#game postmortem

[igb220-rhiann-steenstrup]

Assignment 3 Post Mortem

After completing this assessment, I have the opportunity to review my work and learn from it.

The most obvious area for improvement is the aesthetics of the game. Haunted mansion is set in a, well, haunted mansion. And with a setting like that, there's certain aesthetic decisions you expect to create the appropriate.

When I think of haunted mansion, I think of dark colours, particularly blacks, greys and browns. I think of lavish but outdated rooms, covered in dust and cobwebs. And most of all, I think of ghosts. And the latter is really the only part our group delivered on.

The lacklustre aesthetics are in part to the strengths of my team members and I. None of us are artists, or are majoring in animation. As far as I was aware, I was the only one who had taken units that belonged to the creative industries.

Because the aesthetics were lacking, I felt this took away from the effort of the design and mechanics. Despite several testers telling us they enjoyed the game and the movement mechanics, the aesthetics were always our downfall, and likely decreased how much testers enjoyed our game.

Another aspect we could improve on is our time management. Because this assessment was due later than some others, all of us pushed back working on this assessment until weeks 13 and 14, which meant we were behind on testing, and performing tests on a barely developed prototype.

However, there were some parts of this assessment that went well. I believe we had an interesting concept, and some unique enemy movement for the ghosts. I also liked the idea of their being multiple endings based on the player's performance. It's a feature I don't see in many platform games, which typically have a linear story - you die, you start again, or live until you get to the end.

Team communication was also a strength for this assessment. Every week, we made it clear what our tasks were, and what we hoped to achieve for that week. We also made sure to tell the team if we had external commitments that prevented from working on the assessment.

Working on this assessment was an enjoyable experience, which allowed me to identify several strengths and weaknesses in the development process, as well as working in a team.

[arimiadev]

Hello visual novel fans and vampire lovers! It’s been a while since I last wrote a postmortem, so I hope I’ll be able to write this concisely (and coherently).

Dahlia was a short visual novel I created in under 36 hours for Velox Formido, a shortform visual novel game jam ran by robobarbie and Allie Vera. It’s inspired by Ludum Dare, one of the longest running game jams in the world where devs are tasked to make a game in 1 weekend based around a theme. I got my start making visual novels by entering Ludum Dare…which was 10 years ago, as of 2024!

I had my eye on this game jam for a while now, as this isn’t its first incarnation. I’ve been a bit burnt out the past year or so, not completely where I can’t make progress but to where I feel like my work has slowed down a lot more than my peers and feel I can’t make anything quickly. When I saw the jam was happening this weekend, I hopped on board once the themes were announced.

the themes

While Ludum Dare has a rigorous process of eliminating themes until it gets down to the final one, Velox Formido has it where there are 5 themes that win and participants have to use at least 2 of them in their entries. The final themes were…

Enemies with Benefits

Flower Symbolism

Doomed by the Narrative

Trapped with Someone

Forbidden Romance

I started crafting ideas as soon as the themes were announced, which was what the jam started- meaning the clock was ticking!

My first idea was a shounen rivals-esque sapphic story about two rivals meeting up for alone time. I started writing it immediately but moved on to another idea- being trapped with a vampire. I doubt I’ll ever use the first idea, so I’ve shared the snippet I was able to write for it here. Every new line is the other woman talking, so think of it as a quick back and forth.

Even though I had started on this idea, I wanted to write something more… mysterious. Frilly. Girls in cute dresses, to be exact. So I began potting an idea where a girl wakes up to find a vampire in her room, unsure if she’s had her fill yet or toying with her next meal.

the story

The “flower symbolism” theme was definitely my first pick, as I love the concept of it and played around with it in my last visual novel, Asphodelium. I named the characters Dahlia (beauty, change) and Camellia (admiration, longing). Dahlia represents a change in Camellia’s life, a sudden burst of newness. Camellia longs for something different, some way for things to change.

The other theme I picked was “trapped with someone”, as the premise is a girl stuck with a vampire in her room. I didn’t want it to be outright horror, but still a little creepy and tense.

