Coin Drop Turbo postmortem

Just submitted my Charity Game Jam 2 entry so here is the postmortem.

What Went Right

While I seem to have no problem finishing weekend game jams, the same can not be said for the week-long jams that I enter. While I usually end up with a playable game,  the result is quite far from what I plan on. Figuring that the main reason for this is vastly over-estimating how much time I will have to work on the game, I took the approach of designing a game that I would do during a weekend jam and spending the extra time polishing the game. I would probably have spent a bit more time polishing had it not been for what went wrong. This proved to be fairly successful, especially considering that I missed a couple of evenings as well as had to watch the Doctor Who anniversary special and go to a CFL party. Had I gone with the game I was thinking about developing when the challenge was announced it would have been a total failure.

What Went Right and Wrong

Once I knew what the game was going to be, I had planned out a system for having different levels. This was based on the types of coins that were in the bank, the target goals, and the pig speed. This sort of worked, but was not as effective at controlling difficulty as I would have liked so the game is a lot easier than I had anticipated.  Had I not used real currency I could have had much closer point values for the different items that had to be collected that would have given me more control over the difficulty but that was not an option so the Loony and Toony kind of throw off the game balance. I suppose I could have gone with not using those coins but those are my two favorite coins. I suppose the lesson here is not to let your emotions get in your way of good design.

What Went Wrong

I should be polishing the game some more, perhaps fixing the difficulty issue by getting rid of the Twoony and replacing the Loony with a 50 cent coin but I am calling it a week due to Steam. This is also causing me to spend a lot more money than I should be. The worst part about Steam sales is that I already have a huge library of games so really have no need to buy more but the newer games that I want are on sale for a really good price so I end up caving in and buying some games and simply have to play them right away so I don't feel guilty for buying and then not playing them. Speaking of which, the game I just bought today has finished downloading so I had better finish writing this!