Early this morning I submitted my entry into GDKO 2023 – Round 1 (Game Dev Knock Out). The focus was on art and visual design. And man, was it a challenge for me. In this post mortem, I take a look at what went right, what went wrong, and what I learned from my new game Shilo.
Note: this is just the post mortem for Shilo. If you are interested in playing the game, check out the Shilo – GDKO 2023 Round 1 Game Jam page or play Shilo on itch.io.
Inspiration Behind Shilo
With the focus of GDKO 2023 – Round 1 being art and visual design, I chose to really focus on that. I read through my game designer idea notebook until I came across an idea that stuck with me.
Shilo is inspired by the legend of the koi fish. In this Chinese legend, a group of koi come to a waterfall. For 100 years, they attempt to jump up it. Eventually, one succeeds and is turned into a dragon by the gods. (Paraphrasing.)
I wanted to play with this idea of water, bubbles, koi, and the sakura blossoms.
Player mechanics are intentionally minimal. Primarily because I wanted to focus on the artwork, since that’s a struggle of mine. And the mechanics I chose to include are all somehow story elements (like the bubble being used to dash).
What Went Right
Taking time to solidify my plan and a schedule was, hands down, the best thing I did when making Shilo.
I took the first full day to just read through ideas, think about what exactly I wanted to make, and create a rough schedule. (And it was quite rough.)
Initially, I was pretty overwhelmed. But I decided to work in 2 week-long chunks. The first week being focused on getting absolutely as much as possible done. At the end of that week, I would re-evaluate and adjust my plan. And that actually worked incredibly well for me. All the main pieces were (mostly) done in a few days. It just looked absolutely awful.
What Went Wrong
If it was art related, it pretty much went wrong. I was able to get the setup the autotile system working and greybox things pretty quickly. But that was about it.
Setting up the rule tiles was a struggle. I kept getting tiny pieces backwards and the whole thing would get through off. (Note to self: make a template system for rule tiles.) I managed to get some placeholder art in place, just to make sure the look and feel was going the direction I was envisioning. And fortunately, I was satisfied with where it was going.
Then, I started working on revising the artwork and making it…you know…not suck. And that did not go according to plan. I spent nearly twice the time I had planned for the entirety of my artwork. I didn’t even get to the character herself.
Oh, and one of my basic move mechanics was wrong. Didn’t find that out until the morning of the due date. Wasn’t able to figure out the issue in time, so it was submitted with a huge bug. Hopefully my fellow game developers have mercy.
What I Learned
Pixel art is freakin’ hard for me. Let me rephrase that. Good pixel art is freakin’ hard for me. I definitely have a newfound appreciation for what artists do. I feel like my own skills grew enough that I can now make decent prototype games and get my point across. But man, I still have a lot to learn on the art side of things.
That said, I’m actually really proud of what I managed to do with the art and visual design. It is hands down better than anything I’ve created in the past.
Make your scope smaller and get things working as quickly as possible. That was hugely important for me. It gave me a huge confidence boost to see things coming together. It also allowed me time to focus where I really wanted (the art and visual design in this case).
Create builds early and get people play testing. I even had that on my list. Failed to do it and it damn near broke my entry. Not making that mistake again.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m really proud of myself for what I’ve managed to create in these last two weeks. It looks and feels pretty good (minus the basic mechanic issue). I learned a ton about pixel art. Made some new friends on both Twitter and Discord. And all around, just had fun.
Fingers crossed I make it to round 2…
