Postmortem

3 months into the game per month series...In my last two postmortems my main takeaway was that I was not settling on an idea quick enough. Based on the even more ridiculous process this time around I think the only takeaway I should have is that the game per month approach is pure chaos, there are no rules or best practices. 

For the first 3 weeks of the month this was a classic example of small indie dev trying to make a game far bigger than they have the capacity to do. I was making a game called Kaffea, a rpg / simulation / survival type game inspired by the likes of Links Awakening, Stardew Valley and Minit. Kaffea revolved around the concept of a single commodity, a coffee-like substance that was used for food, money and fuel. That means you would put the Kaffea beans in your car to run it, pay for items and keep yourself alive by eating them. The fully realised game world would be large, filled with characters and challenges that can be gradually explored, a market economy, touch on things like fair trade, globalisation, the works of Franz Kafka and David Lynch. Fitting that into a small prototype is funnily enough a nearly impossible task! I was spending most of my time trying to build in systems for time, life, money etc. Rather than start again with a new concept I tried to reduce the game down in scope….As such I had to cut out the majority of my initial intentions (like building interiors, most of the story and character interactions, the larger trading economy and different vehicles). Then I also added some elements, like a much faster time concept to give the game more urgency. And to be honest it was rubbish.

So at the start of week 4 I opted to take the existing art and world and use it for a different purpose....Locally Sourced was an idea I had lying around from a previous brainstorm - Spelunky xxx (xxx = a random word, a game genre, a sport etc). This was Spelunky Cooking, a 2d platformer where you had to go on runs through the random levels to find ingredients and bring them back to your cafe.

In conclusion I walk away from month 3 feeling a bit jaded and filled with questions about the Game per month process, Kaffea (the larger game), hand-drawn art and rpg-like projects. But also pleased that I scrapped the original game and shifted to Locally Sourced.  I'm looking forward to the next game, which I’m intending to be much smaller in scope, more action-packed and more colourful (and it won't at all be a car crash in any way!) As I'll be on holiday in the next month game 4 will probably be stretched out over 6 weeks, which will hopefully benefit it.