What I Learned from Making a Game in 3 Months | AstroClash Post-Mortem

I recorded a video going into much more detail on my YouTube channel!

In case you don't have time, here's the highlights.

Overview

Development started April 1st and AstroClash was released exactly 3 months later, on July 1st.  

The game was developed as a part of the 2nd season of Tiny Mass Games, a collection of small teams and solo developers from Massachusetts who are creating games with small timelines, focused scope, and big impact.

What Worked Well

• The Use of 3rd Party Tools
  Using tools like DOTween, Shift UI, and the All-in 1 Sprite Shader greatly simplified my workflow, sped up development, and allowed me to do more with less.
• Art Style
  I completely changed the art style 2 months into the project. This was a heavy lift, but shifting from my own art to premade assets from Synty Studios elevated the project and theme.
• Testing
  The Tiny Mass Games community was crucial in providing valuable and timely feedback to the project.

What Didn't Work Well

• Preproduction
  I did next to no preproduction on this project. I dove straight in without recording any of my ideas, without systems design, and without a clear timeline (except the deadline provided by TMG). This caused problems throughout all of development, from mismatched mechanics to cut content.
• Responsibility overreach
  For some odd reason, I decided I would do nearly everything on my own in this project. I simply cannot remember why I decided this: I've never even attempted something like it before. This is why the art style needed changing 2/3s of the way through the project. With the short timeline, I simply did not have the time to do the things I wanted to. This resulted in hours of wasted work on deliverables that I ultimately cut for better versions that would require less time from me (mainly in-game art and the UI).
• Testing
  While the feedback provided by the TMG community was very valuable, I did not perform enough testing to benefit the final product. I only did 1 round of testing, meaning the final iteration was an unbalanced game.

What to Change Moving Forward

• Utilize more 3rd party tools, specifically an audio manager.
• Spend more time on preproduction, with a focus on systems design, a development timeline, and recording ideas in design documents.
• Test more often and make testable builds a priority.
• Plan for less time, since I had less time than anticipated to work on the project over the 3 months.
• Polish as I go, removing bugs and adding game feel earlier in the process.
• Perform basic marketing, posting more screenshots on Twitter to share progress updates.

With all that said, I'm very proud of what AstroClash has released as! 

I'm excited to get started on my next project, with the incredible, descriptive, and very tentative title: "Project Vietnam." Another TMG game, this is an asymmetrical RTS game set in the Vietnam War. Balance military objectives as an American military commander with troop morale, local relations, and the challenges of fighting a guerilla war. I'm currently focusing on pre-production (specifically systems design), and you can say updated by following me on Twitter!