Dahlia "I've had enough pitchforks stuck in my face for today." Camellia "And why is that?" Dahlia "Because your kind isn't too welcoming to my kind." Camellia "I was asking why you were here in the first place." Dahlia "Obvious questions get obvious responses. I needed a snack, of course." Camellia "And you chose my residence." Dahlia "Didn't you say this was your fathers?" Her words curl around the last word, like ivy growing against a trellis. She's clearly already had a "snack", but was it enough to satisfy her? Or am I the main course?

Both of them are somewhat young, but there is still the element of the unknown. This creature clearly already had a meal, but does she want dessert? Is she just toying with her food? Or is she truly delighted to find someone her age to talk to?

With the time constraints I wasn’t able to flesh out much of their dynamic, but I hope it was still an enjoyable taste! The story ended up being about 2.3k words long with 3 endings.

the art

I started doing the art about….12 hours before the jam ended. I love working with fullbody sprites as they offer me a lot more versatility with posing, but I knew I didn’t have time for that here. This time I went for 3/4ths bodies, namely just so I could cut it off at the end of their dresses. I spent about an hour on each of these.

With the time crunch I didn’t have time to do concepts for them- I just winged it! I knew I wanted Dahlia to have pigtails, though she was originally going to have a purple theme. Camellia was supposed to have proper curls in her hair, but because the game starts with her being rudely awoken, I went with messy waves instead. Think of it as bedhead rather than her actual hairstyle.

I also quickly did a main menu artwork towards the end of my crunch in about half an hour. It was originally going to be the cover art on itchio but Dahlia’s >:D sprite looks more striking.

For the backgrounds I went with free photos from Unsplash and edited them. Personally, I like the look of filtered photos as backgrounds depending on the aesthetics of the game.

I didn’t have time to edit the GUI aside from the textbox, which was NVL mode.

the presentation

Dahlia is stylized fully in NVL mode, with the textbox to one side of the screen. I love NVL mode for scenes focused on narration and setting the right mood.

I was considering making the game a different resolution, but because the NVL mode is to the side rather than the entire screen I wanted to make use of the widescreen resolution.

The game is set late at night, so each of the backgrounds had to be nighttime. To match with this, I tinted the sprites to match each of them. For example, the above tint looks like this:

transform nightcolor: matrixcolor TintMatrix("#8594d6") * BrightnessMatrix(0.03) image dahlia night = LayeredImageProxy("dahlia",nightcolor)

I wanted to try something more complex like a tint + another light source overlayed onto the sprite, but ran out of time.

Another part of the presentation I did was to have a variety of shots. I had a very limited about of art to work with (only changing mouths and eyebrows, no arm poses or eye positions) so I knew I had to be smart about how I composited the scenes.

One thing I’ve done in other visual novels was to have one character further away and have another closer to the camera but their sprite turned black. This allows me to give the illusion of depth without having a sprite of the back of each character’s head.

for instance, this is that technique in Canvas Menagerie

Doing this in Dahlia was a quick and easy way to make the visuals much more interesting rather than swapping between two mostly static sprites the entire game.

The way I do it in other games is on a per-sprite basis, meaning I set brightness and position each time. It’s hectic, really! But because of the time limit for this jam, I was able to come up with a much quicker way to set it up.

transform lefttt: zoom 0.5 xalign 0.3 yalign 0.05 transform leftttb: zoom 0.8 xalign -1.6 yalign 0.1 matrixcolor(BrightnessMatrix(-1)) xzoom -1

The lefttt transform is for the character in the back- in this example, that’s Camellia. The leftttb transform (b standing for “black”) is for the character in the foreground who’s shrouded- in this example, that’s Dahlia.

Basically, the leftttb transform sets the sprite to a bigger size than the farther away sprite, sets the position, and then makes the color completely black before flipping the sprite (because this should be us seeing them from behind).

