Escape - Postmortem

• The development process overall

This game starts with a simple idea. We spent a lot of time developing that idea and refining every design based on it. We only knew that we want to make something about social media, and spent a whole week thinking about that. During our meetings, we added on each other's thoughts. Later we pick up works that we are interested in doing. We finished the draft or gray-box version of our game before playtest, and really made changes based on feedback after that. 

• What went right

  I think we successfully developed a small idea into a game. The three of us didn’t know what we are going to do when we teamed up. Through our conversation, we added on each others’ thoughts and make a small idea large enough to be a game. I wasn’t a big fan of teamwork, but through the last two assignments, I see why people want to work with others. It’s hard to expand your idea if you are working on your own. Other and other’s thoughts inspire you. 

• What went wrong

I had trouble building the moving post. The function that setting parent didn’t work on mine. Later I figure that out: I put collision collider in the condition of OnTriggerEnter. Later, we decided to combine the moving platform with dislike posts on level3. Dislike posts end the game immediately. The dislike post will end the game before you move with it. 

• What did you learn from your failures or how did you overcome them

Another interesting is that we turned a bug into a special feature. In the first week, our jump function doesn’t work well. During the playtest, our character can jump on air as many times as it wants. We received a lot of feedback on our jump during playtests. Most players feel that’s something that needs to be fixed, but two players and we saw the potential of making it our special feature. We tried the debugged version after the test, but feel the “infinity” jump is more interesting. To keep our jump, we fixed other parts of the game, adding boundary and change jumping speed, to make the experience with the “infinity” jump smooth. What I learned from this is how to treat feedbacks and comments. There is definitely a problem if most people feel uncomfortable about a certain design, but how to fix it is on the designer. 

• Future Development

This time we almost achieved everything we want to do, but there is still something we can improve. For example, we can modify the collider on green posts so the player won’t stick on those posts. Personally, I want those posts to generate themselves. Right now they are pre-made by me and that makes them stay at the same location every time you play. I wonder if I can make them appear randomly each time the player plays.