Postmortem: Luftballong

This was my second Trijam, but first proper 3h jam (with the first one being 3 x 3h). So I'm happy to have been able to submit a game without stressing towards the end. Still, I made a common mistake, which is why I'm writing this postmortem.

The jam had two themes, Anti-gravity and If you play with fire, you'll get burned. Making a game where the player controls a hot air balloon felt like a natural way of combining them both. My idea was to develop a relaxing game, in which an old man slowly ascends into the sky to some nice little melody. Here is where I made a mistake. Usually I like to start getting the basic gameplay down, just using simple shapes. My reasoning being that nailing that is paramount. However, in this case I focused more on other aspects, such as the look of the hot air balloon. Once I got around to implementing the gameplay, I realised I wouldn't have enough time to playtest and balance it properly.

So what I take away from the jam is the importance of starting with the fundemental gameplay. This isn't necessarily true for everyone. But to me, gameplay should be the basis for and inform the rest of a game, such as the visuals, audio, setting etc.

As a side note, it was quite fun doing small ink sketches for the game's sprites. I'll continue exploring it for future games.