Hello everyone and welcome to my postmortem for 'Day of Darkness - A Horror Typing Game'! This game was developed by me over the course of seven days for the Game Parade 2020 Game Jam, run by Games Job Live. I had lots of fun taking part in this jam and I loads of fun playing all of the games produced for the jam! :D 

I'll be honest, when I first started this game jam I was extremely nervous, as this is the first time in a long while that I have attempted to do a game jam by myself. I usually enter game jams in a team. The reason for me going solo this time was because I wanted to present myself with a challenge, which was could I make a game by myself within a week. Also, the first game jam that I ever did was solo and I wanted to see how far I have come as a developer. 

Overall though, despite me being a bit nervous the game jam went extremely well :D I honestly think this is probably the best game I have ever produced out of a game jam! However, with any game jam things always end up going wrong, aspects of the game change or you just run out of time. 

What went well?

As said earlier, this is my most successful game jam game that I have made. Mostly because I actually made a full game from start to finish without the game containing any major game-breaking bugs such as the game crashing, or a mechanic not working xD. It's also really great to see all of the people enjoy playing the game and giving me amazing feedback :D 

A part of the game that went really well was that I was able to implement and the build the main mechanics within a couple of days. It also set a foundation that I could easily build upon in the future. I think the reason why this went well was because the overall mechanics were very simple and not overly complex to program. By making the mechanic simple, it allowed me more time to polish the mechanic, fix any major bugs and it also gave me time work on other areas of the game that are important such as creating the main level. Also before I started coding the mechanic, I first wrote down how the mechanic would function on pen and paper. This was a massive help because it allowed me to plan out the function and have an idea of what to when I get to the coding stage. Below is some of what I wrote for the typing mechanic.

Another part of the game that went really was the creation of the Farmland level. For the level, I was able to create a well paced level that offered the right amount of challenge for the players. It was also able to show off the main typing mechanic of the game, along with the two types of enemies. Also, with the help from Quixel and the Unity Asset Store I was able to make the level look visually amazing with a consistent art style. Below is how the level developed from being on paper to being a full detailed level in Unity.

STAGE 1 - Designing the level on pen & paper

STAGE 2 - Boxing out the level

STAGE 3 - Starting to add in some detail to the level:

STAGE 4 - Replacing the barn and farmhouse with detailed models:

STAGE 5 - Adding in the final details:

I'm also really happy that I didn't have to crunch at all, which I had to many times in previous game jams. I think the reason why I didn't have to crunch at all for this game was because we were given seven days, instead of two or three. This was great because it allowed for more time during the planning stage and polishing stages, which would always lead to a better game. Also, if you ran into a problem like having a major bug or a mechanic not working properly you now have the time to fix it, instead of having to change it or remove it from the game. Furthermore, I think my time I have spent at university has helped as well since during my time at uni I had to learn how to manage several projects at once, especially during the final year project and with a (still) going pandemic on. 

Were there any problems (and how you dealt with them), or any major changes during the course of development?

Pretty much with any game (or anything for that matter) something will always go wrong, like a mechanic not working the way you want or Unity exploding and deleting all of your work of the past couple of hours; or just running out of time. Also, there can be massive changes to how a mechanic or a level because you end up finding a more fun and better way of doing it.  

Probably one of the worst problems I had was to do with this sound glitch that I had. With this sound glitch, it would sometimes play the same audio clip multiple times at once, making this horrible noise (RIP headphone users). The worst thing about this glitch was that it wouldn't happen all the time but just randomly (or so I thought). I must have spent hours trying to solve this glitch! I didn't solve it until I started playing around with how I removed enemies from the game world (they used to disappear after a few seconds). From this playing around, I found out that even though that enemy was dead the player still trying to access the main typing script on that dead enemy at the same time as the live enemy. This meant that when the live enemy was shot, it would send the same message to the dead enemy making the horrible sound glitch. I was so happy when I found this because that noise was horrible, and it would have put anyone who played the game off.    

One of the major changes that my game went through was how the main typing mechanic functioned. Originally, instead of having the phrase on the bottom of the screen I actually had it attached to the enemy (See Below).

This was all OK, but it had some major problems. The biggest problem was that once the enemies got closer to the player all of the text would clip across one another which would make it impossible for anyone to read. The second biggest problem being that phrases and words would go out of the little boxes I created, so it limited me on what words I could use. So after a night's sleep I thought of a better solution, which was to move and have the phrase appear on the bottom of the screen. 

This overall was so much better than my previous solution because it solved all the previous problems since there would be no clipping, and by having a larger area it allows me to have longer and more complex phrases. Also, it fitted in much more with the game than the previous solution and I preferred it much more as well.  

Another aspect of this mechanic that nearly did make it into the final version was that to continue on to the next section you would have to type in continue. Just before the end I decided to remove this as it slowed down the flow of the gameplay and there wasn't any good reason for that to stay there.

In my design stage I actually did plan out two more levels, one in a graveyard that would have lead into a crypt where the light from your shotgun fire would have lit the way. The final level would have been a boss fight in a village where you have to fight a demon called the 'Meat Demon'! A monster covered in loads of eyes that shoot out fireballs which the player would have to shoot. I will hopefully implement these levels in future updates to the game. Below are some rough drawings for the levels.

What's next for the game?

I have lots of plans to develop this game further, as I think it has a lot of protentional to become a full game! I have also had a ton of really great feedback from everyone (Thanks you everyone who gave feedback!! :D ) I have already written a list down of what I'm going to improve, what I'm going to add and change. 

List of Improvements: 

• Add in Ultrawide Screen Support
• Sound for when a player makes a mistake
• Add in more phrases and words
• Add health items into the level
• Add in some fires into the level so the orange lights in the level will make sense
• Have a shotgun shell eject from the gun after firing
• Add in some vocals when the player is attacked/losing health.
• Animate the zombies coming out of the ground
• Add in a progress bar so the player knows how far they have progressed through the level
• Add in background scenery for the first level because at the moment it does look a little barren.
• Add in the two final levels that I designed for the game jam, but didn't have time to make
• Add in a new type of enemy that fires out projectiles
• Further polish and more
• Bug Fixes
• Improve the tutorial screen

This is quite a long list, but luckily most of these changes and improvements are easy to implement. Probably what will take me the longest is adding in the new enemy AI, animating the zombies coming out of the ground and adding in the new levels. I honestly can't wait to work further on this game, and show off some updates! :D 

Overall, to conclude I think this game jam went really well despite some minor things going wrong that could easily be fixed. The thing I can't wait to do is to develop this game further into a game that is more fully featured, with more levels, enemies and phrases. I would also like to thank everyone who supported me, Games Job Live for running the jam, a massive thanks to everyone who downloaded and played me game and to everyone who gave me feedback :D It has been a massive help!

Thank you for reading my postmortem! :D

Adam Tedder