NSFW MiniJam 14 

Cozy, Monsterlovin' Card Hypnosis

I’m pleased with how this Jam went!  It was my 3rd ever, with a lot of improvements and new lessons learned since my last jam! (NSFW 13)  I’m just gonna ramble my thoughts from memory below; I don’t have the energy to edit, so first, a  tl;dr

Rough Time Break Down:
    3 days of Card Tutorial hell.
    2 days of Art Dept.
    2 days of Integration and Gameplay Design.
    2 days of bug fix, and polish on all of the above.
Wins:
    Brainstormed/sketched before jam.
    Hit the ground running from day 1.
    Appropriate use of art dept time.
    When too tired to code, I sketched and made pixel art.
    Uploaded and tested on itch.io early, fixed weird web bugs.
    Got early confirming feedback.
    Left proper time for integration, bug fix, and polish.
    Scoped to quality over quantity and actually managed it.
Losses:
    Genre out of comfort zone: 
    Wasted time on a bad tutorial instead of just rolling my own card-game system.
    Should've built some stock assets for things like menus.

Old Lessons Improved Upon

My first Jam was a Bitsy jam on my main account.  I was pleased with my ambitious entry, but ran into last second build and upload bugs, and just barely missed the upload deadline.  I was very discouraged.  I prolly should’ve asked if I could submit slightly late, but just shut off the computer and went to bed instead.

The next jam, (NSFW 13) I discovered while it was already in progress, and had some irl events come up, so I had way less than a week to work.   I knew I’d do a strip games and made art assets first, they’re my strong suit, so I knew it’d be a motivating early victory, and in the nsfw genre, art is a functional part of the mvp.  I went way out of my comfort zone on genre and wanted to invent a puzzle mechanic from scratch, but got stumped, so I just made pong, and hooked that up to the strip poker dynamic.  It was alright, but I had to make serious scope cuts to finish.  I did set things up and upload early though, improving on last time!

This jam, NSFW 14 I did some brainstorming and pixel sketching on general concepts and assets I thought I might like to use.  My wheelhouse is much more action games and shooters, so I was noodling with various sweaty, sexy combat crew concepts.  Then the theme was announced as cozy, so I threw that out.  I decided to resurrect some of the strip-game ideas I’d had to scrap for 13.  I wanted my previous opponent to be strippable in a modular fashion, instead of just a linear progression, so this jam, I made a character you could shibari tie in a modular fashion.  Which wasn’t the easiest.

New Lessons to Learn From

Days 1-3

  I hit the ground running, making a ton of progress from day one.  However, I was again way out of my wheelhouse again in making a card game.  I followed the most popular card game tutorial I found without really reviewing it first.  The end product works, but it took me like 3 days of work sessions to build the part of it I needed for my game, and the implementation was somewhat brittle, and not at all intuitively architected for me.  My first instinct was to build my own card game system using methods I’m familiar with, but I second guessed it, arguing to myself the tut would be faster and better so I could focus on gameplay and art.  I think if I’d followed my gut, I would’ve had it done in one day, and it would’ve been much easier for me to work within.  That would’ve granted me more time to iterate and advance the actual gameplay design.  Including more card types and opponent features like clothing as defenses against the player.

Days 4-5

  I’m a trained artist, so I knocked out my assets in about 2 days from scratch, and am happy with the results for a jam.  I’m pleased with the modular tie system, and only ended up with one glitchy layering condition I didn’t fix.  I think it was worth the time investment.  If I had gone for a lower polish level, I could’ve completed two opponent characters in the same time, but idk, my one opponent is pretty juicy and thick lookin, and maybe that’s what really counts.  I also focused on making the one fully functional before tackling a second, which I think was the right choice.

  The modular tying of the opponent was tricky.  I didn’t want a static character that just gets ropes super-imposed.  That’d be easy.  But squishy bits should squish when they get squeezed, and some ties should change the pose!  This led to a pretty complicated layer structure that was clunky to export.  It works, and I only have one ugly corner case I ran out of time to fix.  I think if I add another character or do something similar in the future, I can make it somewhat more streamlined though.

  It took like 5 days before I could integrate my disparate elements into one playable object:  card handling system, card deck, tie-able opponent, GUI that represents the tie locations, and this doesn’t even include actual gameplay logic!  As soon as I this though, I uploaded it to itch, and found some weird behavior with screen size related to the regretted card handling system.  I’m really glad I started early!

Days 6-7

  From here on out, my work week got BRUTAL, so I was far less productive with my time than the first half.  I had a lot of unproductive time just staring at the project, generating simple bugs I couldn’t grok at the time, and a little bit of small but important progress.

   At this point, DidNapper’s Shibari jam was almost  due, and I thought I could toss up a development build for that Jam to get a little exposure, so I pulled my only all-nighter to rough out the gameplay system before their deadline.  I did it, submitted, and most people were very positive given how limited the actual game was at that point.  Shy of MVP imho.  A few people complained about that, a few gave constructive feedback on exactly my next set of priority features and bug fixes, which was really cool to see!

  Two more days of integration and game design, and I had the basic playable game, but with lots of bugs and ugly.  About 2 days left till deadline.

Days 8-9

  I had a lot of competing priorities, and REALLY wanted to stretch for features, but I stuck to the fundamentals and am glad I did!  I thought I maybe had a day of bug fix and polish, but it took the two full remaining days to get it really buttoned up using some late nights.

Eleventh Hour

  That left me with Sunday morning/afternoon to indulge feature creep.  I was REALLY tempted to implement one of the big features I wished I had time for:  

• More playable opponents
• More gameplay mechanics for complexity and progression
• new card types
• deck building

  The game loop is too short and simple, but I stuck to my quality over quantity mantra and also felt that the risk of breaking things at the 11th hour was just too great.  So I added small, independent juice and polish that I was confident I could do without affecting other features.  Things like:

• UI Upgrades
• Sexy wax dripping candles
• Lots of small SFX and VFX for actions
• Proper main menu.

Here’s some more things that hit the cutting room floor:

• Facial expressions/reactions
• Opponent Dialogue
• Flashier VFX for some actions
• Intro Sequence
• Volume Control for Menu
• Saved High Scores/State
• Make banishing a manual action

  I need to make some pre-built menu scenes I can just drop in and hook up for game jams.  They’re not that hard, but I could make them more complete and save precious time.

  I was cramming in shit until the actual last minute, when I found a small bug that froze the game when you returned to main menu.  Did a hot fix in 2 mins, and uploaded the fix 1 minute past deadline!

  I’m really pleased with my experience of this jam, and I hope the game provides a minute or two of fun for you!

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