GMTK Game Jam 2022 - Post Mortem

I know voting still has a week to go!

I figured I would offload a bulk of my initial input from the game description and throw it in a post mortem discussion where it should be.

Below covers some of my personal motivation for this project, especially it being a productivity focused game.

Also I have included some discussion type questions at the bottom for anyone wanting to give any feedback / ideas for other modifiers, I just had an idea to use very specific reference materials as modifiers, I feel like I could get some ideas from card games like what do you meme, cause I feel like I could draw some parallels.

Inspiration / Personal Note:

Feel free to skip this, this is just the driving passion behind this project if anyone was  curious why I would make a productivity focused "game" and how it relates to me.

Being able to focus and stay on task with my dev projects is always a viscous cycle of get excited about a project, work hard on it, burn out, and get excited about a new project, I'm sure this is in part due to my adult ADHD (If you really want a glimpse of what life is like with ADHD, look no further than my hyper focused game description you're currently reading (when  maybe I should be bug fixing / playing other jam games), or look at my GMTK jam submission time for this game, 6 mins before I was permanently cut off. 

To save you a bunch of time about all this stuff is simply put one of the many things ADHD makes you become is Time Blind meaning you just don't have  a great perception of how long things take. (It's also why I missed my submission due date on my last game jam, hooray!)

One of the other major problems with ADHD (last one I'll bring up I swear) is the inability to provide a consistent stream of motivation (i.e., consistently working on a video game for months / years.)  However things like stressful deadlines, novelty in tasks, being passionate and natural about the topic at hand, activities / tasks with quick input / response loops (i.e playing videogames), ect., But without these kinds of motivators (or multiple of them at going on at once), makes it VERY difficult to stay on task.

 Anyways, the reason why I went into everything above is to explain why I have been dreaming for someone to somehow make being productive as addictive as playing videos games are, but that's so  hard to find and harder to execute (I feel doing gamedev on it's own right is the closest to that feeling because depending on the task, it IS better than playing games). This game certainly is not that, but it's my first time trying to blend productivity and gaming. The goal is to add some randomness to assist with the motivation and get an idea on how long tasks are taking (time blindness issues) that come up every so often, on this very long and daunting (but extremely rewarding) gamedev journey. Especially for the days I'm just not as motivated and want to trying doing the same repetitive tasks in a new light!  I mainly made this game for me to see if something like this could work for me, but better yet if it could help someone out similar that's in my shoes, even just a little bit, then it was totally worth it.

Q/A: Why put silly limitations on the usual way to work through game development? This definitely isn't a method for everyone I completely understand that. I've heard and read from multiple sources that limiting ourselves can bring a whole new perspective on our creative process, And interestingly enough it can actually feel more liberating when you have limited options! Why implement a timer? Often times the hardest part of game dev is just getting started. The timer is used to keep the player on task and understand that we only need to work on the task at hand for the length of time given even if it's for just a few minutes. After each task you can take a break, continue on without the task or modifier, or take your gamble at the same or different task again but with potentially a different modifier / time limit) Why do you have modifiers that encourage staying offline / off the internet / phone? I feel these can be really powerful! I know it's hard because I know personally I want to watch a tutorial the second I run into ANYTHING I run into that I don't know how to do. But recalling information can be a strong part of the learning process, and thankfully, you can dive into a tutorial after the timer is up. But I would highly encourage you to try spending the time recalling the information yourself! Why do you have modifiers that have you use only pen and paper /  go into another room, I'm building my game and I need to be on my computer? What gives? This one I especially love, cause I utilized this personally for this game jam funny enough. I think you can still get a lot of planning out of the way while using pen and paper and/or a different change in scenery. Some of my best ideas / troubleshooting come from when I'm away from my computer / write down what I'm working on, and then when I come back I have an easy blueprint to follow! :) Known Issues: • My "Super Short [Game Jam Mode] that is supposed to have times of 3 mins or less, actually has much longer times like 17 minutes. How's that for irony when I tried to make it specifically to be a quick in and out option... it's great, I love bugs! • The pause button is missing from the bottom right corner... Yup, similar to the game jam mode issue above,  I'm bummed because I specifically had it made to be able to restart if anything went wrong. :( • I forgot to export the build so it starts in windowed mode 1080p. Currently it goes to full screen. (If you have an ultrawide like me, you'll realize this is not a fun way for the game to open :(. Crappy work around: I turned off my ultrawide monitor so it would appear on my secondary 1080p 16:9 monitor) • Some modifiers conflict with each other (eg.,  challenge modifier: "No use of the internet while progressing on your task" but a helper modifier would be "you can use 1 youtube video / reddit post/ google search to help you with you task"  Downloaded videos anyone? :) • Bean collection is not working are not persistent through saves. • Music / SFX is repetitive, may look into changing it down the road. • UI can be slow to react to mouse hovering over options. • Coffee Pouring SFX can be a little loud. • Timer can start at 00:00 • "Task help Modifier" will give boosts although they player not meeting the requirement. TODO: • Fix all major bugs • Add more modifiers • Add UI animations / SFX • WebGL Support (If I can get it down and running well) TODO if others find it would be helpful. • Clock Ticking SFX? • Add an alarm to the clock when it hits zero (or gets close)? • Other Ideas to be rewarding to the player, eg., more options to spend beans on? • Scale bean reward quantity based of modifiers / time.? • Multiple Modifiers at once? • Task steaks to earn more beans. (every 10 tasks, you get a good chunk of beans) • Task skips • Gamify good habit tracking, "No Zero Days" philosophy.

For anyone that got to play a little bit of the game! If you can think of other modifier ideas (both challenge(debuffs) and helper (buffs) I would love to add more on. Its pretty minimal right now and I tried to keep the modifiers broad (so it can maybe work with others tasks) which I may or may not need to change down the road.(I almost spent the whole 48 hours pondering other ideas and asking friends if they had other ideas! ) I would love any and all feedback as well as hearing any suggestions on gamifying the development process to be more fun (I think game development is extremely fun in its own right, but when you need to sit down and grind, how would make it better in this context?) Thank you again everyone! :)