Post Mortem: Solo Dev again

I really love crafting games and started this as a solo project. It's been months since I worked solo, and this was a great refresher on scripting (aka I died.)

It was hectic! Midway I realized I'd forgotten about Ludum Dare  too xD Thankfully Lyrcaxis came to help out with coding and saved me houuuuurssssss! and now it's a team effort! :DDD

My responsibilities:

• Art and animations
• Overall game design
• Tutorial design
• Scripting
  • Barking, Movement
  • Game Manager, Sound Manager, Asset Manager
• Voice acting

What's I did differently from my other Jams?

One of the biggest weaknesses I've had in previous jams is players being confused about how to play the game. For example, they weren't sure if their attack had done damage, or they didn't know what to do.

To tackle that, this jam, I focused most of my time on feedback and tutorial design. Feedback design lets the player know clearly and exactly how their actions have affected the game state, and if it was a good or bad thing. It's extremely important for learning.

I pioritized fully polishing the main mechanic first (barking and moving) from the physics to special effects. Normally, I'd have stopped just at scripting, and come back to add effects and animations on a later day. By the end of day 1, I had a barking dog with no real scoring system or crafting system of any kind. But playtest players were having fun just barking around at squares! :D

This way, I found players weren't as confused about controls or goals.

What's in the bark?