LOWREZJAM POST-MORTEM

Another year, another LOWREZJAM!

I really love this jam, and it's great to see some of the developers from last year's jam pop up again. I like this jam because there is no room for superfluous elements, or waste. I feel like my pixel art has got better because of entering lowrezjam. To create an atmosphere, variety of characters/sprites and design a UI with no/little text in the tiny space we have available is just fantastic. And the fact we all make games that are widely different in many ways just shows what is possible.

I again went for a sim-based game. Tell me not to do this next time. I love playing simulation games, which is why I am drawn to designing and making them so often, but they are difficult and buggy and really hard to balance with the deadline of the jam approaching. But I loved making XenoJar nonetheless, mostly making the xenos and UI.

The feedback I received is very helpful. Players liked the concept, thought it as unique and intriguing. Players liked the graphics and atmosphere created. This is great as those two parts of the game I am most proud of and excited about.

But there were some parts that will be improved, they should be relatively easy to do also. The first being the controls. Players could not control with scroll, without the window scrolling. This is obviously not ideal. If one plays in fullscreen this is not an issue, however. I do feel the scroll element is good as it offers quick changes in conditions without the need for a sliding bar that would have required pixels. Now the jam is over, I could look at going over the 64x64 resolution and redesigning the controls to use the mouse to drag sliding bars, maybe?

Another part to improve is the tutorial. It was my first ever tutorial, and it was rushed. Ironic, since the tutorial does takes its time... which came up in the feedback almost every time. Luckily, this is easily rectified by adding a skip text button. Longer term, I would like to go back to the tutorial and make it feel less tutorially. 

The last part to improve is the balancing. Some players indicated they could do discover any xenos. This could lead players to think one of two things: they are doing something wrong, or the game doesn't work. Neither of which is good! So I need to go back and re-balance what conditions make which xenos appear. Originally, I wanted to put more xenos into the game, but I just ran out of time. More xenos would increase the likelihood of players discovering something, but doesn't really address the problem in its entirety. Perhaps, something a little bit more sophisticated would be in the gameplay; with indicators allowing the player to gauge whether they were close to getting conditions correct for a xeno to appear. I shall have to have a think of how this is best graphically represented, but I like it and was suggested in the feedback by players.

In short: I do hope to address these three main critiques of the game, and expand the game so that there are more xenos to discover. Hoepfully, get it touchscreen enabled too. Thank you to all those who played, rated and gave feedback on the game. Congratulations to all developers who took part this year.