I also did quite a few small animations in the game, such as Dahlia dancing around or bouncing up and down. You define it once as a transform and can reuse it again and again.

transform dance: ease 0.7 xoffset -59 linear 0.25 ease 0.6 xoffset 74 linear 0.19 ease 0.76 xoffset -70 linear 0.3 ease 0.7 xoffset 102 linear 0.2 ease 0.8 xoffset 0

If you’d like to see the code in action, then guess what- I’ve released the entire source code for the game on GitHub! Feel free to sift through it to see the components in action and copy some of the code for your own projects. All I ask is that you do not redistribute the game (i.e. download the code, make a build in Ren’Py, and redistribute that as your own game).

wrapping up

I’m pretty happy with how Dahlia came out. It’s short and visually distinct and helped “prove” to myself that I’m capable of making visual novels in a weekend still. I tried to avoid spoilers here, so if you haven’t played it already then give it a try!

— Arimia

[tothepointofinsanity]

Just read into it and apparently this structure from LSD: Dream Emulator is the entrance to a place called “Happy Town” from the Natural World.

…it looks uncannily similar to the structures around the forest sections in Greener Grass Awaits. I wish I was kidding and just trying to stretch my delusions. I’ve played the game more than enough to remember how they look like. What was exuberance doing lmao.

[lapinlunaire-games]

Play on itch.io!

Kyrie Eleison (Κύριε, ἐλέησον) Translated from the Ancient Greek: Lord, have mercy. Simultaneously a petition and a prayer of thanksgiving; an acknowledgement of what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will continue to do.

The sun set a long while ago. In the long night that has stretched on since, Pandora has had ample time to think about who she used to be, what she's become, and what might lie ahead.

500 words. Created for the Anti-Romance Jam 2023 and Neo-Twiny Jam 2023.

Content Warnings: mentions of blood/violence

[hummingbird-games]

Postmortem: #CrushedVN Edition

Okie doke y'all! It's been some time so I guess we're good to dissect this project!

(I almost didn't bother with writing this up, but at the end of the day I do the dev diaries and the random--game development related--posts for me to look back on and prove I'm learning. Getting better. Not regressing. So. Might as well move forward!)

Background/Inspiration

It's like if you took my late 2022 brain and threw it into a blender!! Most of these are self-explanatory (Boys Love media I adore with emphasis on early to late teen experiences.) Let me draw your attention to The Edge Of Seventeen: not sure how many times I've rewatched, but it makes me tear up every single time. Main character Nadine is awkward AF, still hasn't come to terms with the death of her father years prior, isn't on the best terms with her mom or her older brother, and even ends up on rocky terms with her best friend too!! Anyway, that feeling of being young, and a little angry and a little sad and not feeling quite right on the inside but eventually reaching a place where things fiiiiiinally start to work out...it's just a sliver of what I wanted to capture and infuse into Crushed.

Listen y'all, I just pulled and pulled and pulled from real life experiences. I was inspired by authors Julian Winters, Leah Johnson, and Jay Coles' works (all Young Adult authors LOL! Fitting since I seem to be creating things for the teens at this juncture in my life). This all provided the base for Corey and his inner world. Also, I've been wanting to create a bookworm character...no time like the present right???

As for deciding to specifically create a boys' love visual novel of all things?? First, y'all must understand that I fought the original idea and anything related to it. This was coming off the heels of me suddenly seeing (another) wave of players throwing fits about indie games forcing you to play as a femme character. First off, no one is forcing you to do anything. Secondly, we are still at a point in video games where the majority of characters you play as are male. Forgive some of us for wanting a little variety 😑Thirdly, for those looking for games where there's even more inclusivity (choosing pronouns, playing as nonbinary/trans, and etc) I really wish that players would seek out those games that ARE being made and support them so the developers don't lose steam and drop their projects. It's so disheartening to make something that's meant to be consumed and BOOM, silence.

Anyway, all of that to say that as a developer herself who's tired of watching girls' media be regulated as Less Than, made fun of, and just overall disrespected, I wasn't interested in making any games that didn't center a female character. But back to my main point!!!

