This was my first finished game for my first game jam. Here I will do a little post mortem on the project.

The Idea

So for this jam, the theme was announced as "heaven" and the limitation was "player must be an inanimate object". I was immediately stuck. I would say my weakest point is art. How was I supposed to show of the beauty of heaven without good art? After some thought I decided that your goal was getting to heaven. This allowed to me to focus on a different easier pallet. Next point is the limitation. Why would an inanimate object be trying to get to heaven? After throwing some ideas around, I ended up upon that you were an adventure that soul got trapped in a sword. Perfect!

Now that I have the overall concept, I need to finalize the mechanics. I could of make a generic dungeon or adventure game, but I wanted a unique control scheme for the weird concept. I came to the thought that as a sword, you shouldn't be able to walk freely, but instead be thrown across the room. From there, everything else sort of came into place.

Building

I've been playing with Godot over the previous few weeks so the initial movement was pretty easy to set up, but some of the smaller mechanics were a lot more difficult than I expected. By far the largest time-sink was the movement. I feel like it works pretty well but not as smooth as I would of liked. I didn't want the player to be able to change directions midair so I only gave you the ability to target a location once your sword has landed.  This caused issue if the player hit a wall and never actually reached the target location. This problem also extended to tight corners or corridors. The only way I could think of to fix this was only allow you to target a location on the map, and have a maximum airtime in case you did get stuck on the wall. I would of preferred to find a better way to fix this.

As I said, art is my weakest point, but that also extends to music. I didn't want to be too ambitious with my first jam and this was over Christmas so I knew I couldn't use the full 72 hours. I wanted at the very least a finished product. I decided to use some pre-existing assets for the art and music. I spent WAY too much time trying to find the perfect art and music that I was looking for. I did take some liberty with the art and combined asset packs and made a few minor changes to make them fit together. In the end, I'm very happy with them and how they work together.

What Went Well

Overall, I'm very happy with the end results. People seemed happy with the controls and the game feel. There was some mixed opinions on the difficulty and I agree. I had a few friends play test for me and they were also mixed. I could barely beat the boss myself, but one of my friends beat it multiple times with no effort. People also liked the minor visual flairs I added like the sword shadow and screen shake.

What Went Wrong

My biggest regret is the art. In hindsight, I really should of used my own art, but as I previously said, I didn't want to over scope the project for the limited time frame. Besides that, people got bored pretty quickly with the limited enemies and game play. While I think the game play was interesting, it did get repetitive pretty quickly. As previously said, the difficulty was criticized and I would of liked to make it more approachable, but being that it was a game jam, there wasn't a lot I could do.

What Could be Fixed

Taking all the feedback from this project, and without going too crazy, there are a few things I wish I would of done. Of course the art is something I would of liked, but I already explained why I didn't.

Besides that, I would of like the tighten up the controls. I would of liked an animation if you hit the wall, maybe a bounce or something. Also have more interactive items. Maybe a bounce pad on the wall, or different enemy types that can only be attacked a certain way. In summary, more ways to interact with the world.

Another thing that was mentioned was how the game was too disconnected from the theme of heaven. In hindsight, I should of make a stronger connection to the theme. I could of made the enemies devils or demon and the angel more prominent. This is a minor point because the theme was optional, but still.

Lastly it would of been nice to add more user feedback. It was noted that besides a sound, it was unclear if you hit an enemy. There was no color change or knock back. This could of been expanded a bit to include better door animations or wall collision feedback. Again another minor point, but it would of made the game feel a little better.

This was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot. I'm glad I finally joined a jam and am looking forward to my next one. Thank you to everyone who played and commented my game. Your feedback was amazing!