Why Did I Make This? - Critiquing My Own Game

hey there how's it going we're going to try something a little different today for the last year and a half or so every friday on my live stream at twitch.tv slash vimlark i play community games give feedback and just try to help people become better designers overall basically people are allowed to submit games we play them and we give critiques and general feedback i come from an art background critiques are very important to me and when i say critique i don't mean you bash a game i know on youtube there's a big trend of you know roasting games bashing games for being bad or this or that the idea here with critiques is to look at a game see how it plays see where it could be made better see what falls short what works what doesn't and really kind of fine-tune and finesse just with a different set of eyes but what we're gonna do today is actually turn that camera back around and we're gonna look at myself and we're gonna dig into some of my old games and see how they work but first before we get into it i would like to thank the sponsor of this video which is the awesome jason wyman jason is an industry veteran with the goal to teach you how to make games at a professional level whether you're a beginner or experienced jason will guide you through the process of mastering c sharp and unity to create incredible games and jason just released a new course called the game architecture course which will teach you all the essentials to complete your very own full-scale rpg you'll learn how to implement inventory crafting stats quest systems character leveling progression and a whole lot more even more important it will help teach you project planning and how to successfully follow a process from start to finish when making a game as well as numerous shortcuts to get your game done faster throughout the course you will have access to jason in case you have any questions as well as access to a private discord server with tons of fellow game developers to make the deal even sweeter it's now included in the vmlark bundle which gives you access to the new game architecture course as well as all of jason's other courses and it's all for the price of one plus as an extra special bonus you'll get this exclusively sweet monkey hoodie so if you want to learn how to make professional quality games using unity support me and rock an adorable monkey on your chest just click the link in the description to get started today this is oh rats this is a game that i made for the four game devs jam off the same art kit video which is made by mrs if you haven't seen the video there's a card up top i also made a devlog about this as well if you want to go into even more depth of like how the game was made and find out that i made a full different prototype first that was like a skateboarding game and then completely abandoned that and switched over to this in the last half of the jam and yeah the development was a bit chaotic i was super stressed about it but in the end i thought the game came out okay let's go back and revisit it though because i've looked at it again recently and i definitely think i was a little bit i thought better of it then i've looked at it again recently i'm like ah there's a lot of things i can critique in here so let's take a look at the menu boring but it doesn't really matter again 48 hour game jams those ones menus get cut all of that the name terrible the name is this because i just threw in a bunch of rats because i was i just didn't know what to do and i didn't have time to make any other enemies and also why i use this font i will never know this is like a star wars font why i used it i don't know i don't like it and still to this day it baffles me that i did this um but let's go ahead and check out the game itself so we can dig in so there are a couple of controls you've just moved around and we can sprint with x if you're using an xbox controller and we can jump with a so the idea was to make a top-down platformer i thought it was cute also for the restriction for this was we had to there was no theme but we had to use an art pack that was made by kenny so we're using i think it was kenny's tiny roguelike pack i think is the name of it i'll put the name on screen of the actual pack and a link in the description if you'd like to check it out but i animated it i thought it looked cool the one thing i will say i think the character is adorable i think i did a great job of making a kitschy little character where it kind of moves back and forth you know it runs around i got a little bit better particle effects in here although the particles don't match the styling as well if i were to do this again i would definitely make those particles a little chunkier and look more like pixels and not quite like smoke i feel like it doesn't fit aesthetically as well with the style because it's such a low res style i would also love to animate the water because the water is super stagnant and kind of boring but the idea is if you hit the water you would die now here's where this game is kind of jank right and this is the things that i think nowadays looking back on it i just questioned why i did something i have a stamina bar in here i was playing a lot of dark souls at the time so stamina bar was on my mind but you can only run for a certain amount of time and then you're stuck to walk the thing is if i run and jump with my stamina bar you see how i can i can jump further if my stamina bar runs out while i am in the air i kind of stop and that's the number one thing that i think i made i did wrong in this game having the stamina bar i mean the stamina bar in general i should have killed the stamina bar like entirely this game does not need a stamina