Hey everyone,

I would like to get into the habit of analyzing my own work and trying to learn from my mistakes. Hence, this postmortem! I am writing this mostly for myself, but I would be happy to hear any thoughts you have :)

Lately I have been playing Tunic a lot on my switch. I am quite fascinated by the combat in that game, which is super frustrating all the time to me, but at the same time somehow fun? I especially really enjoyed/hated the bosses, so I was curious what it was like to create my own boss battler and what kind of decisions go into that. This is how my Ludum Dare entry 'The Scourge from the Deep' was born! You can play it here if you are interested: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-scourge-from-the-deep

Initially I was aiming for a compo submission, but at the end of the first day it was already looking like I might run out of time. Perhaps I should have pivoted to a different game then, but I was still very invested in the idea, so I decided to keep working on it. In the end I indeed ran out of time and submitted for the jam instead, but I think it was the right choice. I am very proud of the results and had a lot of fun in the process :D

Some things that did not go so well this Ludum Dare:

• One of the main reasons that everything took this long was the sprite for the boss. It is quite a large pixel art sprite to animate, which was quite difficult for me. On top of that, it has a lot of small details (like the lava/fire thingies on its body). This all took a long time to draw and animate. I think a simpler sprite with less details would have been better.

• The difficulty of this game turned out to be very hard to balance. For some, the game was very easy, but for others it was impossibly hard. I think the main reason is the extremely short wind-up times of the boss's attacks, which give you very little time to respond. Some people figured out it is actually better to just take the bosses attacks while you keep cutting away at it, because trying to evade them is just really hard and will result in the same amount of damage taken. As some people in the comments have suggested, to fix this I think the boss's attacks should be easier to read but do more damage. This might make it feel more like an actual boss fight.

• Some people also complained about not being able to move while you are attacking. I think this is a matter of taste to some extent, but I agree that the gameplay feels a bit static because of it. Perhaps if your attacks actually moved the player character a bit the attack would have felt better. Kind of like a lunge attack or something.

• Music is always a weakpoint for me and it also was in this game. I think the music was okay, but it did not really fit the style of gameplay. This happens because I do not really know yet how to make music that evokes a specific kind of feeling. All I can do right now is just make some music by putting together some sounds that sound nice together, and hope that the feeling matches. I do really like to make the music though, so I would love to learn how to do it better :)

Overall I am still really happy how the game turned out! There were definitely flaws, but a lot went well too. People complimented my art, which I really appreciate (since I absolutely dont have an art background). It also seemed that noone was confused about how to play. This jam I furthermore played around with shaders for the first time, and I am very happy with what I managed to do with them. Things like the healthbars, or the white flash effects when you (get) hit were done with shaders.

I think that is about it! Thanks a lot for your interest if you are still reading :) I already have my 20 ratings, but you are of course very welcome to still play my game and give some feedback here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-scourge-from-the-deep

Wuppos