Kommandant RNLF: a post-mortem 1

toasty • 6 years ago on 2nd Kajam entry  Kommandant RNLF

So the 2nd Kajam is over, and I'm very happy with the result (and we won, sort of)!

This was a very busy month for me, but fortunately I was working with some very talented individuals. They deserve most of the credit as I only managed to push a small amount of code and a couple of level designs.

I think the game is pretty fun, despite the simple gameplay. The music & SFX are great (albeit lodged in my head forever), and everything fits together nicely. There are also some brilliant touches which I would never have thought of myself, like the cat, which give the game character.

Given more time, I think we could have benefited from adding some hazardous items (e.g. spikes) for more varied gameplay, and perhaps some animations for the player in particular. But then, the lack of animation works quite well with the retro theme, and the game doesn't really feel like it's lacking. More probably we just chose a very realistic set of features for a game jam, and executed them quite well.

I learned a few things from working with wan, too: how useful a design document can be; how to pick a simple idea and do a good job (I quite often fail to complete something because it's too complicated); and how to drive something through to completion.

Overall I'm chuffed with the result and proud to have been involved :D

Comments (1)

Wan • 6 years ago • 

It's been fun working with you on this game!

I'm pretty happy with how the game turned out as well. Here's a few more lessons I learnt in the process:

  • TypeScript is very useful to work with, even in smaller scale projects like this one. Thanks for introducing me to it Toasty! The autocompletion and compile-time validation are definitely time savers. I'd like to spent more time getting comfortable with build tools like Gulp & Webpack so I can set TS up quickly in the future.
  • Getting a limited color palette right is super useful to make bad art look consistent. Despite not being happy with the tileset, I find the game still looks decent & retro, and I feel the CGA-like palette helped a lot.
  • Despite having coded a lot of platformers in the past, those low-resolution, super tight arcade games have always remained a mystery to me. I'm finally starting to feel a bit more comfortable with the various tips & tricks needed for setting up a physics engine correctly, and get closer to that authentic arcade feel.
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