《People Watching》开发复盘

On the Makers Massive Discord which hosted the SA Game Jam, Raptor asked a question to the group "I would love to hear more peoples break downs/ retrospectives / stories about their jams. What were you trying to do, what did you learn, what did you enjoy?"

I thought about their question for a while and started jotting down some things, which ended up becoming this post.

It's a good question, and difficult to answer somewhat because the time during the jam was so different to now, can hardly make much sense of it retrospectively. Off the bat I loved the theme 'People Watching' - I was originally planning on doing something to do with Plett locals (basing characters off people I know or know of) before the theme was announced, I think after listening to Jonathan Hua-Yoon's podcast with Julia Smuts Louw about his and Free Lives' latest game DressMaker (which has been a roaring success), he really reminded me about how personal stories are valuable, and I learned about the 'star-shaped game' where someone can lean into their strengths and not worry too much about their weaknesses, so I was feeling good about taking a leaf from that, the timing of hearing that message was right, it lit a little flame inside me and I internalised it; a breath of fresh air since I was used to seeing a lot of advice of a popular game marketing guru to just follow the market and that devs should even make something they're not that into. That always didn't fit right or feel right for me, and kind of seemed bleak somehow. I was also possibly going to jam with 2 buddies, Julia and Pete, but they both forgot it was school holidays that weekend and both had plans with their families lol.

Anyways,  soon as the jam started I was like 'you know what, I'm just gonna follow this thing wherever it goes' so without any planning or roughs I started drawing stuff in Photoshop and had pretty much all the visuals after the first night. I was rushing a bit because I didn't know if I'd have Sunday and Monday to work on things since my birthday was coming up and I had plans for Sunday and Monday. I didn't really have a bird's eye view of the plan, but because things were following some internal compass,  the navigation was pleasant. And I knew if I kept going with doing the next thing, then the next, then the next etc. and keeping the time in mind, we'd get there.

Another game of mine (Bru & Boegie: Episode 1) was about to take part in a 'Punk Games Showcase' on Steam and I thought 'PUNK' is a great vibe to go for, so I wanted to do something punky and also gentle since my neighbour's young daughters play my games and I wanted to keep things clean - the game feels weirdly personal; originally when the player enters the manhole to the sewer I originally had him saying something like 'This look like a good place to enter the unconscious' and that's kind of what this game experience is I suppose. I didn't have any distractions on during its entire creation (no music or podcasts or audiobooks on in the background) and think I was able to bypass the logical and reasoning / rationalising part of the brain and get a little deeper into a rich symbolic / metaphor territory, where the emptiness is rich in itself. It's as surface-level or as rich as a person allows I suppose.

Submitted the finished game on Saturday night, and then because at least 2 peeps mentioned in the comments/ratings that they missed having audio, spent some of Sunday night and a fair bit of Monday doing audio. I initially regretted doing the audio since I was eating into my actual birthday and it took some fiddling to find the right tone, but ultimately glad for it, I think it helps set the tone and mood without being overbearing.

Yeh. Felt like 'being open on the operating table' and then seeing the process through, getting stitched up at the end, and enjoying the thing afterwards and seeing what it is. Like being pregnant I guess, but with a creative ball of something, giving birth, release it into the world, and then onwards we go. One of the benefits of a time limit (and I suppose not using AI) is not much chance to second-guess or over-rationalise stuff, more of a direct line between brain and result, and one can't OVER-optimise where it's not necessary, the mess doesn't seem as much of a mess once it's wrapped.

There was a level of 'hang on, if I can do this in a day, why did I just spend a year making a demo for another game (Bru & Boegie: Episode 2) that isn't markedly better than this?' and I don't quite know the answer to that question, other than the long project took a lot of planning and following some kind of external map and it was a tough slog, and this quick jam was far more intuitive and followed some internal compass. Maybe two sides of the same coin / both need each other? I defs learned a lot making B&B Ep2 that I think helped me make this game without needing to guess how to do certain things, and keep things nice 'n simple.

I try not post-mortem too much (otherwise I can and will obsess), because each time the process and conditions are different and can rarely be recreated, and I think it's a mistake to attribute too much of success or failure to oneself, there are often a lot of other factors involved outside of one's control! Also, I can spend time trying to extract meaning from a meaningless void, and there's a beauty in the void.

The game's done well. It got onto the front page of itch.io and it's still in the top few in some categories:

I enjoyed the fortunate situation of having a game Featured on the front page of itch (Bru & Boegie: Episode 2) as well as having People Watching on the front page a little lower down the front page in the 'Fresh' section. Gonna enjoy riding that wave while it lasts. 🙏

Here's a scene I had in the game at the end but ended up removing because it felt funnier it the game looped straight back to the title screen with da boi back to people watching.

Get People Watching