Post Mortem 2

So, like last game jam, I think that this one went very well, if not entirely to plan.

Idea : Fire Emblem X Pokemon
Result: Fire Emblem engine

Though in past game jams, I have made very ugly games that were 100% about the mechanics before, this game I decided to bring in some pretty elements, including a non-zero number of assets (tiles and sprites, yeah). This prevented me from being able to add any game play features above the base Fire Emblem level (like the pokemon-esque leveling / capturing I had envisioned), but resulted in what I think was a very reasonable product, and something that is able to look more finished than it perhaps is due to that layer of "looking right".

The only major issue is that this game jam became an "engine jam", which very little game play put onto a fully functional engine. I am entirely content with this though, as I know have something that I can build on either in my free time or, because I am unlikely to have terribly much of that next semester, in another game jam. And my idea was really too big at the beginning to become a terribly fun game if I focused on gaminess, so a fully functional engine is very satisfying. There are plenty of game features left to be added, but I have enough infrastructure now that it could become much more fun very quickly by writing very few lines of code, but instead designing maps and such.

What this game jam taught me was probably that assets are not evil, and it's probably worth the effort to pretty up a game somewhat...though my game does have some performance issues brought on by it's prettiness that I should try to at some point fix.

Both of the game jams for this class were both quite fun and educational, and I think rather successful. Everyone won the game jam (winning is defined as completion of a game), so that is very good, and hopefully my games will become more game-like with a bit more work. Also, after these game jams, I have gotten pretty familiar with Javascript and Codeheart, so, despite their flaws, I have the skills necessary to be able to work efficiently with them on future game jams. Unless I decide to do the next one in Dart and WebGL, because why not?