bar you should just be able to run as much as you want and walk when you need to the hitboxes are the other thing that i struggled with in this really really hard so getting hitboxes to work with all of these and then being able to walk up these platforms is really really janky in the code it really really is but you see i fall down and get a little smaller my character gets a little bigger as i walk up the stairs and i thought that came out cool i really like this as an idea as a concept i think this game is really cool as an execution though there's a lot to be desired right like did you see that hitbox look at the ground here right this is where i think i have a problem i'm still standing on the ground entirely why on earth do we fall in the water so very visible and clear hitboxes are i think the most infuriating part of this game because i bare i'm not even touching the water and i'm still falling so that's a big thing that i to this day really wish i could wish i had adjusted here we go up we come down here i got it like there right look what happens when you come to the edge also my z ordering is bad i can actually fall down there i can fall behind this wall and i'm still technically alive here and then i can fall in the water but bad hitboxes will entirely ruin an experience you could have a great game and everything could feel great but if your hitboxes aren't consistent and you're dying when you don't mean to it can cause players to be frustrated and when players get frustrated they will put down your game in something like this when i fall off of a ledge like that that's not my fault how was i supposed to know that that ledge wasn't gonna you know work that's that's a problem on the design side right so i try to nowadays be much more mindful about that you're never gonna be perfect you're never gonna fix everything and make sure that everything works just well i do really enjoy the the coin collection effect and sound effect i think that came out pretty well see right there my stamina ran out why do we have stamina because i was i i don't know i don't know why i have stamina in this game i really don't to this day i see why so many people struggled with this game so there's also the thing right i had no problems with these when i made this game originally i made all these jumps just perfectly because they were designed to work with the way i was playing at the time that's just how i was controlling it and i was able to get all of these my level design was also done in the last like five hours or last couple hours so they're it's a little scattered oh my god oh my goodness that's absolutely ridiculous what is wrong with me how can i do this to players do you ever play one of your old games and just think how did i do this to people like why why am i subjecting people to this and why does this exist i 100 at this moment i'm just mad at myself and if like here right if on these on these little sections if i was a player that was just picking this up on itch i'd put this down at this point i would be so frustrated and annoyed that the hitboxes weren't working that the you know the dash kept cutting out and that like i wasn't making progress with what felt like any kind of like it didn't feel like it doesn't feel like it's my fault it feels like that jump worked last time why didn't it work this time and that's something you never want to have your players feeling you don't want to have them feeling like they're doing the same thing and it's not working oh man legitimately that was an awful experience and to all players i am sorry i made that i oh that was that's that's bad level design right there again with the bad hitboxes that's where that runs into an issue like that's just that's so frustrating and that's also it shows the value of play testing right this game was made in a panic the level design was thrown together at the very end because i didn't have time which is something i am guilty of a lot and i think most of us are right we leave level design to the very end because we think oh we just got to get the mechanics in the level design is not going to be that bad level design is very important when you push it off to the end you run into this where it just gets crazy this is where the game starts to you start to understand the name of the game is oh rats and you see all these extra coins that you have to go collect which i'm gonna completely ignore because yeah we're not gonna i'm gonna deal with that but i just don't think the coin collection is satisfying but those hit boxes those hit boxes are just i will harp on this to the until i someday possibly come back and fix it may or may not if you're interested in me going back and revisiting old game jam games i made and how to and how i would improve them and kind of like dig into what i would fix having more time and thought on them uh let me know in the comments because it's something i've thought about but i don't know if it's worth doing because generally when it comes to game jams you know game jams are they're they're semi-disposable content not even content but they're semi-disposable you make a thing you move on that's how i usually approach them but i would uh i would definitely be interested to see if people are interested in how to kind of update a game and make it a little bit better generally if you're going to make a full release out of a game jam game you should start from scratch after your game jam always because game jam code is let's see what's the nicest way to say this jank and terrible this this level's easier than the last one but yeah i mean look at this jump like what the hell was i thinking why was i being so mean to people like why why was i so mean in this situation i'm i'm getting irritated at