Post-mortem

This jam went really well! I liked the idea I came up with and I was determined to get my game submitted. I might’ve pushed myself a little too hard by the end but I’m happy with the results. 

One thing I’ll need to be mindful of in future is that spriting the levels takes quite a long time - even for very basic sprite work. I spent several hours making the environment look prettier - starting at 12:30am as that’s the only chance I got that day to do so before the deadline at 8:30am. I allocated 3 hours in total for sprite work and it took me likely closer to 6. In addition, I hadn’t accounted for time to polish my design or fix bugs - both of which would’ve let me get to bed a few hours earlier.  

I slept in until 2pm the next day. I was knackered. Would I do it again? Probably. 

I have plans to add a hard mode with some of the levels I didn’t get a chance to dress up, sprite work for the enemies and springs, and add in a countdown mode. 

I know I said I wanted to do music for this game and whilst I’m happy it’s got sound, with everything else I’m doing, a three day jam doesn’t allow me enough time to do it fast enough. It took time enough searching for royalty free music to use that suited the feeling, let alone making my own. If I’m going to make music for a game jam, I believe it’ll have to be one of the only things I make. 

All of that said, I stuck to my allocated times much closer and was able to create a game I’m proud of in a real short amount of time! That’s awesome! 

Oh and one last note - using the pathing system for html projects in gamemaker is super buggy. I got around this by switching to a node based system like the one shown in this video, except instead of for moving platforms it was for my enemies.