Play/Rate the game here!

In general I’m really happy with how APOLLO turned out, and I’ve gotten some great feedback on it already Just thought I’d do a quick summary of how things went this time around, how I improved over previous LDs and hope to improve in the future.

What went well / improvements made:

• Aesthetic – I was able to nail the feeling I was going for with this game, through the look, sound, and how it plays. One of the things I’ve noticed in the past is how I stay deep in my comfort zone when it comes to visuals for my jam games, but I think I did an ok job of pushing things a bit further this time around.
• Sound – Though I didn’t compose original music for the game (it uses a track called “Past the Edge” from incompetech.com), I’m proud of what I did with the sfx. In the past I’ve fallen back on basic SFXR noises, and though I did use SFXR in my workflow, I think I did a much better job this time of creating sfx that fit into the mood I was attempting to create.
• Gameplay and originality – My 2 previous LD games suffered from a lack of originality imo, they each ended up being somewhat similar to gameplay mechanics that already exist. I feel like with APOLLO I was able to create a game that was entirely about my idea, and didn’t need to borrow gameplay concepts to round out the experience. I’m sure there are games out there it’s similar to, there almost always are, but I think I created a much more unique game than my previous LD entries.

What didn’t go well / areas to improve:

• Perceived complexity / learning curve – I wouldn’t say APOLLO is an especially complicated game, but due to the UI and presentation it can come off that way. The main problem is that a new player is bombarded with a lot of information, and for some people this is pretty hard to process. I didn’t want to make a straight up tutorial, as I wanted part of the game to actually be about learning how to navigate the world and use the actions available to you, but some easing the player into the world would probably have helped a lot.
• Visual clutter – Mainly, too much text. Kind of ties in with the previous point, there is just a lot of text onscreen at any given time. I personally like the aesthetic that this gives to the game, but to a player it can certainly be overwhelming. A goal I’ll set for the future is to try and do better at only showing the player what they need to know, and create better focal points on the screen.
• Pacing – I actually really like how slow-paced the game ended up being, but I’m marking it as an area to improve because I think it’s important for a jam game to be really easy to jump in and start playing right away (something that I think really helped NXTWPN10). I think it would have been possible to do this with APOLLO without sacrificing the slow, looming feel, by doing more to grab the player’s attention right at the start and not forcing them to hold up and analyze a quite dense screen’s worth of information before making their first move.

That’s basically what I’ve been thinking about regarding APOLLO since the jam finished! Making it was a really fun experience, and of course getting to see people’s reactions to it was even more fun. Many thanks to everyone who gave it a try!

Tags: postmortem