Devtober Jam Update

Hello everyone! This post is meant to briefly discuss some things relating to this project for the Devtober jam here on itch.io. We have been working on this project on and off since April 2020, so for Devtober we decided to put in the work to finish this project that we had been putting off for the last few months (mainly me). 

A brief overview of the game is that SlimeTime is a Tamagotchi-style game where your slime pet wanders around its enclosure, and you must take proper care of it during the time limit in order to "win". SlimeTime went through a lot of tweaking with regard to the core stats mechanics; though we easily decided and implemented the main mechanics (the "buttons" at the top of the game, i.e. what you can do to interact with your slime) we had some issues deciding exactly how we wanted the player to be able to win. This went through several stages:

• The slime had 4 distinct stats, and the mathematical relative positive of each stat based on what we would decide would result in five different types of "endings" for the slime (i.e. 5 different medals of success/loss).
• The slime had an overall Happiness rating that was effected by the 4 distinct stats, and based on where the happiness rating was at the end of the time limit, the player could have a few distinct endings for the slime.
• The slime had 4 distinct stats, but they basically don't mean anything except to function as parameters for the slime to die. You can win the game by just feeding it constantly and doing nothing else.

You can probably guess which option we went with towards the end of the process. This wasn't chosen by preferred outcome, but both of us devs had been working on this thing for long enough, with enough problems, that at the end of October we felt like we had put in enough effort to see the game as finished. After all, it has the basic life cycle of the game, and if we left out too many details players could work it out for themselves how to win. Note that we specifically wanted to make this game a kind of "hard mode" without a very distinct stats bar, from the beginning; for anyone who has played it, there is a window in the bottom-left corner that shows your slime throughout the game. It's expression slowly changes as the game progresses, reflecting the players progress. That was our different idea for using a stats bar, though with the one-minute game time limit we realized it might not be as effective as we hoped.

Though the game wasn't made start-to-finish during Devtober, all of the music, sound effects, and major stats changes happened this month. One thing I'll say that we definitively learned through this process is to be patient! Everyone goes through periods of ups and downs, especially in personal, for-fun projects like these. I lost a lot of motivation as a backend developer, but in the end I'm pretty happy with what we were able to produce. Choosing the "finale" time frame for this project was difficult, but there comes a point when, for us at least, it's time to move on to different things. I would definitely say to anyone reading this who may be hung up on a current small project, feeling some of the same anxieties - take a break! Work on something else, step away from game dev for a bit, and do what you need to do. The project isn't going anywhere, and you don't need to constantly work on the same thing until it's finished. Take some time to yourself, do another hobby, or start something completely new! 

Thanks for reading, and good luck to everyone who also submitted something for the Devtober jam. And good luck to you, if you're reading this and plan to start a new project!