#12 Conclusions

What I've learned

I had a great time making a game in just a week. I've started quite a few games that never quite got finished. This time I only had 8 days, so I was forced to scope my game well. I wanted to make sure that I had a working prototype as soon as possible. After the first 2 days, I had the basic game working. That weekend, I had the most time. During the week I needed to work, so I only had time in the evening.  Once my prototype was working, I could be a lot less stressed. Whatever happened that week, I was sure I could submit a game by the end of it. I could spend the rest of the time working on adding a lot more levels. Polishing the game, adding new models and music. I made sure that I always had a working prototype, so I could always test my game. I had some freedom to work on whatever I wanted. If I felt drained by coding all day, I could do some modeling in blender. I will now summarize some lessons I've learned.

1.  Get a prototype working as soon as possible. Once this was done, I knew my game worked, and I could test it. I knew if it was fun and could tweak it if needed,
2. Test early and often. Testing is so important. It's a lot easier to fix bugs when you catch them right away.
3. Don't get stuck. I've never used Blender before, so that was a bit of a learning curve. I was getting stuck on details that wouldn't matter in the end. I couldn't get UV unwrapping working and to fix it, I tried starting over and following the tutorial I was using more closely.  I lost a lot of time with this, and in the end I didn't even get it working. Furthermore, I probably wouldn't have used it in the end. The model was fine without textures, so I could have stopped at that step. Having never used Blender I wanted to follow the tutorial all the way, but I should've just used what I needed.
4. Build often. The building process in Unity can take a lot of time, especially on a lower end system. There can be some differences with your build version and the version of Unity play mode. To catch these early, it's important to make sure your game builds. When I wanted to take a break, I could just hit the build button and this would force me to stop working for a bit. 
5. Let someone else test your game. To really test your game, you need to make sure someone instead of you tests it as well. They don't know anything about the game, so they will get stuck on things that in your mind are obvious. They might even give you great suggestions to add into your game. I let my friend test it, and he said there's not enough feedback when you complete a goal. I've added some particle effects and not only does it give some feedback, it also increases the aesthetics of the game.
6. Thinking of new levels is hard. I wanted to add a lot of levels, but to actually think of unique new things is harder than you think. I also wanted to make sure there was only one solution possible, so that gave some restrictions. However, I'm not sure how I could've changed it to make it easier. This might've just been a restriction of my game idea.  In the end, I have 12 levels in the game. For a game jam I think that's enough, as I don't expect people to want a lot more than a small gaming experience.
7. Game Jams are fun. It's a great feeling to make a game in just over a week. You are forced to keep a small scope. You also have to experience every part of the game making process, so you can learn from every part. If there's a place available to talk with other people that joined the jam, I highly recommend joining it. Like the GoedWare discord. I learned a lot from other people there, who were also making their own game.
8. Try something new. One of my goals was to try something new. I wanted to try working in Blender. A game jam is a great space for this. If it fails, it's no big deal. It's just a jam, not your dream game project.

In the next jam, there are two things I want to focus on that I neglected this jam.  I want one cohesive art style and I want to make sure the UI is stylish. I just kept the UI pretty basic this jam, and it feels that way as well. There's a lot of improvement to be made here, and I can surely learn a lot from this as well.