Hey, this is Tuile, the artist, game designer, and writer of "Please the Gods" ! I'll be talking about my team's entry for Historically Accurate Game Jam 4.

This is my first time writing out a post-mortem for a game, so I may miss some important factors to consider. All feedback will be welcome! These are the points that I will give special attention to, this time around, and will probably be more aware of next time:

• Game Jam Specs
• Team Cohesiveness and Skillset
• Organizational Workflow
• Game Design and Iterations
• Art
• Music
• Development
• Submission
• Future TODOs

Game Jam Specs

Expectations: Getting mythology as the theme for the Historically Accurate Game Jam. Game jam theme and restrictions would be easy to understand and absorb.

What happened: Too much attachment to a previous idea. Game jam specs fluctuated regularly, leaving us confused and frustrated as we tried to fit our backup concept into a relevant form on Day One. We lost time, some morale, and game design iterations suffered greatly.

Team Cohesiveness and Skillset

I joined the team 2 weeks before the game jam began, meeting everyone for the first time. Teammates were nice to get along with, and I felt that the jam experience would be enjoyable.

Expectations: We discussed this beforehand. Figuring out timezones, and how much time we each would spend on the game jam was shared early. A consistent 10 hours/day from devs, and 5/hrs from the music designer. I had decided to put in about 8 hours/day. We would all put in extra time near the end of the game jam.

What happened: I ended up putting in an easy 11-12 hours on 6/8 of the game jam days, other than on Monday and Tuesday, when I put in 6 hours/day. I had hoped that I wouldn't have an side effects from getting the 1st dose of the vaccine, but wasn't quite lucky. I didn't take any days off like I had originally planned, and clearly put way more hours than I originally planned. 2 out of 4 members had other undisclosed commitments that heavily derailed how many hours they actually put in throughout the week. This effected quality of output and final submissions, as well as team morale over time. 

Organizational Workflow

Expectations: Using my Notion workflow for GDDs and longer team efforts, I thought it would be more convenient to have a base of operations already set up for the game jam. I also created multiple channels for different things within a category just for the game jam, on my discord server. I thought that members would be consistent in how they used both interfaces.

What happened: Notion had a surprisingly higher entry-barrier than I thought. The other members couldn't quite figure it out, and it wasn't intuitive enough for them to keep using, especially when time crunches were involved. Within the first few days, this task list was abandoned, and while I did clean up after them for a while, after Day 4, I resolved to stick entirely to Discord. Past that point, it worked better for the other members all around.

Due to not sticking to Notion, and not setting conventions early, file management was terrible. Music files weren't organized in a way that they could be found easily, and we couldn't maximize on the music assets we did have. Personally, I couldn't stick to file-naming conventions, especially at the end, it devolved into something like this:

Even though I was still naming them properly for exports, I think I could have made it easier on myself to find things with some naming conventions set up in advance. I had to keep a bunch of files open so as to not lose time in figuring out which is which:

Game Design and Iterations

Expectations: I would wait to design a game based on the final Game Jam specs, and try to go for an rpg-puzzle mechanics within our intended scope. Using my GDD template as a base, I aspired to be able to do my usual design iterations, albeit test how to do things faster within the time restrictions applied by the jam.

What happened: Due to the confusion on Day One about /Game Spec, we couldn't adapt to the changes well, and devolved fast into quick and dirty mode. We didn't fill out some basic things within the GDD, and there were things that weren't considered at all until much later, or added as we went. We also changed our genre from rpg-puzzle to interactive fiction (bare-bone as it was), with mini-games.

While we did brainstorm and complete a research phase on Day One, I felt that we still dropped the ball on how "fun" the game would up being. We focused a lot more on bringing in different mechanics through the mini-games, and sticking with historical accuracy, and less on how it was going to be like to play as the player. I should have balanced more hours focusing solely on game design, but dropped the ball due to how the sheer amount of art I was trying to iterate and finish.

