Now that both jams are over, I wanted to look back at what I have created with this game.

SPS Iron Hammer placed: 

• 51/450 Overall, #10 on Mood for the FFS22 Jam
• 6/22 Overall, #3 on UI Design and #4 on Gameplay for the Interact-If Jam

I haven't interacted much with the FFS22 crowd for this one, but I have much more with the Interact-if community and got more feedback from it. I also played more games from the latter, since it was based on the same theme. Playing them and seeing what feedback they were getting, I've started to reflect a bit on my little work. Obviously a lot of coulda/woulda/shoulda going on. There was a lot of learning happening in the past two months.

FROM HERE, SPOILER FOR THE STORY (as it stands on March-2022)

WHAT I DID WRONG

• My scope was too large.

I based the whole game on a little blurb I wrote at the start of the Jam, without thinking much about the scope the game would require to tell the whole story. Even while plotting for the beats of the story, at no point did I think it was too large. SPS IH ended up being one of the largest entry for the Interact-If Jam, which worked against it (I think). To be honest, to tell a convincing story based on that blurb, it would have needed at least the double of words. It was almost too tight to meet the deadline with what I had from the get-go.

• I should have cut the last part altogether. 

The story is set during 3 different days. From the feedback I had gotten, the last day felt the most rushed, had the most issues (bugs/typos) and brought down the whole game. That 3rd day is dialog-heavy with choices that are not very "active" (you either continue to listen or stop listening). I was forcing the player to choose one specific path to push the story forward when it was running towards a cliffhanger. 

Reading it, it just didn't work at all with the rest of the game. The "official" end comes out of nowhere and just doesn't seem to work anymore. You spend like 30min listening to Jake talk about his 'conspiracy' under the watchful eye of the AI and nothing happens to you, but if you listen to the whole thing, he stabs you with a needle? That makes no sense!

The planned reveal should have come during the awakening instead, with the AI reacting almost right away. Maybe have a skip to a few days later and its chaos type of deal (or one of the card's ending, maybe including the robot?). Not only the cliffhanger would have been more powerful, it would have been less boring to reach that ending. (I feel very annoyed that this came to me yesterday... It's so much better....)

• A pretty UI means nothing when the story doesn't back it up.

I spent a bit too much time on making my game look good (and there was some obvious issues still) rather than focusing on the content itself (where it was needed). The story ended up being boring as hell (if you continued on the 3rd day) with a mediocre end, something that felt at odd with the feel of the game itself. You really see it in the jam's result as my lower scores are on the Theme and Story criteria.

WHAT I DID RIGHT

• The UI did look good.

I picked a template and edited it well enough to fit the atmosphere I wanted with the game. The animated text, the computer/codex styling, etc... were a pretty good choice and applied properly (if I do say so myself). I had the most fun (and the most headache) working with the fake terminal vibe. I really wanted a colour scheme that would work for both dark and light modes and didn't feel threatening.

• I managed to finish on time with few bugs.

And that's thanks to careful planning of my time and how much progress I knew I needed to get there. I had a process that worked for another project that ended up working just as well for this one. I don't think I would have managed if I had winged it. (Though I may have stuck to that planning a biiiit too much).

Bugs still ended up being fixed in the first few days, but I still managed to finish on time. It was tight and I almost didn't make it. I ended up adding a fake stats page that went haywire if you picked too much of one type of choice (a variable showed a negative percentage...), just for giggles

Most bugs I ended up getting didn't stop the player from advancing the story itself (just a certain path, but they they were not stuck). There were a few forgotten macros (both variations in text showing instead of one). 

• The premise was sound and the idea for the cliffhanger had potential.

I still believe the story I had chosen to make and the idea of the cliffhanger were the correct one, just not executed as well as it could have. It really was something that has a lot of potential still and would still be interesting to explore.

WHAT'S NEXT?

I will be moving the game from Released to In Development. I don't think I am done with the story. There is still quite a bit I want to do with it (and yes, it may or may not involve that robot). I know I will need to rework the story completely. The start may not change much, but the 3rd day will probably be gone completely and be replace with something else. I think I might have more endings like one of the card's one or have that type of passage within the story (I am not yet sure).

In any case, a lot will need to be done. The game may be completely different by the time the next upload. When that will be? I don't know yet.

That's all for now :)

EDIT: This project is going back to on hold for now, as I am focusing my energy on finishing previous projects. I am still working on it here and there, but don't know when I would make actual progress and update it.