Development of Witchy Woods

Retrospective

Since all of my current games originate from game jams, I figured it makes sense to write dedicated posts about the development of the jam versions, instead of just documenting the development journey of potential "enhanced" versions. I'm planning to do this with every jam from now on.

So, let's talk about the development of "Witchy Woods".

A new member

I often complain about how I'm really bad at drawing sprites and designing visual stuff in general, well, this time it would be none of my concern as I teamed up with a talented friend of mine who created all of the graphics assets and most of the story. She is also the one who designed my profile picture/logo quite a while ago.

Not having to work alone is great in general, even if it's just talking to someone while working on stuff, but talking to someone while working on the same project, with the same extremely tight deadline and the same amount of stress to get it done is amazing (never thought I'd say this).

It's a great motivation booster knowing that you're not the only one doing stuff and that there is a person dependent on your progress. Nevertheless, I think the 48 hour deadline for a first jam like this was a bit too extreme, maybe 72 hours would've been perfect.   

Technical difficulties

Right from the start we experienced some problems regarding Unity Version Control (UVCS), which is the Unity-integrated tool for version control. In total, we spent about 8 hours to get everything working, from auto login errors to package manager conflicts.

While I am really disappointed with how error prone and buggy this whole versioning system is, I still have to admit, that the time loss could've been prevented by just setting up the project before the jam started.

All in all I have to say, if you want to use UVCS, don't be as naive as I was in thinking that everything would go smoothly, it never does with any kind of versioning tool, not with UVCS, not with git, not with anything.

The outcome

Even though a lot went wrong in the beginning, I'm very pleased with the game we made. I also think that, aside from version control issues, working together went smoothly and development definitely benefited from the collab.

Will there be an enhanced version of Witchy Woods?

I can definitely see a lot of things which can be improved upon, game play wise I would've loved to add a bit more complexity and maybe different attacks for all of the gems. Multiple enemy types would also be cool.

But in general I think the game, as it is now, greatly benefits from having a very sparse game play, because with how short the game is, players wouldn't have time or reason to experience more complex mechanics. So If I added more stuff, the game, along with the story, would also have to increase in scope for the new features to make sense, which is quite a commitment.

Especially the fact that I haven't worked on it all by myself means, that if I wanted to make an enhanced version, that other person needs to want it as well. Smaller fixes/patches for the current version will be provided of course.

In short: It would be possible, but I'm not sure if I want to commit myself and/or my friend to it right now (or ever).