Firstly i'd like to thank everyone for playing, rating and commenting on our game. The feedback has been super valuable.

The Good:

This is another set of consistently high results, similar to our last entry Checkmite. As we've grown and gotten more professional team members we too have tried to grow as programmers to make the most of their talent. Mood is an especially strong standout. The coming together of audio, graphics, mechanics and level design to really sell the effect of the depths of your subconscious.

We came into this jam with the same goal as always. Make something awesome. And I think we achieved that. Somnium is one of our most ambitious games yet, being fully 3D and free roam. There were moments where we thought we might not finish in time but the finished game is very close to our vision. However there are some areas we weren't able to implement and things to improve.

The field are standouts for going beyond my expectations and being truly beautiful, big shoutout to @Ruslana here for her art and animation work on the horses. She also did a great job with environemental story telling and I hope those who played it were able to find some of the easter eggs she placed in the world.

The music is also another area that we got good feedback on and really helps sell the uncanny dream like nature of the game.

The Bad:

There are several areas where we could've done better and most of them come down to running out of time. Running out of time is inevitable in a game jam but it's how we use the limited time we have that can be improved. While the feedback has been very positive there are a few consistent weak points people have highlighted.

Firstly is that the audio did not have fading. That was actually something we intended to implement but ran out of time. I have since implemented it while working on a post dare version and this has been a useful learning experience to learn more about Unity's Coroutine system and the intricacies of AudioSources and AudioClips.

The second is that the ending is a bit abrupt and doesn't make sense. Now to some extent that is intentional. Dreams are often nonsensical. But there was one aspect of the final area we didn't get time to implement. That is a voice with 3D audio calling out to you to wake up that would've come from the correct door. This would've then reinforced the theme of depth with your depth perception of audio and also made the ending more natural as you waking up from the dream. Unfortunately due to time we scrapped this and just ended with a fade to black instead. This is something I am also working on for a post dare version.

Another area is the amount of bugs. Most have been fixed but this too is partly due to running out of time. We prioritised new areas and puzzles and while I don't regret that decision it definitely did lead to a few players getting stuck and missing out on experiencing the entire game, which always hurts a lot to see. Part of this is down to the game being ambitious and 3D being fairly new to me and @Pegasys. We've learnt a lot and hopefully next time there won't be as many bugs. Alas as a developer I know that is wishful thinking. Colliders especially were an area that is far more fiddly to get right in 3D than in 2D.

Lastly is the topic of getting lost and the game being hard to figure out what to do next. This is an interesting area because it is a fundamental aspect of the genre with similar games like Superliminal not holding your hand. Our philosphy here was to let players figure out for themselves what is going on and piece together the world and puzzles however certain areas such as the Infinite Hallway could've been choreographed better. I don't think having a tutorial or hints would be a good idea as it would detract from the mood and dream like nature however perhaps audio cues or other less explicit environmental hints could've been used and that is something we want to explore in future.

The Ugly:

So from this feedback how can we improve things for next time? There are 4 ways we plan to learn from our mistakes and improve

*1) Implement audio fading into audio manager *

This one is already done as I mentioned above and should allow us to have improved audio transitions in future games.

*2) Focus on building a MVP by end of day 2. The game should be playable from start to finish. Doesn't have to be final art, music or level design but it should be playable *

This is something we have tried before to middling success. Back when it was us two the last day was often spent with @Pegasys creating art and me on features. However now we can focus purely on programming I think this is something that we can do without worrying about the other elements of the game.

3) Start each day with a Prioritisation session

Using something like MoSCoW to prioritise the various features and assets is something we have done in the past but haven't been as on top of in recent dares. This would greatly help us to decide which aspects are vital to the game and which are nice to have. So this will be a bigger focus next time.

4) Having friends and family playtest our game

Partly due to the time constraints we didn't have time to give a start to finish version of the game to friends till right near the end. This meant we missed out on bugs and other potential flaws that we could've caught. As such doing more regular playtesting, at a minimum once per day, will be something we do going forward.

Conclusion:

We really enjoyed making Somnium and exploring new techniques and art styles and it was a pleasure working with @Ruslana and @theoconfidor. We will be back in October and looking forward to what we can make.

If you're interested in trying it out you can play it here: https://pegasys.itch.io/somnium