After taking a bit of distance with my game and reading and thinking a lot about the feedbacks I've got so far, I wanted to write a little post mortem for my game "Disco Lovers". This is the second game I release for a ludum dare and the third game I release for a game jam. I learned so much since my first participation to the ludum dare one year ago, and this definitely helped me create and achieve this game.

The theme and how it blocked me at the very beginning

The theme I hated the most amongst all theme in the final row was "Running out of space". And damn, it was the one that was picked. I woke up at 5AM the first day (so 5 hours after the begining of the ludum dare), and got immediatly anxious because I literally did not know what to make. I overthought it, and tried prototyping or thinking about different things - a platformer and shmup with a mecha, even a point & click, and also a rythm game. But everything I thought about was crap. Eventually at 8 AM I gave up on those ideas I've made and decided to at least take a break, so I went outside and took a walk (well, not really a walk, I went picking vegetables but well). At 11AM I got an idea and thought about it a lot while getting home.

The theme wouldn't be used for the actual gameplay of the game, but for the scenario. I thought my idea was pretty good (and I still think it even if I think I could have implemented it better, so not only could it be more obvious, but also maybe have a link with the gameplay).

The organisation and how I should think... Little

One of the very big problems of this is not only that I actually began working on my game 12 hours after the beginning of the jam, but also that I thought about a concept that required wayyyy to many scripts and graphic resource to feel good. I was obviously unable to release my game for the compo (only because it wasn't finished), so I decided to take the extra 24 hours and release it for the jam. And even with those 24 extra hours, I felt like I couldn't release my game in time.

In the end I succeeded, but I had to abandon the Idea of making any music for the game - wich, as some people told me in their feedbacks, is an absolute shame for a game called Disco Lover. Also, I had to cut some ideas I had for the game (like being able to level up some room to boost their productions) because they just didn't feel finished, and it was a bit frustrating to be honest.

The gameplay and how I should think about making things more obvious.

One of the major problems that was recurrent to many feedbacks was the fact that the player was lost and didn't always know what was going on in the game. Some thought they have to place random rooms and eventually access to one of the two endings, other wanted to be more informed of what was going on the productions of each rooms...

This is something I have to improve on this game. There should be more feedbacks to the player of what is going on. I'll probably take "fallout shelter" as an example (But that's also what "simcity : builder" opted for) : the player will have to reap the benefit from each room himself, so he will know exactly what is going on, in the way that he controls this. This is something I already added to the game right now (I may be working on a post-jam version... But that's a secret !), and it does work well. I still need some feedbacks from some beta testers, but I feel like it's way better. I added a lot of different things that will show you exactly what is going on with each room, what you have to do to make them work better... I also already added a lot of new actions you can perform on more or less every room...

The art style and how doing simpler made it better

Realising I was running out of time (haha... ha... ha...), I decided it would be better to draw simpler art. I still spent a lot of time on it (maybe a total of 12 hours or so). I really ran out of time at the end, so I had to do even simpler with some assets (Like the vigil office or the bathroom are... Not really good looking). But the art style was fine, and using a LOT of lightning effect was a pretty good Idea.

(If you wonder, because I've already been asked it : the lightning effect is made in two step. First, I duplicated every elements that were supposed to glow in another layer on gimp — but you can do it in most art program —, and applied a blur to them with a ray of the width of each object. I updated a bit the settings of the layer so it was actually considered as light. Then, in Unity, I used the post-processing effect to add just a little bit of bloom (But not too much, because you don't want to ruin the work you have done AND the bright colors that aren't supposed to be lightning will with this filter.

I think that with all the effect that I applied to the scene, the art is good looking and neat. Eventually I will now be able to enhance the sprites so it will look even more pretty !

The inspirations I got and how they influenced my work

Talking about the actual gameplay, my inspiration obviously went from the game "Fallout Shelter" by Bethesda, that I used to play a lot in the past. I enjoy a lot city builder games, but I never thought on making one myself, and this is something this theme pushed me to do (And I'm glad for it !).

But my real and most important inspiration went from a serie actually, named "Pose". It is a drama series created by Ryan Murphy on FX renewed for a second season. It features more than 50 transgender characters played by actual transgender actor (Wich is awesome !!), and describe "several segments of life and society in New York : the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe, the downtown and social and literary scene, [...] the ball culture world", a part of the life of LGBT people and a part of the life of seropositive people during the 80's.

I didn't get enough time to include everything I wanted but this show really influenced me a lot on the making of this game, and if I keep working on this game I'll definitely more clear that it was an actual inspiration and show more of it.

However, you can already see a bit of it in the gameplay : the main character wants to create a safe space, a shelter for every LGBT people and especially young people in need of a home. However the time depicted in the game in not really the 80's, but more in a futuristic time, just like in dystopias. This is something i'll really try to add in the game with a lot of graphics elements.

Notes :

If you liked the game and want to see the progress i'm making on it, please check it on itch.io (https://hishicorne.itch.io/discolovers), i'll post some updates on it later this week !

I also published this post mortem here : https://hishicorne.itch.io/discolovers/devlog/45682/ludum-dare-42-a-post-mortem-of-my-game-disco-lovers-