Post-Mortem

Day 1 | 2 hours
I had trouble coming up with idea. I knew I won’t have much time during the week so I needed a simple mechanic to be able to finish on time.

I wanted to make a game utilizing 2D sprites dragging for a long time and this game jam was opportunity to try it. My first usable idea was a recycle game where you drag different items(glass bottle, pizza box...) to different bins like paper, plastic, glass and other waste.

Then I realized I don’t know many things that could be recycled. With no other idea in mind I asked a friend for some and he came up with an idea of an alchymist mixing color sources to create potions. The less color sources you have left in your inventory in the end, the more score you get. I was shaping this idea in my head for the rest of the day.

Day 2 | 3 hours
I broke the alchymist idea into smaller tasks and started programming the potion and resource system. It went fairly well and I prepared placeholder graphics for all 2D assets I need. At the end of the day I had the UI done using the placeholder graphics, font chosen (Indie Flower) and was ready for the next day drag and drop system.

Day 3 | 3,5 hours
Drag and drop system done. Yay! I stumbled on many problems and had to redesign it a little. I must admit, the code is trash. Anyway, I accidentaly broke the UI setup and had to do half of the work again. After that I started working on the mixing system. It took me more time then I expected but I managed to complete it still on third day. At this point I already passed the 7 hours which I foolishly thought would be enough to finish the game. Felt like I would need double the time.

Day 4 | 3 hours
With mixing system ready, I was working on the main game loop. That means I made 90 seconds timer, endgame screen with a score and best score and I also did some UI polish, for example when you have 10s left, the timer turns red. At this point I was done with programming except the audio manager. It was time to dive into graphics. Now, I remember why I usually do 3D games...I suck at 2D art. The only way to not fail miserably was to use vector graphics. I had all sprites done by the end of the day. I was satisfied with a simplistic art style with no background.

Day 5 | 3 hours
I spent the day animating all the assets from previous day and figuring out how to render particles in 2D overlay. I had to copy paste some code from my previous game Three of us to make it work. I spent most of the time figuring out custom cursor design, because that is the most important thing in any game. In the evening I recorded some sound effects with my girlfriend voice and modified it in Audacity. I had to overuse noise cleaning, because my mic is bad. I love it though because sounds are unique thanks to it.

Day 6 | 3,5 hours
Two major things were waiting for me. A graphic based tutorial and a menu screen with the tutorial. I decided to make the main menu very minimalistic for obvious time reasons. Problem was that I tried to make the tutorial from screenshots of the game. Worst decision in this game jam...After I spent more than hour on it, it turned out to be very bad. Then I remade it with ingame assets. The UI dependecies are total mess, so I’m sorry if it breaks on smaller screens. I tried to build the game for windows to take some gameplay screenshots for the game page when I noticed there are no particles rendering (cauldron bubbles). I spent an hour trying to fix it. I was successful in the end with a UI particles script I found online.

Day 7 | 2,5 hours
The game was basically done except for music. I use bosca ceoil, if you don’t know what that is, it is easy to use software for making music. Easy to use sadly doesn’t mean that even a total music noob like me can create good music. So I hired my beloved girlfriend to make the music and gave her 45 minutes. It's way better than what I could do in 45 mins. Last day was also reserved for building the game for windows and browser, playtest, creating game page here on itch.io and submiting it to blackthornprod game jam. It went suprisingly well. Thanks the organizer for this fun experience and I am looking forward to play others games. I really enjoyed working on this game and I hope you enjoyed playing it.

Total development time was approximately 21 hours.