Nina Clash Post Mortem

Hiya! Thanks for taking a look at Nina Clash, my entry for the Pirate Software Game Jam 16. It means a lot!

This is a small post-mortem/what’s next for this game. I get a bit sappy here but I’ll try to avoid sounding self-deprecating.

This is my first Game Jam in 5 years, but I haven’t touched making games in a year, so I was afraid of being rusty. Ultimately in the end, I proved myself wrong and made what I consider a very good prototype that can be worked to create something greater.

Here are the things that went right and what went wrong.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Making and publishing the dang thing

That’s the point of a game jam for a lot of people isn’t it? It helps to get the ball rolling in getting games made. Whether you’re new or, in my case, very rusty. It was a fun challenge.

Integrating Top Down Engine assets + asking for help

I’ve used the Top Down Engine framework from MoreMountains to make this game. I’ve actually had this framework for over 5 years now, but the last time I tried using it to create a completed game was for my disaster of a college capstone project. The failure of my capstone sort of resulted in me feeling a bit cursed by using this framework, even though its really really good!

Secondly, I feel really proud of asking for help and seeing where it leads. The Top Down Engine contains a script that allows for a projectile to bounce off objects. This formed the core of the ball mechanic in the game. However, I ran into a problem where the ball would essentially bounce on itself and get stuck in place. I asked within the MoreMountains Discord server about this issue- and the lead developer, Reuno, was intrigued enough by my planned implementation that he just coded it in for me anyway, to be used in a future update - and I was able to get the code earlier :) ! It pays to ask for help, you never know what’ll happen!

Affirming to myself that I still know how to code

I love using the Top Down Engine framework, but it has been the basis of my scrapped prototypes for a while now, and sometimes I worry it means I’ve regressed in terms of coding. In the end though. I was not only able to understand and modify the scripts that came with the asset, but create my own for specific functions of the game, such as the combo system. Would you believe it was all relatively bug free too?  It was good to go back into that flow state with coding that I thought I lost. 

Usage of Scheduling Tools and Production Methodology

utilized the website Codecks and Pomofocus to help me with staying productive. I’ve been trying a whole suite of production tools for a while, but none of them had really been to my liking before I discovered Codecks, which uses cards, decks, and hands to create a project management system that’s fun and intuitive. Being able to successfully use Codecks to make a product guarantees I’ll use it again.

Pomofocus is just a website for the pomodoro technique, and I think for someone like me it definitely helped to make sure I stayed on track while giving myself breaks. I’m definitely tired of hearing the ringing though. I still can sometimes. 

WHAT WENT WRONG

Lack of time for Art and Sound

My weak spot in Game Development has always been the inclusion of art and sound. I like making art, but in making games it hasn’t really ever been a priority of mine. When I first made the GDD, I just left the art section blank because I always knew in my head the style I wanted, and I thought it would be as simple as finding the sprites online. Golly was I wrong! Because I realized not every tileset has every sprite I need, and it would take some time to implement those too.

It’s a bit embarrassing on my part - but yeah, drawing and animating art takes as much time as say someone making a script. This is embarrassing to me because I know very well about the struggles of artists and still I brushed it aside for my own needs. I need to take a closer look at my own preconceived ideas. And how to use Aseprite.

Lack of Playtesting

I did playtest- once, one week after the jam started. I wish I had set aside time to playtest even earlier. For me it’s always sort of a struggle to know when is the best time to playtest an idea. But I think I learned that, depending on the game, it's really all about getting the gameplay loop done and then seeing how it feels without all of the extra fluff. For example, I got critiques about the character controller not feeling so good, and that was important to catch after the first week. 

Unfortunately I never found that sweet spot after my first prototype where I felt like I could prototype again with something new. Hell, even after I caught the first instance of the character controller feeling bad, I never got a chance to see if the new one was any better. 

WHATS NEXT aka Action Points)

Stealing this wholesale from Mark Brown, here are my action points.

1. Research more about pixel art and properly implement them.

I like Solo-Deving - and it's important to recognize it requires wearing many hats on many sides. My weakest “hat” is definitely art, and if I wanna get better at being a solo dev, then it’s time to take art more seriously beyond an appreciation stand point.

1. Remake Nina Clash with better focus on art and sound from the beginning

There are also other gameplay changes I’d like to make with Nina Clash - Improving the controller, making the code less of a mess, and overall improving the level design, but I do genuinely feel as though Art is something to very much work on from the start as well.

1. Watch more gamedev stuff again 

More of a personal thing really. Before this jam, I’ve been put off by game dev stuff due to a lack of self confidence. Doing this jam brought that back, so I’d do me good to continue to watch more game dev related stuff, in person or otherwise.

1. Learn a bit more about marketing on itch.io and beyond (analyze CTR)

I avoided talking much in the Pirate Software Discord to focus on the work. This was mainly a pragmatic thing, because before I published my game I had a heavy amount of imposter syndrome that made me feel like I didn’t deserve to talk to a community. 

It is only after I submitted the game and talked more in the Discord did I realize that I should engage more with the community before submissions were due as a way to feel that commadire. I admit though, it’s not a heavy need for community, but it would be nice to be there while also promoting my game and getting people to play it.

I want to make nice itch.io pages that people would be enticed to click and play.

1. Join more “Smaller” Jams

I’d like to join smaller and maybe less time jams, so that it can be easier to play other games and have my own game get played - not for the purposes of seeing numbers go up, but so I can get more feedback on what to improve.

Wow! Thanks for reading/skimming through this whole thing. Closing thoughts - this was fun! I’m definitely going to ride this high of “I finally completed a game after being lost for a few years” energy for a good time, think about playing video games, and most importantly, make some more kick ass stuff. 

Genric out!

• Genric