I had Heartstopper, the webtoon, infecting my brain. I was so not immune to falling in love with Nick and Charlie like everybody else. But then I was hit for the 34573847th time that I was engaging with white queer media. And I knew that if Nick and Charlie were Black Brits, they wouldn't be getting half the attention they are now. Even less if the boys were girls and we had a sapphic relationship on our hands. (But that sapphic story from Hummingbird Games is still brewing, and Corey and Jacob's story was ready first.)

Also....the biphobia is real. It's insidious. I could write a whole book about how the straights and the gays need to get their shit together. I could then write a sequel about how the Black community can be some of the worst offenders when it comes to our Bi Fam and say some of the most ignorant and devastating things. But I had limited time on my hands and decided to write a short VN instead. Once I let Corey just be, exist as the person he is, everything fell into place.

Things That Went Right...

I took a very niche, very Specific To Me, very nestled in the space between my heart and my brain and wrote a script just so I could be a part of a game jam specifically highlighting and supporting the work of Black game developers.

And I submitted the bitch on time.

I'm always down for anxiety rep!!! As a fellow anxiety haver, I say the more visibility the better!!! At the same time, it's not a one size fits all, and there were some things I dealt with that I'd never seen depicted and I figured I might as well be true to my experiences. Maybe someone would take solace in Corey the way I've taken solace in other characters for reflecting my lived experiences.

I tried new things I was scared of or didn't have time for with HSD or didn't feel confident enough to sit and learn previously: partial voice acting (and holding auditions to incorporate more), a text message system (which wasn't my own but part of learning to code for me means being able to take what others have done and replicate and/or use it myself), and implementing music and sound effects with intention. I've done it with film, but games are a close cousin in a lot of ways. A LOT of ways. I should remember that.

I still didn't do too well in the marketing department but for this game, it didn't feel like a failure. I also didn't really try. Oops. I've got to do better. I went into Crushed knowing it wouldn't have half the audience HSD does, and yet the feedback I've received for Crushed has made me want to break down into tears of relief.

I launched the game around 10 something at night my time and proceeded to be sick with anxiety for about 3 days. For three whole days I legit felt like I was going to die. And then I wanted to laugh because didn't I just make a game to express a version of the human condition?

Things That Were Different...

HSD showed off my skills when it comes to intensive planning and sticking mostly to that plan. Crushed was a jam entry that became more extensive over time and found me flying off the seat of my pants.

I also had less (aha, zero???) budget this time around. Because again. Jam entry. It wasn't supposed to be a Big Affair. But now that it's over and out to you guys, I'm not mad. You could say that it all worked out.

If I Could Go Back, I Would...

For one, I would have smacked the voice in my head that said "let's add more voice acting now". I love the feature, but there's no reason why I couldn't have done auditions after release. I was impatient and restless waiting for art assets, and my idleness led me to take on more things just to not feel useless. I Have Learned My Lesson, thanks.

I Had The Pleasure of Learning...

There will always be an obstacle in the way of game development. (And sometimes your body will be your own worst enemy, yuck.)

I don't know who my audience is (yet) for HBG but I'm always a part of it. And that's not a bad thing. If I hadn't felt so strongly about Crushed or even HSD, neither project would have happened because I would have given up a long time ago.

To the Future...

Empasis on future, but the world of Crushed isn't exhausted. It lives in the bigger universe of HSD:JY but took on a life of its own. So it's no surprise that Corey and his friends became even more precious to me. Not that I know when I'll be able to work on it, but right after finishing and publishing the demo, I outlined a rough draft for a kinetic novel sequel told through Jacob's POV. In my head, Corey's story was always half of a whole, and busting out Jacob's outline so quickly confirmed that.

(What I didn't anticipate was how loved Oke and Keegan would be, or that there would be a want for their story outside of myself??? Between us and this postmortem, I hope to sort out their deal and get the satisfaction of seeing another type of love story/dynamic I can't get enough of and share it!)

