Gamedev Gone Wrong: a case study - part 1 (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

Last week I was going to do an update about the newly implemented quest system and theme selection interface in 'Ninja Attack!'. But it seems just thinking about this game makes me want to stop and go do something else now, so instead I went to write about the reasons this game's development is so annoying to me. And it turns out I have quite a lot of stuff to say, so this will be a 4-parts thing! One for every day from now up to the conclusion on Friday!

These posts might end up pretty negative but I really feel like I need to get that stuff off my chest. Besides, it'll hopefully end up as a really good case study of game-development going wrong and I believe it's super important to learn from those!

Today we're starting off with before the development even started, the very moment when the Frosty Pop Corps told me about their idea for the game and presented a rough design document to me, the moment when I should just have said "no".

The original idea for the game was that you'd be a ninja, in a first person view, attacked by tons of other ninjas who'd come running towards you from the four sides (left, right, front, back) and you'd have to rotate, and kill them before they get to you.

That idea already sounded way too ambitious for the proposed dev time - one month - and it didn't feel like something I would enjoy making. So I didn't accept. What I did instead was propose a lighter version of the design. A compromise that is less ambitious, that would need less animations and that felt like it would be more interesting for me to make. As I write this today, a good half of this lighter design got trashed for a bunch of different reasons and other things added themselves, like a new control scheme and a quest system.

And yet, that design did have some breathing room. The visuals were pretty much up to me (although they had to be in hi-res, per request), the controls were pretty much up to me, the game progression was pretty much up to me. The theme system had already been mentioned and that was my idea. Things could change if they didn't work. There was breathing room. But there was no time to use it.

Even with my lighter design, supposed to take ~5 weeks of dev time, I knew it would be a challenge to manage to do everything on time. And I thought it was doable, except I didn't take that breathing room in count. You need time to handle breathing room in your design, you need time to plan for what you will actually do with that breathing room and you need time to inspect these plans make sure they don't have major flaws. I didn't plan time for this.

The design we settled on was vague enough that there was too many things to figure out and make happen, in too little time. Too much uncertainty on an actually fairly simple design. (enemies appear, you kill them, and again) I had literally nothing about the UI, no reference or clear idea of how the ninjas were supposed to look and how I would make them, the controls from that design got trashed on the second week of development. Looking back on it, these design plans were not only too ambitious, they were also way too shallow.

Yet, we did settle on that design and I did accept to make the game. The main reason is that I thought it'd be a good idea to get away from my comfort zone and challenge myself. It'd be interesting. It was interesting sometimes. But mostly it was exhausting and painful.

Here's a tip: getting away from your comfort zone is a good thing, but do it in low-commitment projects - in game-jams for examples. Your comfort zone is very important because chances are it's there that you're good at what you do and it's there that you enjoy doing it.

For this project, I should just have said no to the first design that was proposed to me.

Or at least I should have spent at least three more hours digging the design before settling on something. (these hours don't get paid though)

Thanks for reading this! Hopefully you got something out of it!

Please tune in tomorrow for part two, where you'll be reading about the actual development of the game!

Take care!

TRASEVOL_DOG