Post Mortem - Evil Eyes

So I finished this game 2 days ago now and have received some nice feedback from fellow jammers and friends. I have learned a lot from previous games I have made, and with this game, I tried to hone a new skill; art. As with all game jams, there are things to learn from and do better in future projects, and I will now list the major things I did right and the major things that would have improved the game a lot.

Sprites & animation

• What I did right: I am very happy with the cartoony feel of this game and I think the very simple animations blend very well with the sprites.
• What to learn: For the next time, I think I need to add animations to the main menu as well. One jammer suggested that something should happen when you press the big Play-button and I totally agree. I would also have liked to slightly animate the Evil Eye and the Spaceship, but definitely, the Tutorial-button which most people missed existed. This brings me to my next point.

Tutorial

• What I did right: Nothing much here honestly.
• What to learn: To make a game enjoyable and accessible the player must first understand the controls. When I created this game I put almost all focus on the playing of the game, and when that was done I slapped an explaining image on there to explain the controls. However, this image was hidden behind a tiny button on the main menu, dwarfed by the other extremely large UI elements. For the next time, I should spend much more time with the tutorial, even trying to seamlessly implement it into the gameplay.

Controls

• What I did right: Opposite to the tutorial I think I did everything right here, almost everything. Before even implementing enemies I tweaked the values of the controlling of the spaceship so that it felt perfect. I didn't do anything else in the game until I thought it was satisfying just flying around without any care in the world.
• What to learn: The only thing I think would have made the controls better is if I would have added a rocket burning sound for moving forwards, it would have been an improvement. Games make or break with player controls and I should keep spending a lot of time making them feel just right.

There are a few other things I did right and a few I could learn from but for this game, these were, according to me, my major wins and fails. I hope you learned something from this postmortem, I know I have at least.

Peace!