Week 1 - Colour Me Impressed Post-Mortem
So!
It was my first week taking up Rami Ismail's One Game a Week Challenge, this week! I aimed to work at least three hours on the game (this was the time JW of Vlambeer used to make games in during his Poppenkast collective days), but ended up working on this project for around 12 hours. The game for this week will likely be on the higher end of quality for games I'll make in the challenge.
It was my first week taking up Rami Ismail's One Game a Week Challenge, this week! I aimed to work at least three hours on the game (this was the time JW of Vlambeer used to make games in during his Poppenkast collective days), but ended up working on this project for around 12 hours. The game for this week will likely be on the higher end of quality for games I'll make in the challenge.
My first game is Colour Me Impressed, an abstract platformer.
What went right
- Game Feel: I focused a lot on getting the game feeling really great. I added particles for moving, landing; jumping; and wall climbing. As such, the feedback for moving around works pretty well. I tried my hand at making a pressure sensitive jump, and I'm pretty happy with the result: jumping feels really responsive. I also added a sound for jumping and landing. The final result is gameplay which feels responsive and clear.
- Simple Levels: The final game had around 10 levels, with only two specific level elements: the spikes and flames. Designing levels with so few elements is pretty tough, but it was a challenge I set myself. I think this is quite effective in the end - the levels are quite simple in terms of elements, but the structure keeps players interested.
- Effective Aesthetic: The aesthetic is simple, clean and abstract. I think this works well surprisingly, but once the colours start appearing it becomes a bit haphazard.
What went wrong
- Generic: While the game feels great and is interesting for a while, the game is far from original. It takes a lot of ideas from popular platformers of the past and doesn't really iterate on much. Plus, the abstract platformer has already been quite extensively covered with Thomas was Alone.
- Buggy: While the game feels pretty great in places, it is far from perfect. There are some weird bugs that pop up from time to time.
- Short: The game is quite short currently, and I think it could have done with 5 or more other levels.
- Arrows: The arrow art for the flame throwers was quite bland, uninteresting, and broke the clean aesthetic of the game.
Ideas for future development
- Colour: From the trailer people at MGSA thought the game looked interesting, but thought that it was the colours that made it interesting. For any future development it would be worthwhile exploring using the colours as a mechanic.
