Image description: On a blue background within a light blue box is the title reading: A postmortem about my first attempt at a game jam! In italics underneath the title are the words: Postmortem (n) an analysis or discussion of an event after it is over.
After creating my first indie game, Bubble Bumble, and discovering an industry and creative field that combines my desire to create compelling characters, worlds, and stories, I took a few weeks to rest and re-charge.
Rest is important not only to my game development, but also for embracing my very human body and what it needs to thrive.
Of course, I was itching to keep going! My only problem was (and still is) that I didn't know where or how to continue. Do I keep going with Bubble Bumble? I mean, I have tons of ideas for it. Do I find my "dream idea" and turn that into a game? I wasn't sure. And like a deer in headlights, I froze.
Having an extremely creative soul can mean that starting and completing projects can be a major challenge.
Instead of jumping into a new game, I let myself connect with people by going to a local indie dev meet-up, joining several Discord servers, and attending online events like the 2021 Game Devs of Color's Virtual Expo. In doing all of this, I've found communities that, while centered around game dev, aren't all about game dev.
Eventually, and here's the meat of this post, I joined the Devtober Game Jam over on itch io! With Devtober being an entire month, it gave me the ability to create a short game without unnecessary stress or crunch.
Image Description: On a violet background is the pixel art logo for Devtober 2021.
I planned on creating Foliage Conversations, a pixel art, interactive fiction game where you play as Leafette, a character trying to win free game tokens, a coupon for a music store, and the courage to talk to their crush, Ovate.
Image Description: On a light brown background are two characters drawn in pixel art. On the left, a character with the name "Leafette" above them has a brown leaf for a head and has medium brown skin. They are wearing a green sweater, circular red earrings, blue jeans with heart-shaped patches, and dark orange shoes. On the right, the character with the name "Ovate" above her has a green leaf for a head and dark brown skin. She is wearing an orange dress with red ruffles, and it has a laced-up cut on the side. She is wearing red lipstick, dark brown heels and has a silver prosthetic right hand.
Now, I've already decided that I didn't want to work in Unity. I like Unity, but I don't enjoy programming, and I wanted something more laid back. I wanted to try out visual scripting, and I found a really interesting game-making software called GDevelop.
GDevelop was fun to learn, visual scripting is its top priority, and it has tons of demos and tutorials and is still growing. GDevelop has an integration with Yarn Spinner, a node-based dialogue system, which was great because I wanted to focus on growing my narrative design skills.
Image Description: Two logos are shown. GDevelop is first on a purple background, and Yarn Spinner is second on a green background.
I knew that learning two new softwares at the same time would be part of my development process, but I overestimated how difficult it would be to try out a new game concept simultaneously.
Towards the end of October, I was stuck in the dialogue system and learning the overall engine. My game wasn't going anywhere. Eventually, I decided to stop trying to create my game in GDevelop. GD It's my favorite visual scripting program to date, and I plan on going back to it.
After a few days of mentally pouting, and with a week and some days left in the jam, I reluctantly turn towards Godot. I said "pouting" and "reluctantly" because I didn't want to program anytime soon. But here I am. Programming. Again in a new engine, that I'm learning from scratch.
I do like the overall feel of Godot over Unity, but that's another post in the future.
Image Description: The Godot game engine logo is shown on a dark blue background.
As I'm learning Godot, I'm glad it has a huge community, tons of resources, and an
excellent dialogue integration called Dialogic, created by developer Emilio Coppola. Why do I like Dialogic? First, I had to do ZERO programming to get started! That's an A+ in my book. And because Dialogic works with Godot's native scripting language, GDScript, there are many possibilities as I learn both programs.
Image Description: The logo for Dialogic is shown in white text on a blue background.
I want to create more narrative-driven games, and using Dialogic is my way to start. But seriously, I would have probably stopped altogether by now if I didn't find Dialogic.
Although I’m nowhere near completed with Foliage Conversations in time for the jam, and I don’t know when I’ll finish it, I like the direction I’m going in.
Thanks for reading, and as always, stay creative!
– Bloomzeye
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