Turn your skill issues into skill advantages.

It’s long overdue. And I needed extra time to do a proper post-mortem of a game that, with all its vices and virtues, is the culmination of a life-long dream of finally becoming a game developer.

Results.

The final scores were, including ranking percentile and overall score (thanks to Jamlytics! ❤️)

Let’s dissect them one by one.

Results

Innovation

I went to battle without armour and came out alive. As some context out of why I went with this proposal in the first place: I am a (certified) architect. That’s the previous life I sometimes alluded to on several occasions on Discord and other places.

Throughout the arduous, bloated 6 (plus 2) years of education I had to take, I had to do something like this every single week. So I had a lot of experience on how to approach short projects like this.

However, I am not a game designer. I have this curse where, on everything I build, I have amazing ideas stifled by bad execution. This curse runs throughout the entire game, and to be honest, throughout everything I’ve ever designed.

Coming from a completely different background helped a lot on this being my top score, because I literally, for better or worse, can’t play much games or have play many games over the last 10 years.

It did come at a heavy cost in gameplay, though.

The main innovations, as per the reviews, were:

• The graphics proposal.
• The collision-based dialogue system, which had its flaws but had potential.
• Bugs as features?

My main takeaway is that books are judged by their covers but engage by their prose thereafter. You hook gamers with a good cover, but without good gameplay, it’s a museum. And any innovation you have just falls flat. And if there’s one perfect way to experiment with ideas, is in game jams.

Graphics

Despite being my top score, this one had insane competition. The game that got the top score, Mind Palace, has it way well deserved.

Although, it was the main hook of the game as a whole. And it was one of the driving forces for some of the deepest, most experimental technical changes and challenges I faced. If modifying your game engine to have a particular look is not a testament of that, then I don’t know what can be.

Spoiler alert, but this was an intentional dry run for my next game(s?). I am going to double down on this aesthetic as my personal brand for, at least, a couple projects I have.

Fortunately, it went along well.

However, I did fail on several, basic, inexcusable technicalities such as the screen scaling not working. These shall be addressed from now on, and be part of every debug and release export QA checklist. I mean, come oooooon.

Theme

This one I am half torn apart because I feel like I took the wrong choice. As I’m gonna explain in a later writeup, the original idea was way more concise, concrete, and understandable.

However, I didn’t have personal experiences with it, so I couldn’t really measure if I was doing it right or not. I wouldn’t have mattered anyways, because I did have some 50/50 splits between I don’t get it and it’s an interesting take on the theme.

On a game jam, it’s essential to strike the balance between concreteness and abstraction, as I’ve said like a billion times on my reviews. I strayed way too close to abstraction and missed several points on that one.

Considering all this, I feel like it wasn’t that catastrophic of an error. I clutched last second with an idea that had something going instead of have something going.

Next time, I’m gonna trust myself more and avoid overcomplicating things.

Game Design

Ok, gonna be honest. I sucked at this much more than I expected. I didn’t have a game, I had a museum. Walking simulators get an insanely divisive reputation for striking way too close between being a game and just an interactive art piece. This is a game jam, not an art exposition. And this is where my background betrayed me hard.

This is also where my original idea would’ve made more sense. Maybe have taken more queues from other interactive experiences, plus some of the RNG I implemented; and then I would have some gameplay going.

However, overall… I think it was, at least, implemented. It was complete, to an extent. Yeah, a menu would’ve been cool. Yeah, had some severe issues with some controls. But… you could experience something out of it that was, indeed, much different than the rest.

This is the win I can take from game design. I have notions, but I need to git gud and learn more theory and play more games to design actual games.

Audio

Yeah, nah. This one was a complete failure for me. Rushed, filled with bugs, an absolute disaster. I tried to be clever but failed at the last minute. The original idea would’ve made the audio a key instrument (heh) to deliver the punch.

However… it did cause some impressions. Some found it interesting, some found it just, not there.

This kinda hurts me a lot as someone way into music and arts in general. I feel like I could’ve done much better, but I managed to get the minimum mark for approval and just carry on.

Fun

(btw this is the code that broke the whole game)

The bugs became the fun part of the game. Of course, being broken for artistic purposes is not an excuse to deliver a bad product… but it did lead to something. It’s my lowest score. But I got above 3 stars, above average, barely passing.

This is an inherent flaw with the whole concept, and something I, unfortunately, cannot fix. At most, maybe some gameplay quality of life improvements like adding more interactivity.

Sadly (or not?), Premonition is what it is because it’s imperfect, it’s not traditionally fun, and not a game per se. It’s a trip.

Overall

The one thing that stuck with me the most, is how many people talked about the “vibe”. It was a Rorschach test. Some saw it as a calming experience, some got legit scared to bits, and some didn’t even understand it.

If I have one belief that may contradict common sentiment, is that games not only have to be fun, they have to stay with you. Some told me that the experience will stay in their head rent-free for a while. And that’s what I want. Making people feel different after they play my game. For better, and sometimes, sadly, for the worse.

So, what’s next?

• Premonition is getting a Director’s Edition. Due soon. It’s in progress.
  • Camera has been fixed.
  • New system for interaction is being tested. Pointing to an item will display a message, or an icon to trigger a message. This can make the the game more playable.
  • Audio is getting revamped.
  • Proper scaling has been fixed.
  • Some modifications to the house layout have been done to improve navigation. Specially the staircase.
  • Some things are subject to change:
    • Thinking on releasing the original idea as a separate game. Probably this will be Premonition 0.
    • Thinking on adding more items, or not. It’s taking long enough and I need to carry onto other stuff.
    • Probably gonna add a more complete menu system. Depends.
• A full devlog about the experience, in detail, is in production.
  • This includes a timelapse of me rebuilding the game. It’s a lot.
  • I want to talk about the process, because it’s probably way more interesting than the game itself, and it could help me to get better by exposing it, getting feedback, and gauging the reaction.
• Have a lot of notes about the design choices I did and how they turned out. Don’t know what to do with them.
  • Maybe do some content with them, I guess…
• A full game, Two Tribes, is in early production stage.
  • This is the game that I alluded before, where I tested many concepts about it here. Mainly the graphics and production pipeline.
  • I know it’s going to sound absolutely counterintuitive to any good project management advise… but it’s a gigantic game.
  • However, I am taking a much smarter approach and building it modularly, dry-running some experimental concepts on other places (like this game!) and feeding it back.
    • All I’m going to say is… I hope you like Petscop, Earthbound, Undertale, PSX graphics with raytracing, breakcore… and a lot of dichotomies.

This is just the beginning. If you want to come with me into this journey, maybe we can investigate this together…