The Game Jam is over and I came in 4th. Meh. Okay, 1st place goes to Citadel and is completely deserved, it's just too innovative. But I also got beaten by a Chess clone, wtf. XD
Okay. My game received praise and criticism. And I agree with most of them (the criticisms, too!).
Thanks for everyone who gave feedback here and on ContentDB.
How I made Shadow Forest (teaser)
Many people rightfully complained the mob spawning feels very unfair and I agree. The reason? Bad planning of time, basically. The mobs are !!!NOT!!! meant to spawn in the high rates, but trust me, the mob spawning was even WORSE before submission and I half-fixed that before submission.
What happened? Basically I decided to take a huge risk this time. Not only wanted I do to everything myself (even music!) but also tried to make something with mobs, somethinig where I'm still not very experienced in.
I'm very happy at how the light orb turned out because it moves very smoothly and non-laggy. I'm also glad I finished a working world in the end because I also struggled with that for a long time. I actually planned the world to be MUCH larger but I vastly overestimated how much work that is. Ouch.
This game is the first time ever I have composed and published my own music tracks and I am shocked/surprised I managed to do it at all. I used LMMS. So the risk I took with music actually did pay off (not literally tho, haha). I am quite proud of my first ever published music. Strange that nobody commented on it (maybe it was too quiet?).
I wasted a lot of time in this game jam, for example, I lost two full days trying to get 3D model animations to work (still failed). Or I have implemented a full new world generator for an open world game but it all was useless since I had to fall back to regular levels due to time contraints. Ouch. The world generator can seamlessly put an existing world (saved as schematics) into the game with the world border continuing the world infinitely with Perlin noise. It also fades into darkness which kills you. All of this works perfectly but you never see this feature because it's outside the level borders. Ouch.
What I feel like
Overall, I am like half-happy with my game jam result. It could have been better if I planned my time better.
Also a word on the theme: Honestly, I basically ignored it for the most part. OK, the "unexpected" DOES occur in this game, but I admit it was kind of forced into the game.
What happens next?
This is not the end of the road. There will be updates!
What I'm planning:
- Completely rework how the mobs spawn and behave because that's the biggest obvious problem in the game
- Fix all the obvious bugs (obviously)
- A little bit more polishing of each of the levels
- Add volume controls for the music
- Rework the dialog a little to make the story/goal easier to follow
- Find out how to avoid too much dialog appearing during a mob attack
- Add a little bit of a post-game, maybe (to see results of your victory)
- Write the FULL making-of report, just like last year (this post is only a teaser)
- Maybe I should turn the cool mapgen I wrote into a standalone mod because it's actually pretty useful
- ... and more!