Flerth : General Postmortem
Just wanted to write my own personal post-mortem of our game, Flerth! I was in charge of art shenanigans. This wasn’t my first jam rodeo but it was my first LD.
What we were aiming for:
We were aiming for a simple, replayable concept. Most people probably spend a couple minutes max playing a jam game, so we wanted it to be easy to understand and quick to complete. We also wanted to make a game that would give us a giggle, since that’s usually pretty motivating in itself.
What went well:
We went through a few ideas first until we hit on Flerth, which struck a chord with everyone. We got to work pretty quick which was good since it’s easy to get caught up in all the fun ideas.
I was afraid that players might just see the cute and not much else. But we got a few comments regarding how quickly players turned to killing the Peeps when they would get overwhelmed. So that made my day. Could be the copious amounts of blood and screenshake though.
We organised and sorted our roles and tasks and managed to hit our goals! We had plenty of ideas of what we’d like to smush into Flerth but we got it down to what we definitely needed to have the game playable. We had a clear idea of who was doing what and how long each task could take.
Really pleased that we managed to fit a bit of play testing in. It’s usually pretty hard to make time for it since it usually takes most of the game jam to get the game working well enough to pass it someone else at all (at least in my experience!).
What could be improved:
The scoring system isn’t very apparent. We wanted to let the player figure some things out for themselves, but I think the scoring needed a bit more direction. Perhaps some kind of indicator on the Peeps to show when they’d get tuckered out enough to return to the city (whether that be animation or a little bar or sommat).
I’m also not that happy with the instruction screen, I feel that could have been much better. In an ideal world I would like the player to be taken through things in game, but we didn’t have time to implement/test anything like that.
As it is, the game hits a certain point and the difficulty ramps way up. I think Peep increase needs to be more gradual, or come in waves.
If we were to expand:
I don’t think we’ll take any further, but it’s fun to ponder the what ifs! Personally I would consider making it a level based game rather than survival. We had talked about the God Hand having items to put in the Peeps way, like conveyor belts, TVs with dumb advertising etc, which the player would acquire as they progressed.
During development we did chat about having different sorts of Peeps with different attributes. Some would be mini-paparazzi in tiny news vans that had to be smushed. Some would be day dreamers and totally be unaware of the edge and fall off etc.
At last:
Overall I’m really pleased with what we made. On a personal level I would have liked to have used this game jam as an opportunity to mess about with 3D some. I didn’t this time because while I can cobble together a simple model I can’t remember the last time I rigged anything! If I could have I would have liked to done have the God Hand in 3D.
If you read all that, thank you very much for your time!
You can play Flerth here if y'fancy
