This is the post-post-mortem
It’s a long-winded post, last braincells bangin’ together from the delirium of the wee hours of 5am, right after I got the game trailer out on YouTube, just 6 hours before submission ended.
It wasn’t a buzzer beater, but it definitely felt like it!
Check out my first jam game!
Much love to the itch.io devs, I adore how they give you an iframe to help
you spread your game. I used to do frontend dev work, so things like these are
my jam.
Anyways, I made a game! It’s been a couple days and I’m still trying to process this whirlwind of a month. Big shoutout to my friends who threw me a surprise party, even when I was holing up and no-life-ing this thing. It helped me push this past the finish line.
ADHD, lots of tangents
I’m not clinically diagnosed, but I can barely sit still while writing this. Neurotypical individuals be warned, lots and lots of tangents.
Reviews from generous playtesters are coming in and yep, it’s as I’d feared. The tutorial was not too… tutorial-y. It was trade off that I was already aware of, which was made during the last week of the jam. I only had a couple of days left and barely a story put together, lots of assets not drawn, an incomplete battle system, suffice to say: barely a game.
I mean, even the bossfight was last minute!! I’m the most surprised that it was submitted in time with the trailer and all (check out Anxst trailer on YouTube),
Was that awesome or what??! I'm really proud of this one
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Always wanted to say that in a YouTuber-y voice.
Really, if you asked me around September 27th, “Is the game finished?” I’d be pulling on my hair, mumbling something about fever system, bloody bugs, the boss’ bullets are hitting their spawned children, player hitbox not registering hits properly, and… holy crap, I’m shaking from adrenaline just recounting what happened.
Conveyance
Anyways, I digress. Conveyance was top of mind for me, and that’s why Anxst had a HUD at all. For the combat, if you looked at the game 3-4 days before submission, there were only the players, enemy, the floor, and the environment. There were,
- No Metronome at the top of the screen,
- No fever meter on the right,
- No Nytcast indicator on the left,
- No damage bar for the enemy.
Those game elements were in there largely inspired by Dr. Gabriel Pappalardo’s talk on Conveyance; a big thank you to vemm who hosted the free event over at HG Members. One question really knocked me over, “How would your players play your game if they don’t understand it?”, which made me sigh in frustration at first because that meant I needed to shift stuff over in order to make room for this, but it also kicked my butt into gear to make those HUD elements.
But even with that at top of mind, I couldn’t make a more proper tutorial in time for submission, which is why we ended up with this version of Anxst tutorial; an infodump in the form of a dialog. It was a sacrifice I had to make, either having a better tutorial or have the game trailer, and I chose the game trailer because I wanted to learn how to make a video and put it out on YouTube.
I really, really didn’t want anything to break in the last minute, which was why the trailer was the safer choice in my mind. I don’t regret the choice because I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out so far, the trailer is a banger in my mind because I didn’t even think I could make it in the first place; my expectations were low. But anyways, having a better tutorial is definitely a lesson that I’ll be carrying over to the next jam, if I ever decide to do any after this.
Progression
In the same veins, difficulty spikes. This is an interesting one because I only really realized this after the jam and people have played the game, some of the difficulty jumps were just a bit too sudden for a lot of players. I didn’t have the chance to invite people to playtest it because the game was done at the eleventh hour, and I didn’t take into account that me being very close to the project would cause problems. I didn’t feel the difficulty spike because I’d been playing the game for a bloody month while developing it at that point, no wonder I felt that it was easy XD
But at the same time, I’d also decided from the start that I wanted a difficult game, something that would remind me of how I felt when I got good with Mega Man Star Force. Elden Ring was a big inspiration for this too, which made me think, I probably should’ve put the souls-like tag right from the get-go. The last minute addition of the bossfight (with the giant HP bar) was inspired by that, it just felt like something was lacking from my last couple playthroughs of Anxst near the end of the jam. I thought it wasn’t difficult enough, which brings us back to the problem of being too close to the game and not thinking about playtesting in the first place, getting a different perspective.
Kudos to anyone who got to the bossfight!
So, I guess it’s a creative balance really, while this doesn’t excuse the difficulty caused by tutorial’s lack of clarity, the difficulty spike part of it was me trying to make the game hard enough and fun enough for me to play. It’s narcissistic, sure, but me as a player was top of mind while making the game. I wanted to make something MMSF-inspired, something that I would want to play, and Anxst is what we ended up with.
Lessons
A couple of things that I treasure from the players who gave me feedback and things I noticed,
- Conveyance — tutorials, make ‘em better next time; inspirations:
- Progression — be careful of difficulty spikes
- have more people playtest
- have people of varying levels of gaming experience play it
- also depends on creative decision, difficult or playable game
- Check out these other awesome games!
Having other people play something that I poured a month’s worth of care into and most importantly, getting feedback is something I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced. There wasn’t a day when I wasn’t thinking about the bloody game over the whole of September. And having others play it and feed their thoughts back about it is… filling? I guess? I don’t know how to describe it. (man discovers the joy of creative work)
Conclusion
Will I make another game again? Idk, I want nothing to do with making a game for now, I want to play games! Isn’t that why we’re HealthyGamers in the first place??!
So to honor that, I’m playing CrossCode right now, it’s a bloody amazing game, 10/10 would recommend. I can’t believe that it took me this long to find, found out about it while making the music for Anxst and the YouTube algorithm gods bestowed me with their OST.
It’s got Mega Man-feel, SAO-inspired, Pokemon themes, Avatar (Aang) themes, Zenonia-feel to it. If you liked any of those games or shows, you’ll love this one. It’s got great puzzles, brilliant mechanics, beautiful art, and boppin’ music!
(not an ad, but I wish it was… senpai notice me plz…)