my own game and ready to rage quit i really should have been much much more lenient with these jumps but instead i ended up making these things you know ones that you had to get just hard enough and that's another thing to talk about is when you're making game jam games or games in general um i've played several games like this recently where remember you will be so much better at your game than your players like i was able to make all of these no problem when i made this because i had been playing with the movement mechanics and i wrote them you know within the last week so i was very familiar with how they worked and how they interacted coming into this fresh like a year later right now this is awful this is horrible i don't i don't like this at all i'm not enjoying these uh this experience the movement's not very the movement the movement's okay but the uh the stilted movement the staggered movement because of the stamina bar and just the the general just falling off of ledges when i didn't mean to i'm finding extremely frustrating it's it's much worse than i remembered like i thought it was not great and had some issues but this is much worse than i remember so it's kind of interesting coming back to this and realizing like yeah there's there's a lot of things that i see now that i didn't think about at the time that the players would have to deal with right i've learned a lot since then and the user experience is the most important part it doesn't matter if you're playing it right there is no the developer plays it right the players are playing it wrong if the players are having trouble they're dying constantly and they're not having fun then it's not good it's wrong and you need to adjust it because it's so frustrating stop dying dude okay um i guess we'll speed through this one too because i left another stupidly impossible jump at the very end oh my god okay looking back on this i'm kind of legitimately upset i made this right now like i am not a i i am not pleased with what i have done here and i i would not doubt that a lot of people have come and played this game and made it to level three and freaking needed it to the curb because why why is this so like yeah this is one of those areas where difficulty i didn't i didn't plan properly for sure for a game jam game you want to make your games easier than you probably normally would because again people are coming to play in they're going to play multiple games they don't want to struggle they don't want to fight and in this situation the difficulty also the problem is the difficulty is dealing with inconsistencies when everything is too difficult so either there is a cheat on this you can actually just sneak across the top you don't have to actually go between these guys but normally you're supposed to go like that which that part i don't think is too bad they're a little close together honestly for the hitboxes like to be real but the fact that you can cheese that at the top i hope people figured that out because you can't do it at the bottom to be to be real i truly believe that people probably stopped playing before they got to this point why did i do this to myself like why did i do this to people i i'm sorry if you if you did play this game and you suffered through it and beat it you you have my thanks and i appreciate that you you checked it out and you suffered through it but yeah i i am very very sorry because this is a this is just not i do like the death animation both the death animations i am pleased with those were not in the pack i had to create those so if you look the player kind of sinks down into the water which i really like and also the player hitting the rat which i think it looks pretty good it's got some nice feedback to it these jumps these these final jumps for some reason i made all of them like max stamina jumps that you had to make perfectly and i don't know what i was thinking looking back on it now i i don't get it like i completely understand what i did wrong i don't know why i made like i don't know why i thought these were good ideas at the time there is a little bit of a panic that came in because i was you know just rushing to get these levels out and made but i i should have i should have spent a little bit more thought than this to be honest like i really really should have this is just overkill right like look at this i mean this is why the game is called oh rats because i also couldn't think of a name but i had this just you know i just made this huge ridiculous number of rats and the level balance is all off right some of these levels are way easier than others the only way to get through this is to cheese this this is the only way to get through this you're not gonna make it through there so i basically made a section that requires you to know a cheese that i left in and i did intentionally of that cheese in because i already knew it was too hard so i intentionally left that cheese in but that's bad i made a section where you had to use the cheese that i intentionally left in and then this is the end and then you made it to the end it tells you how many this was the first time i had i'd played with putting different text inside of text like referencing other objects inside of text objects this is one of the earliest times of doing that so this tells you how many coins you got and there is no incentive to collect the rest of the coins there's just not so overall like i think the game is cute i like the idea my number one takeaways awful hitboxes a really bad level design in general for the player to move around i made some jumps that were just i mean far too many jumps that were just way too hard and the stamina bar is i i don't understand why i did that there's no need for it there's none