Once again, I finished a game! Okay, it’s lacking a lot of features… the story should be longer, the maps are ugly, a trap doesn’t work, there is no kinda of sound, people are again complaining about the combat… But, now I have something solid to expand!

Looking back, I noticed that I had spent a lot of time. Since I really (I mean, REALLY) like to code, and usually think that any problem can be solved “if I just change this one line…”, I kept trying to make a “Multiple Autotiled Tilemap”, only to be able to draw this map:

I easily lost three hour doing so… I could use three tilemaps, but it wouldn’t work with how I was managing the maps… Or I could have done it manually… Well, next time I’ll try not to be stuck on those problems… Another stupid thing that made me lose some time was this (incomplete) tileset:

It’s the first graphic I drew. But I didn’t like the fact that it was too repetitive, so I discarded that one and made a simpler one. If I had time, I would then enhance every tileset (and map). Well, I didn’t have…

But, hey, I enjoyed the compo and didn’t only lost time. I really liked the sprites, and I was able to draw and animate them relatively fast. Pay extra attention to the boss. I drew that in aproximatelly one hour! And only needed few more time to animate. There’s that castle, though… I still think it’s missing a tower and some windows. I tried to detail it a lot… and kept trying to make it seem like a castle… That one was hard (and I’m not completely happy with the result…)!

But the main aspect of the game is the story! After seeing the theme I tried to think on the most unique way to use it… a way that noone else would use (so far, I think I played 3 other games with similar ideas… xD). The name of the game, “Save the princess(?)”, try to point that things aren’t as they seem…Though the game is about saving a princess and you can indeed save her, you get a rank according to how you played and what your final decision was. I tried to make you play as a hero but later find out that you actually weren’t one (depending on how you played). I wanted to show that the “Evil King” isn’t quite evil, and killing his followers and himself would turn you into the villain

I also though that this time I made a playable game… I tried to fix the problems from my last entry: there’s a kind of check point (though you respawn on the first map, you don’t have to redo anything), I recover the life before and after the boss battle, there’s a big (well, half the player’s size) graphic that shows what hit enemies… but people still found the combat problematic. I don’t know… perhaps the lack of knockback and sounds didn’t help… or… I simply don’t know!

Anyway, I’m happy with how the game is overall. If I hadn’t spent so much time on stupid stuff (mainly, trying to fix things that didn’t need to exist), I would have an better polished game. Well, I’m making a post-compo version! I hope that one is playable. xD

If you haven’t played my game, you can do so here!

Thanks for reading! =D

Tags: postmortem