Here is the post mortem of Save My Dears. It’s not well structured, but neither was Save My Dears! It’s just a reflection on ways I messed up, things I did right, things I wanted, and such. It was kind of hard to write because Save My Dears had more time spent in Libre Office then Unity or Visual Studios. Also! A downloadable PC build is out now!
The goal of Save My Dears:
To make a game in 3 days, get back into programming, and understanding Unity.
Goals met:
Get back into programming and understanding Unity.
Goals failed:
To make a game in 3 Days
Why?:
I was supposed to make the game in 3 days. I made a lot of progress in 2 days. However, I got distracted by my then weekly D&D campaign and was burnt out on writing. So, I would stay up till 5 AM working on the writing and then spend the next night fixing what I wrote the night before.
Ultimately this was a shit way to work on a game. To make actual progress I just wrote mindlessly and ignored grammar, spelling, and only cared about basic continuity. This led to me being able to write the 4 paths in a week. This took a week because again I was writing from 2 AM – 5 AM.
Finally came the editing. The editing was done in 3 days and maybe a total of 5 hours.
What I would do different: Not write at 2 AM – 5 AM. Jesus did that ruin me. Being able to think clearly and writing not insane gibberish that I had to decode later would be way better. Editing a sane thought is much easier.
I would’ve made a schedule to mark my progress.
Give Heather a personality. Half of the time I’d write a section she was supposed to be alive in and then forget,because I was writing at night. So when editing I hastily added her.
A flow chart to help organize events. This forced me to write very linear. I would come up with ideas, write them down somewhere, and then wait until I got to that scene to write them. Writing linearly is pretty terrible.
Write a clear project scope so I do not expand outside of my time restraints.
Things I did right to help me with my goals:
I cut the daughter from the game. I hadn’t named her. However, I did give her the personality of the dismissive teen. Had she lived she would’ve been more grateful for her family and if Ethan died demand revenge. The funny thing about cutting her is she was the only person to have a personality. The reason I think cutting her helped is because adding her added another section to all other paths, a path of her and Heather, a path of her and Ethan, and a path of her and John only. So, this cut a lot of writing.
I created numerous documents to manage the story splitting paths. This helped me focus solely on a path at a time. So when I was writing path B I could only focus on path B.
I wrote the path where everyone lived first. I then branched off and wrote new paths based on this path. Writing the true ending first gave me a better idea of how to continue the other paths.
Features I wanted to add but didn’t:
Mouse and touch controls. This might happen later.
Randomized story to where the order Ethan, Heather, and daughter appeared was different on each play through. This was cut because while it would’ve been cool I feel it would’ve ruined the flow of the story.
To play like Zork instead of 1-3 keyboard choices. With Zork you move North, South, East, West and do actions. Like Climb tree, cut rope, etc…. This would’ve made it more of a game. In the future I plan to make a text based game like this.
Features I liked:
Going back to the screen you died on despite it not working at launch. I liked this because it was just a time saver. You could choose to go back or you could start over. It saved only 10 seconds but that’s 10 seconds!
Inspiration:
This was a online class assignment. That is why I made it. Originally the story was about confessing your love to someone. It would’ve ended with you getting a date, rejected, or arrested. I couldn’t think of much to write about with this version. So one night I was looking at a pack of batteries and I see two deer leaping. I thought they were leaping to kill. So, that’s how Save My Dears came to be.
Originally Save My Deers was supposed to be like a total of 8 scenes. I expanded to 26 in the true ending path with the lowest amount being 8 in a path. This is without counting the death scenes. It grew and I thought I could contain it. Whoops.
Technical mishaps:
I forgot to include going back to the scene before you died because I did all of that at 4 AM.
Finances:
I dunno…. My electric bill? So like… $13?
Return Investment:
$0- Free tech demo. I just hope someone liked it. If one person enjoyed it then I’ve met my return investment.