Wow. My first ever ludum dare is done.

It's been fantastic and rough! But hey I made a cute, weird, little game that is different to my usual "simulator" type game. I feel that ludum dare is partly about having a go at something different to usual, and it certainly did that for me!

Enjoy the game and feedback is much appreciated.

Calling this a post-mortem seems extra-fitting for Soul Searching...

Since the end of the JAM I have received some great feedback, which 100% will help me develop the game, and more importantly my skills generally. As I said, this was my first ludum dare (second gamejam) and first platformer-styled game, and I wanted this to be an exercise in learning and developing. It has definitely been that.

What Went Well

The feedback I have so far received for the artwork, both character-wise and environment has been very positive. This is massive for me, as even though I enjoy and feel proficient in character spriting, environment art is something I have very little experience in. With this game, I wanted to get the mood right. It is a game that focuses not just on life and death, already deep topics, but in the human condition, morals. And actually asks the player to consider the objective/subjective nature of morality. Do some people deserve a second chance at life? I felt that quiet, but creepy music was a good fit, and a low saturation palette in a dark environment lit sporadically would add the correct ambiance. I felt also, that the player (Grim) shouldn't be running around, it's a sombre game; he should move slowly. This is a point of contention. I feel the dialogue is good too, and this has received mixed feedback but I think this is down to teh random nature of the dialogue. Upon generation, each NPC villager is assigned a random story ID, which determines the several options of this they may say, and what they say depends on the state of village life (e.g. whether you have killed all the businessmen, or priests, or whether pox is spreading through the village/whether you have killed all the pox-ridden people), however this, I now feel is too "behind the scenes" to be appreciated by the player...

Improvements to be made

Leading on from the dialogue, feedback has been that it would be better if it was more obvious who was dieing and who deserves to survive/die. I wanted to leave this partly up to the player, but I can definitely think more about changing dialogue to make personalities more extreme to make it easier for the player (but everyone has good and bad, right?). Another way I though of dealing with this is to add to the HUD or icons over the villagers. For instance, a little icon to show they are ill/dieing upon speech. Maybe, assign NPCs with a morality score (which determines partly their dialogue) and this can be conveyed on the HUD in terms of how much "good/bad" you have taken from the world?

Another improvement would be in terms of story, and this comes from watching my game being livestreamed on Twitch. It's currently open-ended and potentially could be played forever, but I feel a larger, over-riding story arc would help create a fun experience to work towards for the player. I am unsure how I want to do this, but maybe something to do with the morality taken/kept in the World mechanic I touched upon above. Obviously, the map and game itself would have to be increased to fit a larger story arc, but it's only small currently because of the time-constraints of the jam.

Movement was a contentious point. I felt movement of the player should be slow, to fit the mood and ambiance of the game. But many players of the game have expressed a desire for player movement to be faster, and with higher jumping. Again, after watching the game being played on Twitch, and seeing players struggle with jumping, I certainly agree I need to adjust the jumping mechanic. I will also make slight adjustments to player movement to increase walking speed... but not by much... Like I said it was my first platformer, and I do feel my design on platform placement/player jumping needs to be refined, with the feedback I can confidently go ahead and adjust. Knowing it wasn't quite correct the first time at least informs me what it shouldn't be like.

The Play + Rate is still going on, plenty of time left, so maybe there will be a second post-mortem but that's all for now.

Thanks for playing and rating!