It’s time for a postmortem of The Hunt. It wasn’t the usual, great LD experience for me, as I had to enter the Jam just to finish my entry, but I’m happy I did manage to finish something… Well, let’s start…

The Good

• I did finish a game. I think last time I was so happy that I managed to do this was during my first LD.
• I like the graphical effect I managed to achieve with backgrounds. This is definitely something to explore further in different projects.
• I left polishing the code for later/never: no component object models, no fancy object-oriented techniques, just plain simple entities. And I DIDN’T CARE.
• I used the additional time to test my levels, and now I think that the difficulty curve is quite fine. The game can be beaten, but does get a little harder with each level. Even my mom can play it!

The Bad

• I hated the theme. I couldn’t think of anything that I would really like, which resulted in me starting to work around 13 hours after the compo started.
• The original idea to use Twine over AS3 was better, especially considering my time constraints (RL stuff).
• I was late for the compo and had to enter jam instead, and didn’t really gain that much out of it (I managed to add only 4 more levels)…
• I didn’t have time for anything. I didn’t implement anything interesting, and my weekend consisted of switching between LD and other things. I didn’t even add Kongregate API.
• Waited with creating assets too long: in the end I had to look for some pictures on the web and use combination of rotoscopy, palette reduction, recoloring and similar techniques just to have something. It turned out fine, but I wish I had a better plan.

The Result

• I think it’s probably the most non-innovative game I’ve ever created, but I also think that it was a worthwhile experience. Maybe it’s even not that horribly bad in terms of gameplay (it’s simple & casual), but kinda mindless, not very innovative and lacking theme-wise.
• I feel it’s kinda time to change the technology I work with (AS3), just to see something new. Haxe, HTML5, maybe even try something 3D… I must think about it some more, but it’s the right thing to try for me.

Either way, I’m looking forward to the next LD.

Tags: hunt, postmortem