideas for different "weapons" the player could use. Besides the scanning beam, I considered a throw-able flare or glowstick and some kind of actual weapon, like a harpoon. Everything got cut for design or time reasons besides the scanning beam, but the analysis portion of the game I think was positive. It gave the player something to do besides dodging and gathering powerups, and was a good way to feed the player exposition and game hints.
The Bad
The Science Again
Although I'd say the scanning beam was a successful mechanic, it could have used a lot more love. There really should have been a ticker for how many unique creatures you have scanned, and perhaps some kind of journal on the title screen. I thought about this too late and wasn't brave enough to try to stuff either of these things in last-minute.
I've gotten complaints about this in previous projects, but the feedback for scanning a creature wasn't very good. There should have been some kind of progress bar or flashing animation, something to tell the player the scan was working. My bad, I should know better at this point. To make things worse, some creatures took way too long to scan. Honestly scans should have been quick.
Hidden Mechanics
This was somewhat related to the scan beam issues. Many of the hostile creatures have a weakness or some way to deal with them which is revealed when you scan them. The problem is that scanning some of these enemies took too long or was too tricky and couldn't always be done before you got yourself into a bad situation (I'm looking at you, giant eel). So unless the player was a crackshot high-reflex scan master or took a lucky guess, they suffered the consequences of not knowing how to handle a giant doom worm slamming them against the wall.
Bugs
There were a few bugs I couldn't figure out how to squash before release. The eagle-eyed players will have noticed brief flashes of creatures flying across the screen sometimes. I believe the way the creatures spawned in sometimes caused the physics system to flip out and send creatures sailing in some random direction at light speed. This caused creatures to get stuck in the wall quite often. I "solved" this last-minute by layering the wall graphic on top of the offending creatures to hide the mood-ruining wall-fish.
:smallorangediamond: Check out my blog post here if you are interested in how I finally tracked this bug down in the post-jam version.
A related bug that I decided to fix post-jam (due to the session-ruining nature of it) once again involved the giant eels. They existed somewhat outside the physics system so that they could move through the walls, which unfortunately meant they could push the player and other creatures all the way into the wall under the right (wrong?) circumstance. Whoops.
Ecosystem Interaction
I was watching a streamer play my game when the player exclaimed after scanning a hazardous wall enemy, "oh, so you can scare the bad fish into the carnivorous plant and it will get eaten!". Oh, the pain. That is a great idea. A interactive ecosystem would have opened up so many opportunities for the player to deal with obstacles without having a weapon, reinforcing the overall discovery/mood/survival themes of the game. Sometimes you just aren't clever with only 48 hours to brainstorm.
The Ugly
My pixel art is serviceable and has improved slowly over the course of my previous projects, but obviously I'm not ready to draw human faces. Eek.
Conclusion
I can say that I'm quite happy with my entry. I think it's blemished a bit by some annoying bugs that can ruin a delicate experience as well as some obvious missed opportunities, but it's really difficult for everything to lock in perfectly with just two days to think and work. I love the experience, and I'll be back for more in the future.
I'm always happy to have more feedback, so if you feel up to it check out Jupiter II and leave a comment! I've only had one person mention the super-secret alternate ending, so I'm waiting for more people to find it and ascend into enlightenment.