Dragon Island – A late postmortem
Hi All,
It’s been almost two weeks since the competition, and I figured I’ll write a bit about my experience in creating Dragon Island.
What went right:
- Graphics and tile engine: I am quite happy with how the graphics turned out, given the time limitation. Even more so, I am happy with my trusty tile engine which grows from LD to LD – this time I added “depth” sorting to allow for this “3d” look.
- Music: I really like how the music turned out to be – after writing it I though it reminds me of a part of “Dune 2″ music, but that was not intentional (although my sub-conscious probably is to blame…).
What went wrong:
- Gameplay: I am actually disappointed that my gameplay didn’t go as planned. It is full of bugs, and controls are iffy. This seems to be a common problem with my games, but this time it was the worst – I think next time I will need to prototype the game play MUCH MUCH earlier on in the competition, and make it work first. Pretty graphics and nice music doesn’t help when the gameplay is flawed – we are making GAMES here.
- Time management: I am not sure what happened this time, but I didn’t really manage my time well this time around – I got to the evening of Sunday with very few working elements, and needed to rush everything – usually I’m better at this.
- Theme: I didn’t like the theme, and I didn’t even know the reference for it (Zelda, and/or the Meme). Well, I work with what I get – but I don’t like the silly themes, so it would seem.
I think that’s about it – thanks every one for a great competition and be sure to play and vote as much as you can (I am very busy these days, I just hope to rate the assigned games at least…). Go play!
Thanks,
Daniel