Let me write a post-mortem about my entry, Triangle Head’s Adventure. What went wrong and what went right. Some lessons were learned.
The game
It’s an adventure game in which you have 2 minutes. Your head shifts into a triangle at the fullmoons. You have a date tonight with a girl and it’s a fullmoon! You have to find a way to fix your head before she arrives.
Idea
The first time I saw the theme, I thought of Water Ball Game, the mobile game I am working on. WBG is a game about geometrical shapes. Maybe there would be geometrical shapes in my Ludum Dare game, too, their shape would shift. Then I remembered what Umut Derviş (another indie friend of mine) told me: “You should focus on making adventure games, it’s what you’re good in”. I spent some time thinking of a short adventure game, I quickly came up with THA’s story.
I chose Adventure Game Studio and Paint, because I can use them good.
What went wrong?
I wasn’t sure if I could come up with enough jokes and object interaction ideas in 3 days. So I asked people to help me in Facebook groups about game development. I had drawn the intro’s visuals and prepared the story, I showed them to the people. Many people said that they would help me (including an artist who would draw the game). Not bad, huh?
The bad thing is, only one of them actually helped me.
I spent a long time talking with a designer about the game. He didn’t understand the game. He said he uses Mac and is unable to run Windows games (he said no to Wine, too), so I had to prepare him a video of what I had done by far. After spending a lot of time for him, he asked me how much budget I had! He didn’t know Ludum Dare was about freeware games. The lesson I learned: When you ask for people’s help for your freeware game, don’t forget to state that it is non-commercial.
By the time I reached the only man who helped me, I had already finished the living room (everything was improvised as I was drawing with Paint). I got help with kitchen.
Another thing that went wrong is, the references about my old game, Self, were not understood. The mirror scene has references to Self, but nobody talked about it.
Not finding an artist is also something that went wrong. The game looks crappy, it has been downloaded only about 100 times by far. Even my friends didn’t play the game, because I think they didn’t like what it looked like (I usually make games with proper visual quality).
What went right?
I finished a complete game in 2 days. It was 1 minute long then, it had two rooms (living room and kitchen). I wanted to make the game longer, so I also worked on the 3rd day.
Somehow I didn’t need help for bedroom and bathroom. There aren’t much jokes there, though. The part where protagonist looks at himself at the mirror is like a signature of mine, I used it in several games before. At the third day, I had a game about 3 minutes long.
Musics… I have got some musician friends; one of them, Çağlar, had made the musics for Night Hunt. It is an eerie 8-bit track that’s perfectly suitable for the story of shapeshifting. I also have Talha Kaya’s musics in my playlist (Small Games album, for example). “Rock Horse” and “Happy Sample” fit perfectly into THA.
Only a few people played the game, but the ones who played loved the game. They found the game funny and cute. It’s the most important thing that went right.
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