Space Postal Service, a post mortem
More fun than “firefighter simulator“, with more adventure than “farming simulator“, you can now live the daily routine of a space postal service agent in :
What went right :
A one button game :
Creating an easy usable interface is surely something really complicated, therefore a one button game was quite a challenge for me. I wasn’t really inspired by the theme and when I though about a one button game, the conveyor belt came automatically in my mind.
I think the result is correct since I succeed in not trying to put too many actions on that unique button, but instead I’ve created various situation changing the purpose of the few actions.
A meaningful decor :
During the first brainstorming, I had planned to put all the info needed by the player in a sort of big display in the background. And to put in the foreground a dummy control board with fake lights and displays. When I start to really designing the scene, I realized that it would give some stupid result to concentrate all the data in one angle and to drive away the attention of the player with a lot of useless items.
It was way more natural to use the control board for what it should be, and I reckon it works pretty well.
What went wrong :
Coding graphics :
My weakest point will ever be the graphic part. One of the unique way I can create graphics is by code (drawing is not for me). On one side, vector coded graphics are quite easy to modify when they are done, but on the other side they are really long to write and they are not really nice.
As a result, I really lost a lot of time writing every assets, I wasn’t able then to add all the graphics I wanted (I’ve planned some explosions and particles effects), and the overall graphics are pretty bad.
Difficulty curve :
Since my second LD, I’m struggling with difficulty curves, I’m always doing it wrong. That time wasn’t an exception. I’m always divided between making something challenging, but not too difficult since LD audience doesn’t have much time to play a unique entry. The game results really easy at the beginning and the last level is too hard. The player misses the feeling of progression, of improvement of its skills.
Not in the mood:
I know it will sound impossible, but I wasn’t really motivated for this LD, and it had an impact on the game. The direct consequence was that I was less efficient, it took me more time to do things. Thanks to my past LD I know a bit how to deal with time management (I found LD is an incredible way to learn about time management), therefore I succeeded in finishing my game, but it’s lacking a lot of stuff (animation, descent graphics, descent sfx, descent intro/outro).