I developed a game for week gamejam – PolygonJam #5 hosted by KTNG Polygon. The theme was “April weather“.
Actually it takes me about 2-3 hours to made it. It’s just a Fruit Ninja clone without a polish. So I was wondering if it worth showing at all. I performed it as a break from my current GameDevSchool game project.
But still, it was next lesson for me. Main conclusion this time was for me to focus only on most important features. Because it was really tempting to run into a problem while developing next feature. And then something really bad hapens. My focus was moving from bringing most value to game, doesn’t matter how (it could be something cheap as some design), to killing that little bug. I could say that I’m challange oriented person, who loves to solve any kinds of problems. It instantly throw me in flow state. But when you have not enough time, you definitely don’t have time to solve NOT THAT problem. Because there are more important issues and most time, they are not where you are focusing.
Best solution that I can provide right now for this is pomodoro technique (I wrote about it here). When I’m in flow, ringing of alarm wakes me up from dense focus. At break I have time to reflect about what I’ve done. Think about what’s important. If feature is harder than it seems before I could withdraw from it. And take up more important one. The project is like organism – always changing depending on environment. I we also should adapt fast to it. If we stay in this fast feedback loop (in earlier post) – we learn make things much faster.
Sometimes bug become better feature than you design. Use it well. Don’t underestimate it. It could be this special thing, that make your game unique and interesting to others. So don’t attach to your ideas and stay open for what it comes to you in any form.