Halloween ‘99 Postmortem

This was my first time participating in Devtober and it went great! Recently I’ve started a few projects that I’ve put down, so Devtober seemed like a good way to force myself to finish something. And making it Halloween themed meant that I couldn’t make excuses to delay. 

What went well:

I wanted to make something unique, and I think I accomplished that. I didn’t want to make a game that was just ‘insert-game-genre’ but Halloween themed, so I decided to build the whole game around the experience of actually trick-or-treating. Growing up in America, every year you get really excited to dress up and get candy. It’s a fun time, but I also remember being scared a lot while trick-or-treating as a kid. I wanted to capture all the parts of the experience and emotions in the game. In the end, it’s smaller than I originally intended but I still cover most of the bases I aimed to.

Another thing I feel I accomplished was interesting use of the HUD. I’m really interested in games worth minimalist artwork that use the HUD to supplement visuals and flesh out the world, characters, and mechanics. I was particularly happy about how the night sky and candy bag turned out.

What didn’t go so well:

There was week where I only touched the game one or two times. I’m currently working on my senior game at school and that week we got really invested in an interesting design problem that drew my attention away from Halloween ‘99. It wasn’t that I didn’t have time, I was just distracted. Working on a game for school or work and a personal project at the same time can be difficult for me sometimes.

I also had to scale the game down more than I wanted because I procrastinated the world design. I spent too long on different systems that weren’t even necessary so I ended up actually designing the whole level in the last week. If I had started earlier I could have done a lot more with it.

What I’ve learned:

My biggest take away from Devtober  is that it is completely possible for me to invest myself in my main projects while creating small, experimental games on the side. Not only is it possible, but it’s really beneficial and fun! In fact, I had such a good time with this one that I’m going to make a game in time for Thanksgiving!