at all it doesn't so when you add challenge to a game right you the goal is to enhance the play experience with that challenge by making you think differently about the challenges at hand so a stamina bar is usually meant to make you think about when you use it when you conserve it when you don't in this situation you want to use it all the time and there's no reason not to other than it's out but yeah i think in general this one if you're gonna play any of my old games i would avoid this one probably because it's not not worth it it's extremely frustrating it's got some neat ideas i do like the top-down platformer mechanic idea i think i did well there and i definitely think i could execute on this better if i tried it out again so maybe this is maybe this is a concept i will revisit for a future game jam or you know just prototype in general of making a top-down platformer because i like the concept i really do uh the execution here is very much lackluster and could definitely be done better 100 for sure everything does feel kind of like slapped together at the last minute which you know it was and that sometimes that does happen in game jams you don't beat yourself up over it you move on with your life but coming back to this game i definitely see a lot of things that i just there were things that yes were bad because of time but also bad just be in general like concept and design right i definitely did not remember them being that being that difficult and i think this is a really good exercise so if you haven't gone back and played some of your old prototypes some of your old released game jam games some of your old games in general in recent years i would highly suggest doing them and try to take a critical outside perspective going back to the games you're not as familiar with the controls you're not as familiar with the systems you're not you know as familiar with where the hitboxes are that kind of a thing that really gives you a unique perspective after some time and it allows you to thoughtfully and semi-objectively critique and look at what you've done and see if it's a pro or con and how you can improve moving forward i hope this helped other people if you've seen you know where i've made mistakes and you don't have to make them yourself that would be awesome if you just enjoyed seeing me like you know i learned from my mistakes here i have learned from that level design not to do a lot of that stuff again my level design has gotten better in recent times but going back man oh once again i am so sorry if you played no rats that was uh that was way harder than i remembered it being like tenfold and it's things like that that i definitely am trying to be much more conscious of nowadays because i don't want anybody to leaving my games just feeling sad or frustrated or mad or annoyed i want people to play my games and leave them feeling excited happy that kind of a thing so if there are any other games that i have made that you would like me to go back and look at i'm also thinking of doing critiques of other people's games like this in video format i know other youtubers do it i actually do this every friday like i said at the start so i'm also thinking of possibly just cutting up those streams and clipping those and cutting up the streams and making videos out of that so we could see other cool things that people are making but if you'd like to see more of my games and if you have any specific ones you'd like me to go check out and you know look at because i haven't looked at a lot of these things in a long time i'm definitely one of those people that makes a game jam game puts it out there and lets it run right i it's it's a peer it's a piece that i made over a certain time period and i leave it at that so i'm very interested to see just other things i've done and really kind of dig into what was good what was bad and what i've learned and i've definitely i can see where i've learned a lot here thank you so much for watching and i hope you enjoyed if you did please consider clicking that like button maybe the subscribe and maybe even the bell if you want to leave a comment that helps also basically youtube really likes it when you engage with the video otherwise you know it kind of can fall into youtube limbo so if you would like to help out that is a great way to do it i also have a patreon if you would like to help make these videos happen some more like these lovely people right here clone 13. cortland massam david scott nightfall jed-jed kevin halgow cormai mlk matsy makes nazar salim salty pretzel scott hansen soapy gnome straight up gruntled and warren stephen rose seriously you're all amazing people and i would not be able to do this without you i would also like to thank the sponsor of this video jason wyman if you would like to get a monkey hoodie and learn how to be the best unity dev you could be check out the courses the link is in the description and with that that's all from me thank you all for being here once again i hope you enjoyed i hope you have a great day or evening whatever it is for you and i will talk with you next time have a good one later

Channel: Vimlark

Views: 10,687

Rating: 4.9375696 out of 5

Keywords: game, game dev, indie, indie dev, Construct, construct 3, photoshop, aseprite, pixel art, pixel, video game, madewithconstruct, devlog, Indie Devlog, Indie game devlog, dev log, indiecade2019, indiecade, nick, dufault, nick dufault, Ultimate Game Jam, Game Jam, Jam, GMTK, GMTK 2020, Miziziziz, Game Developer, Kenney, Kenney Jam, VimJam, 8bits, 8 bits, 8 bits to infinity, Ludum Dare, Ludum Dare 47, LD jam, ldjam, gamemaker, game maker, gamemaker studio, gamemaker sudio 2

Id: 4_CwiaLW9Z4

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021