Postmortem


Successes

  • The communication between the team went well, with both members being responsive and giving ideas and opinions. This allowed the making process of the game to move along the schedule smoothly.
  • Also, we were able to come up with a few mechanics with only one button as the prompt suggested (1-click & click + hold & mouse-release). Since we didn't get stuck with the prompt, we were able to move onto the next steps after brainstorming fairly quickly and went into actually making the game.
  • Moreover, we were able to create a cohesive aesthetic for the game, with the assets and font being pixel, as well as the color palette and the sound effects fitting to the neon, industrial-like background.

Struggles

  • It was quite tricky to keep the resolution of all the art assets the same when working in pixel. For this project in particular, we tried to keep the resolution similiar as best as we can, but also tying all the assets together with the color palette.
  • Difficulty tuning was also something we struggled with. With the 1 week time limit, there wasn't a lot of time to test and make changes to the early version of the game which is too difficult. Although we added the aiming, the learning curve is still high.

What we learned

  • For this project, we learned how to come up with various mechanic based on the 1-button constraint. We learned to think of how to exploit the 1 button and have the actions of either clicking or holding the button serve more than one purpose.
  • Also, since this is the second time working on a project with a 1-week time constraint, we were able to work into the different elements a but more in depth because we now know now much time we have to work on the game within a week. 
  • Moreover, we learned how to comments the code well and how to add the descriptions within the code and in unity so that the codes are readable for every members and can be send to another person to work on without any problem.

Next Steps

  • Upon the final version, we realized that aiming with the mouse position might make the game not really a 1-button game. As a result, one of the things we could do for the next steps is to change the aim so that instead of the mouse position, the aim rotates automatically and the player press to pick the direction before shooting the saw.
  • One of the next steps could be to add an arc UI which visualize where the saw would landed before the player would release the mouse to shoot. This would make it easier for the players to aim, especially at the beginning of the game. Then, other factors like wind or gravity could be the ones creating the variation in the difficulty level instead.
  • There can also be different types of targets which give different amount of points when hit by the player.
  • The game could also have more levels with different set-ups, and even obstacles like wind and gravity that affect the movement of the saw. Also, these levels can require different things to be completed, like landing on 50% of the glass to win.
  • With more levels, we could also add a narrative to the game and create a story which is cohesive with the gameplay mechanic and the aesthetic of the assets.

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