Postmortem

Conception:

I've wanted to do a restaurant management style game for a while. I already made a failed attempt at that for RNDGAME JAM where I wasn't able to submit, so I decided to do it again. It's quite different though. My first attempt was a topdown game where you would cook the food then take them to the customers. That game would probably be more fun that this one, unfortunately it was plagued with bad planning. I'd love to revisit that idea again someday though.

This time, I decided to keep things simpler and do a better job with planning with the gameplay. I decided to basically just do Good Pizza Great Pizza. I think I did alright, though to be honest, I don't really find my game to be very fun. I guess it's because Good Pizza Great Pizza is really meant to be a chill game to pass the time.

What I learned (Technical):

In Godot, Control nodes are used for ui elements. Originally though, I decided to just use Area2D for my interactable objects since they can accept mouse input. I was able to handle overlapping areas (interacting with the front-most area), but there were some kinks that I just couldn't work out. Eventually I realized that I was just trying to recreate the functionality that was already baked into Control nodes. So I switched all my Area2Ds with Control Nodes. Moving around Node2D games is easy, not so much with Control Nodes. They're a pain to move around.

What I did right:

I have a bad habit of worrying too much about the best and cleanest way to code something. It was kind of a crippling obsession, since it would keep me from actually making progress. I was finally able to let go and just make crappy code this time around. That doesn't sound like a good thing, but to me it is. I'll learn to do the best practices and clean ways to do things along the way, but I shouldn't get hung up on them.  Obsessing over clean code from the very start is just fearing failure. And I think with coding, you learn best when you fail.

Problems:

This was the third game jam that I've joined, still I hadn't learned my lesson. The best game jam games arcade games. At least a lot of the time. Their simple, short, and exhilarating. That's what I should have done. 

By the second week, I was getting sick of the game. Maybe 2 weeks is just too long for me. The same thing happened to me with RNDGAME JAM. I really should try a shorter jam soon.

Moving Forward:

I've learned a lot of things during the jam. Next jam I'm definitely going to do an arcade-style game. Something that I could have a working prototype for in a day or two. Nothing's worse that waiting 2 weeks for all of the elements and systems to come together, only to realize that the game's not that fun. 

Aside from arcade-style games, I should also go back to platformers since that's really what I have the most experience with and what I would consider my strong suit. The only other game I've released is a platformer, and I'm really proud of how that came out, despite being very short.

I hope to start a "real" project soon. Something that I can really sink my teeth into. Before that though, I want to make a few jam games to warm up my gamedev muscles. Hopefully, I'd have one by the end of the year.