Dizzy's Dash - Postmortem

Alright, here we go.

What we did:

This was my first game as an artist. I usually only work on a game as a developer within a team, but this time I wanted to take things into my hand for a number of reasons. So apart from a sound designer I was teamed up with, I worked on the game as both an artist as well as a developer. This was my third game jam and I felt that the past experiences could help me a little with fastening things up while working on both art and code.

What went right:

Well, we finished the game with about everything that was envisioned in the final product. And I am very proud of that. The game was complete, polished, more or less bug free. The level designs, although could have been better, still turned out pretty good I think (Level design is something I have always been slightly scared of). I intended to add more level but I am glad I decided to use that time to polish the gameplay/art instead because that is definitely a big plus over more levels as I later realized with the finished product.

What went wrong:

The time management. I try to participate in game jams along with my day job and while the previous 2 jams were OK since I was only working on them as a programmer, this time it was really hard to create/animate art and then put life into it at the same time in a week.  I had to go near sleepless nights to finish the game on time. This has given me a very needed insight into how much effort goes into making fluid art and then polishing it, although mine was in no sense near as polished as it could've been. I think trying to brainstorm the final idea also took quite some time, I need to read up on better techniques to brainstorm game ideas and time management for game-projects.

Overall Experience:

This was a wonderful experience. When people played the game and gave their feedback, it felt amazing to see a game with all our hardwork was actually being played by someone. Even better when someone liked it. I do not get nearly enough time to work on games with my job and all but little efforts like these have definitely helped me wanting to work on games more and more and take time out for them. I have already started watching N number of other tutorials on unity and game-dev available online to expand my armory of game dev weapons for future projects. I am really looking forward to the next game jam I participate in and what things will be brought into creation at that time.