Oopsie Potion - Postmortem

Hey guys,

I wanted to write something about my experiences of Ludum Dare 49.  Something to reflect on. I participated in Compo category just like previously in Ludum Dare 47.

I'm going to talk about few things:

• Theme and jam preparation
• The jam
• Feedback
• Future of the game

Let's go...

Theme

So the theme "Unstable" wasn't really one I was hoping for. My preference would've been either "Making Connections", "Delay the inevitable", "Strength in numbers" or "Summoning" since I kind of had this general idea which  would fit them all.  Well, that didn't happen, but I might come back to it even without a jam.

So before the jam actually starts I try to come up with different ideas which I can then work on when I know the theme. But for "Unstable" it was hard. I just couldn't come up with anything decent for myself. Eventually I came to an conclusion with an idea of an alchemist, whose experiment had gone wrong. But an alchemist didn't have clear visual features, so who else brews potions... Aha, of course! A witch or a wizard. And  as Halloween was coming it was clear a wizard would be a fine choice.

Preparation and tools

I've been a Unity developer for a while now, but this time I decided to take a different route and go with Godot. I heard it was a good and lightweight for 2D games  compared to Unity and easy to get into, so I wanted give it a try.  And what better opportunity than a game jam.

Of course, going in completely blind would be crazy, so I decided to assess how fast I can learn the basics. I followed the first 2D game tutorial by GDQuest and then made a simple  project of my own in couple of days, loosely simulating the jam environment. This way I grasped the vital information I would need in the jam.  This game is not currently available, but I can publish it for anyone interested.

For the rest of my tools I picked my usuals: Aseprite for sweet pixels, FL Studio 20 for music and sounds, bfxr for sounds and Audacity for possible sound tuning. I also scheduled my time loosely so I would have a clear order of execution, since the jam started at 1AM my time and I wouldn't be up for that.

During the jam

Day one - things went pretty smoothly. I started with coding since I wanted to have the mechanics done first. Especially when engine and the scripting language were new to me, I wanted to be able to tackle those issues first. Around 5 hours in I had a game with a game loop.

By the end of the day, I also was done with game graphics, excluding UI elements. That was a shame for me, because I wanted to be done with graphics at this point and focus on music and sound the next day.

Day two - I finished the UI without significant pressure. I wasn't planning much coding for this day, but ended up polishing the mechanics. Music was a difficult one for me this time. I slammed my head to the wall for couple of hours, without a clear vision. Eventually I was able to pick my instruments and melodies and started to work with that. I think the following image sums it up quite well.

Regardless of the musical struggles, I managed to submit the game 1,5 hours before the deadline - and I'm happy for that. I was prepared to extend my jam for another 24 hours, but fortunately it didn't come to that. 

Afterthoughts

Overall, I think the jam was a success. My goals were not to win or get high rankings, although it would cool as well, but to learn bunch of new stuff and make something complete. The engine was new, I had new sound samples at my disposal I wanted to use, one or two minor features I hadn't tried before. And I was able to finish with dignity. Yay!

I found the game pretty short even for a jam game, but I also didn't have the time to add content. Or if I did, the time would be taken from something else. Now, I feel perhaps I should've done that. Sacrifice some of that itch and entry page refinement for gameplay.

Even if the music is not a masterpiece, I definitely learned new things in composing and will be that much stronger in the future.

For art... Well, I made 3-5 frame animations for couple objects. For comparison, I only did  three different frames for a single character in my last entry.  

Feedback so far

Other jammers have liked the game so far. The biggest critique would be the length of the game - which I was aware of. 

The graphics were liked the most and I'm happy about that. Hopefully I can keep the quality as high in the future jams.

It's kind of unfortunate, but there was not much feedback on the audio side. One streamer couldn't hear them and I found it odd since the volumes were set pretty high from the start and I never had issues with them. It would've been nice to hear how the others felt.

There were also few comments about  the size of the hitbox and how settings didn't persist to replays.

Once the the results are in, I'll add them here.

Future

I have no huge plans for future, really. "Oopsie Potion" was meant to be a small-sized jam game and so it shall remain.

As I write this, I have made a post-jam update which I will publish after the voting period. It contains the following: 

• Adjustments and bug fixes to various things
• NEW: A local high score  (nonpersistent between play sessions)

I wanted to do more levels or challenges with low effort, but that was basically impossible. So, unless I have huge boost to inspiration and motivation, I won't be doing much else to the game. I hope you all find it enjoyable as it is.

Thank you for taking time to read this. If you have any feedback or want to know more about something, let me know.

See ya next time.

-Code