MY experience with this jam

HI ALL! apologies for being quiet, I simply wanted to talk and explain what i learnt in detail, and what I have come across... so lets start from the top!

when this jam started my entire focus was to make a short game and get myself back into the mindset of coding gdscript/c# and also to improve my pixel art forcing myself to do pixel art more

when the jam started i did my usual stupidity and though what i COULD do vs what i CAN do, my idea was simple in concept, was to make a short adventure game as a robot, trying to get out, while slowly repairing this massive facility, coming onto it, trying to learn gdscript, was not the smartest, even though the game is playable, it would've been no where near completed or in a state where it was enjoyable

ALL these are what i made so far, with the sprite sheets i had, when i didn't have enough i had to make a new sprite sheet and expand to make new tile-sets for making maps, of course as u can see here it would've gotten complicated, not difficult but too big and complicated, i clearly didn't think it through on the scale this game would be for only 15 days ESPECIALLY when i was doing it to improve my skill and what i can achieve

i was focused on map design and i didn't have enough time for story and other things, even though all the scripts worked as well as they should

fully working elevator script i worked on, it took me a bit cause i had to figure out how to make the character move to the center, not move and move up, wait for animation to finish then move again, it took me longer cause i had to add on making the wirebox so the player could learn about picking up items when there is no text, so this level was more based on introduction to the game and what there doing

other things to the game, like unique music for each big stage, and also a spritehseet (one out of the five i got not showing all of them cause they can be reused)

these where neat and something i done before but liked them anyways

was planning throughout the level to have lore slowly fed to the player, every new sector more stories from the main characters creator starts to show and also where humans went, also dialouge from other npcs

THIS would be one of the npcs, hell tell ya to fix his arms or hint at it and u have to find the parts and fix them and hell hand u something behind him that only he could reach, as you can tell, this is A LOT for one dev especially as there was meant to be more bots to talk and walk around

all this had inspiration from undertale, as the premise seemed somewhat simple enough, well end of the day i did do alot of pixel art so i think i improved, and most certainly improved on gdscript as i was using it to make a html build of this game!

NOW onto it being 5 days left, I know i wont have enough time to finish it, and make it into a state i would be satisfied with, not enough time and that is clear
So i did the only logical thing and scrap it to remake a different much more manageable game, SO i went looking for inspiration and got reminded of a game, I had computer breaking down in mind before so after seeing "please dont touch anything" it gave me inspiration for working computer! (the current game jam game)

NOW i only had 5 days, i transfered over scripts i would need, and also redid pixel art again but only focusing on the machine and the parts breaking down, i felt like with more time i coulda make something more robust but i stuck to simple

And i just put my head down and worked on this game, focused on two CORE mechanics, repair files and repair machine, simple enough as it is and i beilived i could make something somehwat fun

so i eventually finished and had a few days left, i used those last two days to improve ambience, sounds and music and modifiying little tidbits to make it feel more polished then rough, added random small events like u being watched from behind or the alarm sounding, all little tidbits to make the game more interesting, and the last day and few hours was spent on bugfixes (thank god for the extended 6 hours for that) i learnt from my last game the road to survive for another game jam to not make it too long as the loop was simple and enjoyable it can get boring easy, so this game was planned to be short and simple, unlike road to survive which felt too bland and repetive, annoying to think of but was the case.

all in all outcome this game was a bit of a disappointment to me, if i spent the WHOLE 15 days on this game instead of electric heart (the abandoned game) then i would've had a much more finished thing that would've felt much more fun to play

anywayd that should be all, right now im dedicating on pixel art for my diner game, gonna hold of on monster girl for a small bit to work on this one for at least a couple of months, diner game should be finished by then due to it being way smaller in scope! dont worry I should be able to get the demo for monster girl catcher done in time! prob later in december then late november though...