Shadow Possession – Post Mortem
Shadow Possession contains a goat!
Click here to view my LD entry.
Or click here to go directly to the game.
This post contains a few spoilers (sorta), so I suggest playing before you read on.
Phew!
What a hectic, fun, stressful, and exhilarating weekend this was. I’ve never participated in a Jam before, nor have I ever actually completed a game, or made something beyond the game I’m still working on.
That first game has been (slowly) in development for almost a year now, so the idea of creating a game in a weekend was very appealing to me. Almost like a “right place at the right time” moment for me, as I’ve been struggling to have the motivation to continue development on my first game. Turns out that LD was exactly what I needed.
All the lessons and techniques I’ve learned from working on that first game really helped me create Shadow Possession in the short amount of time I had. I’ve also learned that if I can make 8 decent levels in 60 hours, there’s no excuse for my first game having only 5 levels in 9 months! It’s been a good wake-up call.
What’d I miss?
I have a good list of things that I didn’t have time to get into the game.
Off the top of the list: more sound effects, an increasing difficulty curve, and new rules/additions to the mechanics.
Sound
Sound is something I always had in mind as I developed Shadow Possession. I imagined “darkness-y poof” sounds when you would flip and land, a “searing, burning” sound when you were hit with light, and the appropriate sounds when the lights begin to flicker on and off. They really would have added to the atmosphere, yet I simply ran out of time. A few more hours probably would have been enough, as I had gotten footstep sounds into the game, so it was only a matter of having the time to find the other appropriate sounds I needed. Fixing nasty bugs that appeared in the last hour or two took priority, unfortunately.
Increasing Difficulty/Additional Mechanics
I had wanted the difficulty in Shadow Possession to eventually start escalating, after the player had time to learn the mechanics I continued to introduce. I set the flow of the levels in a calculated way – You learn to flip before you learn that light hurts, you get used to avoid light to continue before you learn that some lights have switches, and so on. The final level in SP should hint at what I wanted to do next with the mechanics – mobile lights via people/creatures/machines/whatever made sense. My plan was to have some AI that would wander in certain areas, and if the spot you with their flashlight, they’d chase you. They’d be either random strangers or perhaps friends of “The Gentleman” (the guy whose body you possess). I also wanted to make the light kill you quicker (and perhaps not push you out as much), but balancing the difficulty with that would have taken more time, so I went for more of a timing approach.
The Result
Despite not getting more sounds and menu in, I’m still very pleased with what I turned out. It was a lesson-full, motivating experience to take part in. I’d like to compete in the next LD again, and do something with procedurally generated levels/content. I’m not sure what takes longer – hand-crafting levels, or letting your systems do that for you (and working out the bugs), but I’d like to take a crack at it, as I’ve never done proc gen before.
The Future
If you liked Shadow Possession, look forward for a new version in the soon future. Now that I can take my time and really give it some finesse and challenge, I’d like to see where the game can go. I plan on setting deadlines to self-motivate like I did for the Jam, so development won’t take years. I won’t try and estimate a release time this soon, but I plan on seeing what I can do in a week or two, and take it further as needed.
All in all, I feel a good kind of different from before I participated. A pretty tired kind of different, but a good one nonetheless.