Post-jam update

The $108 Adventure Game Challenge is over, and the results are in! The game tied for first place in the best visuals category, thanks to the beautiful work by Ben.

I didn’t want to say anything while the voting was active, but now that I can, it was a close call to the end. I submitted the game at the last second and ran out of time pretty badly. I’m happy with how the game turned out, but I’ve taken it offline to fix severe bugs and finish some small sequences and missing dialog.

I had a lot of fun working with Ben and Grahf on this project, but there were a few surprises that came up during the development:

1. The theme was extraordinarily challenging and very specific, and we wanted to create something with a meaningful tone. It took us several games to get this right.
2. Time zone: The team (Ben and Grahf) and I had a 12-hour difference. I would spend a few minutes of my morning before it was bedtime for them. Then, the cycle would repeat in the opposite direction. This meant I had to take a lot more responsibility than anticipated to put the game together, and I was unprepared for that.
3. Adulting: I have a lot of other responsibilities (family, etc.), and it was challenging to juggle. I’m not the same person I was years ago when I could put my full time and spend long hours perfecting a little game on my own. Ben and Graph also had full-time jobs, and their time was limited.
4. Random life issues I’ll spare the details, but random emergencies took some of us out during the development.

What’s next?

I hope to re-release a bug-free version by the end of the year and on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, web). It will remain faithful to the game as submitted to the jam. I had a lot of additional ideas, but I will save them for another game.

-Edmundo