Penelope the Sea Turtle - Post Mortem

dmreichard on 2013/05/05 05:14 of Hold my Beer, Watch This

Well the judging has finished and the results have rolled in. I placed right about where I thought I would, smack dab in the middle. Still, I'm pretty happy with that since I had essentially two days to actually work on it (working 12+ hours a day and then duties at home took it's toll). Luckily(maybe?) I caught a terrible bug and had a day off from work. Here is what went right and what went wrong:

As for production, I was fairly happy overall and the results showed. I learned how to use some tools for the first time and was quite pleased with myself since I'm not an artist. This was literally the first time I made any significant graphics in 2d. My tools of choice for this were the GIMP and PyxelEdit. 

The game didn't have any sound or music until then end when I was desperately searching for something on open art sites. I was able to find some decent sound effects however music was another story. It was upsetting to me that the majority of data in my archive was just in music and it showed in one of my responses as well. Perhaps next PyWeek I will invest more time into learning creation tools for that aspect since I focused on making graphics this time around.

So as for fundamental game mechanic, I wanted to focus on simplicity due to A) time constraint and B) not wanting anything overly-complex. I think I both succeeded and failed in this aspect. Some people enjoyed the simple mechanic (avoid the bad things, eat the good things for points, keep your breath meter from running out) and others wanted more. I personally wanted something else at the end however did not have the time to think of and subsequently implement another mechanic. Perhaps you have a human sidekick trying to help you who will shoot what you are pointing at when you click? Who knows, but I had to get something out the door quickly so I didn't get a DNF.

I will do a "compliment sandwich" and end this with another thing that in my opinion went right. I tried to keep the code organized and clean which definitely helped me implement things quickly in the last couple days. I don't think I would have finished anything if I failed to think about my design before starting to code.

Overall I think there is a lot more I could have done with this concept given time however it was still an enjoyable challenge and a good stepping stone towards doing something even better next time. The top entries had well deserved scores and I commend you! :)