First, I thought it might be worth posting all the images I made for the game:

(I’ve hidden one image above the second ship to avoid spoilers)

This LD was pretty much a dream.  I’d already decided I was going to be using watercolours for the graphics (since I’ve been painting with them quite a bit lately), and then on seeing the theme I had an idea for a game that would really benefit visually, and tie into my current reading habits (again, Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen).  From there the whole thing went incredibly smoothly, with no major roadblocks.

What went well: The graphics, obv.  I’ve only just started to find my feet with watercolours, and they were perfect for this game.  I also really like how the game environment reacts to the player’s actions and starts fighting back if they start destroying the fungi.  That’s something I’d like to explore further.

What went not so well: The explosions when a fungus or the player dies.  They’re just rubbish.  I think the coloured particles are all wrong, and also I need to improve my particle generator; it’s just too simplistic as it is.  And while I think the music is basically perfect, the SFX are really clumsy.  They’re a mix of recorded and synthesized sounds, and they don’t really sit together.  I think I need to study foley techniques to get better at this sort of thing.  Also the endings are a bit perfunctory; I should have probably had some images or animations rather than the simple wipes accompanied by text.

Oh, and I’m not sure if I made it clear enough that there are essentially two styles of play: peaceful (scan all the fungi) and destructive (destroy all the fungi).  This was related to the whole business of the game environment reacting to your actions in a smooth manner, so it’s fairly benign until you start to poke it with a stick, at which point it becomes increasingly hostile.  i.e. the point where you collide with a spore and start destroying fungi is the point at which your mission goes bad, and it becomes all about survival rather than scientific research.

What I’m unsure about: The difficulty.  Judging difficulty’s always hard, and from the comments I’ve had so far it may be too difficult.  I’m not sure if anyone’s seen both endings yet?  But then my benchmark for difficulty in this kind of game is Hydorah, which I’m rubbish at, whereas I can easily beat my Lair.  So, yeah, I’m not sure.

The Future?: I might possibly do more with this setting.  Certainly the visual style is worth exploring some more.  And (perhaps because Vandermeer’s book currently has such a hold on me) the whole idea of basing an environment around fungi seems incredibly rich, and full of potential.  We’ll see.

Oh, and fwiw I’d definitely recommend other people try the watercolour route for this kind of competition.  I found it so easy to create graphics that looked good (and unique).  Just draw some simple shapes (pencil), then pick a couple of colours and let them blend together on the paper.  Really I spent more time waiting for the paint to dry (during which I got on with other things) than I did painting.

Tags: postmortem