Hello all. Connor Meislahn here, back for one last update, perhaps the most important one of all: the Postmortem. I'll admit upfront - I've been given a prompt to follow for this postmortem, and a lot of the questions seem bizarre to me in the context of game-making. Nevertheless, I'll answer them as best as I can. Now, on with the reflecting!
Where am I now?
As far as working on Robotley Crue, where I am now is... to be honest, disappointing. I think one of my professors put it best: "It's a neat concept. I just wish you'd come up with it eight weeks ago." Indeed, the product we ended up with is very impressive in concept, but with such a short amount of time spent working on it, we simply couldn't polish and refine the game or its mechanics to our liking. I am impressed with what we managed to get done in such a shot span of time, but... well, I'd be lying if I said I was proud of it. But I can put that behind me - I'm now going to work on Radiant Ronin (previously Kanji Samurai). I'll admit - it wasn't my first choice of game to work on. But that's where I've ended up, so all I can do is the best I can do.
How did I get here?
It was a troubled road getting here, I'm not gonna lie. There were many bumps, many team disagreements, and ultimately the scrapping of everything we had worked on for the first eight weeks of the semester. I may not have been a fan of the decisions, and I certainly can't say they were the right decisions looking back, but they were the decisions we made. All I can do now is make sure we don't make the same decisions again. If we can avoid it, anyways. But I have faith that my new team will be able to avoid the mistakes of my old team.
What did I do?
As I mentioned before, I did what I could with the time we had left. In the beginning, I fought for the ideas that I felt had the most merit. Later on, I did what I could to shape the mechanics for someone else's design. I tried my best to make interesting patterns, engaging gameplay elements, and whatever else I could to make this four week game into a success. And while it may not have succeeded, I certainly did everything I could. And, of course, I did the music. I don't think it's my best work, but it's still something I can be proud of. I learned a couple tricks that I hope to bring over to the new game.
What does it mean?
...forgive me, professors, but this is the one question I don't think I can answer. Making a poor game doesn't need to mean anything beyond "you made a poor game". It means that the development process was troubled at best. It means that mistakes were made. It means that we'll try to avoid those mistakes in the future. It means that switching projects halfway through the semester probably wasn't the smartest call. But that's all. It means exactly what it says it means - nothing more, and nothing less.
I suppose that's it. Thank you all so much for following this journey.
Take care.
