{"author_name":"ethankennerly","cat":"LD #32","comments":[],"epoch":1431295620,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"17372","p_author":"ethankennerly","p_authorkey":"3040","p_urlkey":"52676","p_title":"Anagram Attack: Post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #32","p_event":"LD32","p_time":"1431295620","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"3040","us_name":"ethankennerly","us_username":"ethankennerly","event_start":"1429228800","event_key":"27","event_name":"LD32"},"text":"

How many of the 100 anagrams can you solve?<\/p><\/div><\/a><\/p>\n

What went right:<\/p>\n

+ Reference simple rules in a popular game:<\/strong> Jennifer loves Scrabble, so she might like Text Twist, which apparently a lot of people on Yahoo games like. Honestly, I didn’t want to make a fighting game, so the theme “unconventional weapon” was bumming me out. I decided I could playtest an anagram game, because my girlfriend kills me at Scrabble and Banagrams. It worked: Saturday night, she played the prototype for over an hour!<\/p>\n

+ Playtest 2 text files in the first 3 hours:<\/strong> Jennifer and Anders played a text file prototype of rhyming<\/a>, which they didn’t like, and anagram typing tutorial<\/a>, which they liked more, so I made that. I just showed them the text file and had them type into another text file. I really would prefer a rhyming game, but others wanted anagrams, which gives you flexibility of multiple solutions.<\/p>\n

+ Research multiple-solution anagrams:<\/strong> A website had a lot of anagram words, so I could include 100 of those words. How many different anagrams of “ywas” can you type?<\/p>\n

What went wrong:<\/p>\n

– Little playtesting of harder words<\/strong>, so word 85 stumped more friends than word 86.<\/p>\n

– Procrastinated playtesting graphics<\/strong>, so the images are minimal and clashing. I was planning for robots and missiles, but people tell me this looks like a dungeon crawler with a sword. Now that I listened to player’s interpretation, I could play that up more.<\/p>\n

– Procrastinated playtesting sounds<\/strong>, so the sounds are incongruent. For this, I’m thinking next time I’d try musical notes in MuseScore rather than 8-bit sounds in BFXR.<\/p>\n

Play Anagram Attack<\/a><\/p>","time":"May 10th, 2015 5:07 pm","title":"Anagram Attack: Post-mortem"}