I also found that the Game Flow document in Notion was hard to follow during a game jam, and wasn't great for quickly finding certain types of information. In the end, something more accessible, like Milanote, was definitely easier to use for quick and visual mapping of events and scenes.

Art

Expectations: May not be able to finish all the art that I need to create for the jam. Unsure if I can make compelling backgrounds, or if I'll be able to stick to a consistent style for all the assets. 

What happened: I actually managed to finish all the art assets required for the game jam, a day early! While the environmental art wasn't always consistent with the character designs, I was able to create a basic style and color palette to stick to. Designing the UI buttons were relatively easy, and a quick fix for jam purposes.

Unfortunately, there was still some art that never made it into the game. This can be considered "wasted" time during a game jam. If I look at the number of hours I had originally committed to the game jam (8hrs/day), I wouldn't have managed to finish everything on time, especially with the number of learning curves I went through in order to do all the assets from A to Z.

I dropped the ball by not considering screen size and resolution for the game, and this was something I should have looked into before the jam. I was unfamiliar with how 16 x 16 would look on the game screen, and this effected how things looked in the end. I genuinely enjoyed designing the characters and mini-game elements, and look forward to finding an enjoyable workflow for environmental art.

Music

Expectations: Immersive and ambient soundtracks and sound effects for all scenes and UI/X, using the types of sounds and instruments you would expect to find in Hawaii during the 1700s.

What happened: These were definitely delivered, and brought about the desired effects within the game. Some iterations were made and it was enjoyable to see how it came together with the scenes I built. Unfortunately, we had trouble communicating with the music designer due to availability issues, which ultimately led to scrapping a music-based mini-game on the last day. There was also a major dev-side issue with the audio manager, which led to most sfx being unusable and inconsistent in-game.

It's a real shame that we didn't get to see the music elements of the game truly shine, although we still got to see a glimpse of it with the main ambient track.

Developmental Issues

Expectations: Splitting 2 mini-games between each developer, and one shared, we aimed to make 5 in total, with some storytelling to laced between them. Mini-games were to be completed at a rate of 2 every 3 days, allowing us to polish them during the weekend.

What happened: We managed to complete 3 out of the 5 intended mini-games. They weren't particularly buggy, although a lot of dirty fixes and compromises were made. Since they were wrapped up quite late, we were unable to really balance them. We also wasted a lot of time on features that ultimately crippled the game, such as the audio manager and a dialogue system. Due to availability issues as well as general lack of experience with Unity, the developers struggled a lot and lost time in figuring some things out.

While I had been trying to keep scope low throughout the jam, I still think that 3/5 was a lot for the developers. The better course of action, would have been to fully flesh out one mechanic, and commit more to the storytelling aspect of the game.

Entry Submission:

Expectations: Playtest with a few friends during the weekend, do some bug fixes, and submit a few hours before the game jam deadline. Create art specifically for the itch page, and aggregate historical sources for those who would like to verify them for accuracy.

What happened: Most of the game scenes were slapped together on the very last day. This led to a lot of corners being cut and raised anxiety levels for the developers. We still managed to playtest for a few hours, and submitted it an hour before the deadline as planned. The submission otherwise went as planned, although I feel I could have spent more time on the game descriptions.

Future TODOs

• Find a better workflow that doesn't get hampered by faster/dirtier iterations
• Better research/spec questions that
• Set up file-naming conventions to follow.
• Iterate forms for different character sprite sizes, so that I have a basic foundation to build on during game jams.
• Create a few color palettes to pick from for game jams.
• Find more resources that help in iterating game mechanics during a time crunch.
• Do some research about submission conventions in advance (i.e. banner sizes on itch), and incorporate design and content creation time for submission pages.
• Flesh out realistic expectations early based on intended availability.

Conclusion

I genuinely enjoyed participating in HAGJ 4. I learnt a lot, and feel proud to have consistently produced art assets throughout the entire week. I'm looking forward to how the game does as an entry, and reflecting on the results and feedback I get to receive from submitting it.