Closing Thoughts

The comments I've gotten concerning Crushed and noting the appreciation for its slice-of-life/grounded-ness is reassuring! Maybe I'll branch out to other genres, but realism will be something I always come back to. Also, making Crushed wasn't too traumatic soooooo that means I'm still making games LOL! Can't get rid of me yet!

- Gemini 💛

(some links of other posts where I went on tangents concerning the creation of Crushed; these can also be found by searching the tag "crushed vn"!)

Music Inspo and Crushed

Memes Tag Game

Game Dev Commentary: Bonus Content

[skydigiblogs]

oughhh i was plagued by ghost game related thoughts today. this is messy and disorganized and a lot so don't mind me gbdsfhgbdjfg

it's been like half a year or so since i finished watching it so this is mostly unprompted and like

i do kind of wonder what would have happened with ghost game if instead of a bigger focus on purely pick up and go scooby doo shit, they were willing to tell an overarching story with the elements they had

i think i enjoyed it so much if only because it gave us something we hadn't seen much of to that point (that i'm now realizing is one of those things appmon heavily inspired in GG), that being digimon affecting technology in complex ways

(that's to say, not just bricking computers like giant magnets or making binary flash on the screen to ominous messages like makuramon does in tamers)

but like also digimon having more interactions with humans in general? just kind of hanging out and living in the human world? yeah the field exists and digimon can bworp in and out of being visible to humans without VBs, but they also live in a setting where they can mostly get away with just going "no yeah i'm just a very advanced hologram, dw about it :)"

i also refuse to get over the fact that gammamon is like, canonically plural, and i really wish we had more time with gulus after the finale ep reveals about him and the GRB shit.

also, i do wonder if maybe the series shot itself in the foot by not knowing what it wanted to do, plot wise? it gave us expectations in the first episode as an audience--- suggesting big and strange things to be delivered, and didn't seem to know how to really deliver on them while also trying to be that variety of scooby doo shit that doesn't have to have a throughline plot (aka, setting up a mystery inc style story when it's got a stated goal to be more like the original series)

i was still using reddit at the time GG started, and i remember a lot of people really wanting to hype it up as "the next tamers," especially after they saw the tone and structure of the first episode. in general, i wonder if high expectations put more scrutiny on GG than it might have otherwise gotten.

(this of course isn't to say that there's criticism to be had for GG. i mean i just said i personally have beef with its lack of narrative commitment. i'm just wondering if maybe some people got a little too excited to see a series that met the lofty nostalgia of something like tamers.)

anyways, idk, there's not really anywhere i'm going with this one, i just had some idle thoughts at work today about this series.

go read the gray matter ghost game fancomic or something (no i really have no clue why ghost game is on my mind, really)

[swallowtailed]

so i'm listening to the bluff city s1 finale, and... there's a thing that happens to me occasionally with fatt, where i'll learn about a moment by fandom reputation before i actually hear it. i'll know or reasonably guess when it happens, but i won't have any of the build-up or context. so i'll be comfortably expecting something to be funny or sad or scary... and then i'll reach the actual moment in my own listen, and it will still 100% destroy me in exactly the predicted manner. because this is a good show.

anyway, hearing "mike truck takes the other seat" sent a real and visceral bolt of fear through my body, even though i knew it'd happen at some point, and i can't even fully explain why. sangfielle who. bluff is the real horror season

[spearheadrampancy]

i have got to do as much of my uni work as possible in the next three days i am currently gripping my seat so bad

[bbsprint]

PMT01: Scaffold nano & Trowel pico

Scaffold nano & Trowel pico v1.1.0 have been released tonight.

Updates add a myStages to Scaffold, and QoL improvements to the powerup editing experience in Trowel pico.

Now that it's out, I'd like to also take this moment to talk about the development and release of both.

One year minus one day ago I had announced in Twitter I would work on the level editor for the demo version of BRICKBREAKER SPRINT (nano) so fans could breathe in more life to the game even in its limited state and to also showcase how much it can do with its limited toolset at the current time.

