Final thoughts on the competition

ChipX86 on 2011/04/24 06:23 of Mop and Bucket

So now that the PyWeek judging is over, I thought I'd give a few final notes on PyWeek and my game.

So PyWeek was definitely a blast. So much fun, and a great opportunity to start learning game development.

Looking bad, I realized there were things I could have done much better:

• Make it more clear when an effect was an effect. A lot of people rated my game as graphically glitchy, but those weren't glitches they saw. It was the "time is merging together!" effect. Oh well. If I had the time to finish the effect, it would have been very obvious. Frankly, I liked how it ended up, though would definitely go further if I decide to continue the game.
• Add a tutorial! I planned this but couldn't fit it in.
• Level design could have been better. I knew this, but again, didn't have the time. If I had a month, this game would have been wayyy different, with more interesting ways to use multiple time periods.
• Sounds! Animation! I almost had sound, actually, but it felt too much like I was trying to shove existing things in. Next time I'm going to see about getting someone who can spend their time on the sound. As for animation, the main problem was that the main guy didn't animate. I have a few versions of his animation but didn't like any of them and didn't get to fine-tune them in time. Next time, that's a priority.

So room for improvement, but to be honest, I did this for myself. Never written a real game before and wanted to learn what it would take. For a week's worth, I'm thrilled how this turned out, and am looking forward to the next PyWeek, with the opportunity to make use of some of the feedback from this PyWeek.