MGK + BiG BYTES Game Jam Postmortem

Bot Race Ranch is done!

Well, technically "done". There are so many more features and so much more content I wanted to do for this game. I still want to do it, and I very well may. But it's important to go ahead and say the game is done. Because truly "finishing" is an elusive and rare joy for me in game dev. 

So in the name of rejoicing in "releasing" a "finished" game, I'm gonna write up a brief postmortem!

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What went well?

• I made this game fast, which was awesome to be capable of doing. Although the jam went through pretty much the whole month of May, I only could personally allot about 2 weekends to this game. I'm so happy though that I was able to hit most of the bases that I originally scoped out when I had the idea for this game. This game is right in my game dev wheelhouse: Procedural low-poly art, animation, and levels, stat systems, and arcadey gameplay and progression. For me its so rewarding to feel competent and speedy in a software. I'm glad I can express my ideas smoothly. Makes it feel like all the time I put in with Unreal has paid off!
• I learned some new skills - namely procedural walking animation and cutscenes. Last time I tried to write code to do a procedural walk animation was two years ago, and it wasn't the best lol.. I'm so glad to have made a true walk cycle work with code!
• I met some awesome people! Melanated Game Kitchen and Black in Gaming Foundation are incredible communities and the other jammers, judges and organizers brought great energy to this event. I so look forward to participating in more activities with these folks :]
• I addressed the theme pretty well, in making a monster collecting game that tries to slightly subvert the colonial ideas embedded in the genre. I think the rancher/bot relationship in this game is a little more give and take than the trainer/monster or breeder/monster relationship in a lot of games. Your Bots don't take commands per se, you make their training schedule but its up to them to grow and pursue their own strength, and they also collectively work together to race on their own. My idea with this game was that you don't control them as much as you're a partner that helps them unlock their potential -- a lot like how a person works with an IRL trainer at the gym! I think some of that came through here, especially with the autonomous nature of racing + the dialogue you can have with the Bots. I'd love to take this kinda stuff further though.

What went wrong?

• I absolutely underestimated how hard it is to scale up content scope. What I mean by that is there are a good number of systems in this game -- bots ai, racing system, the building system, stats and moods... I'm good at building systems but I also wanted to scale up the content for this game. I had originally planned to make NINE different types of bots, but I only managed to make two! 😭 I thought that laying the foundation would let me scale up the content with relative ease, but the truth is I'm way more practiced with building systems that filling out games with content. An area to focus some growth on in the future for sure!
• Game development and iteration are really tightly coupled for me, but I didn't get the chance to iterate on this game much at all. The release version of my game is pretty much my first pass at it from a design perspective, because I didn't have time to do any playtesting or gather feedback. That's just a bit of personal disconnect for me on how this game was made with my usual practice, and I would've loved to do a few more rounds of playtesting & iteration with this game!

What more would I like to do if I could?

• Well as I said before -- playtest! I'd love to have ppl tell me what they think about the game and improve it from there. There's a lot of potential here and directions it could go, but I find conversations with others and playtesting too be the winds that determine the direction of that change. I'd love some wind!
• More bots! One of my big influences here was Tears of the Kingdom. There are a bunch of Zonai devices in that game that are pretty similar to the role Bots have in racing: Physics based vehicle parts. I'd love to play around more with the ideas presented there to develop more types of bots. A stabilizer? A piston? A connector? There are so many little toys we could make with these kinds of new additions.
• Work with others! I did this project solo (except for the awesome art for Minty that my friend Mia did on very short notice!!) because I knew my availability would be bad. I'd love to collaborate more on this project or something like it, especially with designers and artists. What kind of world is this game set in? What exactly IS a Bot? I'd love to answer these questions more deeply and tie them more strongly into the gameplay's core themes.

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And that's it! Thanks to anyone who read. 🙏🏾