The reasoning for a completely separate technology version was simple, WebGL. WebGL in Unity is so limited for even the most basic things (I had to install a package to support cross-app copy/paste before nano+'s release!) and I said "hey, might as well give the multiplatform users something to be able to edit with, doesn't need to be just windows which is what the currently unpolished-ish trowel desktop is!"

But then it hit me that the same limitations would likely make it hell for me to support just levels downloaded as files (internally stored with "bxtp" extension btw :) ) so then... I came at a crossroads

just say FKIT and not do it, make ppl wait for BB Lite

still say FKIT and kickstart the foundation of the online service that I had planned since the first design iteration of the game

guess what I took?

I don't regret it.

Currently, Scaffold's login system is attached to itch.io. In the future, this will use my own account system (called Luna, still in development)

Now then... developing Scaffold's frontend was a challenge in itself, because I'm a masochist. I chose yet another technology to make the frontend in, this time Svelte, Sveltekit as backend saying "okay, no more fear of ServerSideRendering now that I can afford a VPS for this"

but... Svelte has been an absolute joy to work with. Its learning curve even smoother than React's (my first frontend framework, which powers cometSpectrum!), and I got everything rolling very quickly

At first, I was going to use my regular website design language, but it's kinda jank, so I said NO and started from scratch with a simpler façade. For the style I wanted to pursue... it was perfect. Some people have complimented the graphic aspect of the site, and I'm happy I could deliver exactly what I wanted. (and yes the icons being in opposite directions compared to bbsprint's UI is entirely on purpose)

BTW, the site is made in such a way that a BB theme could be used as the site's theme and every color will change except for PNG icons, i love it (this functionality is used for people using their OS's Light theme)

This is actually the first made-by-me website project that has "public" facing write actions to a database and stores actual files. It works... very well, and I am very happy about it. It's like a combination of everything I've learnt up to this point, down to API design and interop between programs.

I did say this was the foundation for Scaffold, and I plan for this game to keep Scaffold as its prime way of getting stages, even when getting to storefronts like Steam or GOG. Kind of like an osu! situation.

You're at this part of the message... wanna see how Scaffold's logo used to look like?

[bumblebaubles]

repost with what song reads most like poetry to you from ttpd

[igb220-rhiann-steenstrup]

Racing Post Mortem

Of all three prototypes, I believe my racing game went through the most subtle changes. The aesthetics only changed slightly: cartoons became pixel art, but the colours and overall art were the same.

cars

road

I also did not attempt to add or alter game mechanics. The game operated as the tutorial built it to.

What would I add?

Based on the feedback I received, the game was overall enjoyable, however, it lacked a sense of tension and challenge. The tester suggested improving this by increasing the speed of the cars. I would likely do this by increasing the force per second on the player's car, to make it appear as if it were driving faster. This would increase the challenge of the game because players would be given less time to move in between games.

Additionally, I would like to make it so after a certain score, say 1000, the road would change. The pixel art I have above is a 'summer' version of a highway, and there are other versions for other seasons. I wanted the road to change to these different seasons. Unfortunately, I did not have the time now knowledge to implement such a feature.

[switchbackstudio]

It's been three months since the release of Cat Herder!

So, I wrote up a little postmortem, talking about the good and the bad and the lessons I've learned along the way.

If you've got time, please check it out!

[lakemichigans]

oh my god. i actually am qualified for this autopsy assistant position. should i go for it??

[hopjam]

CALLING CARD Postmortem & Behind-The-Scenes

good morning/afternoon/evening/time-of-day, everyone! i've finally released a postmortem for my first game, CALLING CARD! it also comes included with a behind-the-scenes section, so now's your chance if you ever wanted to know more about the making of the game!

[dreamsofalife]

((TAG DUMP~))

[zephagame]

My game I made in 48 hours came 2nd in Ludum Dare 54!

Ludum Dare 54 is a massive worldwide game development event, and my game, Less is Moore, came 2nd out of over 500 submissions in the most competitive bracket! I made a video about it! I'm a very small creator, so if you'd watch it, that would be great! ❤️❤️❤️