Color Thief Postmortem
Hey all! This is Team Gamer with our first blog post. We wanted to post our postmortem to share our thoughts and experiences working on this. So, let’s get started!
What did we change from the initial plan?
We started off with the prompt: A Palette of Possibilities. Unfortunately, we could not make a game about pallets and forklifts, but that’s okay! We started brainstorming right away.
Early brainstorming, the day we got our prompt: Palette of Possibilities
Like any beginner dev, we overscoped. We wanted combat, we wanted to drain the color from the environment to repurpose as actions and attacks, and we wanted to combine colors. We wanted to do a lot! But, we were all busy with school, work, and life. So, we had to cut down.
“Our initial plan was definitely more ambitious than what the project ended up becoming... We ended up scaling it down to three colors with corresponding physics properties that only have platforming and light puzzle applications, and I’m so thankful we did that because it made the project so much more manageable during a chaotic second half of the quarter.” - Thurmann
What went right with our final project?
There’s a lot of things that went right with our project. We’re all glad we were able to scale down instead of having to scrap the whole idea, for one. We were also able to implement the main mechanic we wanted to go for: using colors to paint objects, and having those objects’ properties changed based on what color it is. It was like filling up a toolbox to build upon, and we could always implement more upon it if we wanted to. It was an interesting experience with a lot of hurdles.
“We got our core concept across and we were able to make a game in a short amount of time despite all the different projects we were all working on.” - Ethan
Locked in: the final build on the day of presentations.
What went wrong with our final project?
Admittedly, a lot! When it all boils down to it, the main thing was time management. We constantly had to descope to account for the short amount of time we had. Our heads were in the clouds and it turns out: making a game takes a lot of work and time and is very difficult!
I don’t think the materials are supposed to look like this.
On a serious note, we could have planned things better. The production pipeline was spontaneous and chaotic and probably led to a lot more descoping than desired. Plus, there were some bugs we had to fix the day before and even the day of presentations. Learning takes time, and we didn’t give ourselves enough of it to make the game better. Nonetheless, this was a very opportune learning experience.
“Due to time constraints, more complex and interesting level design was not possible. The bouncing effect of the green color is something that I think would make for a great gameplay experience.” - Shuchen
“We had some minor issues with version control with us making multiple branches and afterwards having to worry about merging them together.” - Brandon
What would we do differently next time?
Nothing! (We’d probably allot more time to the project and plan around it more next time.) We tried our best on this project, and we’ll try our best on our next projects as well. Every game is a stepping stone, and we’re glad to have been able to make this game in an environment where we can make mistakes and grow from them.
“I live life with no regrets.” - Thurmann
“A concrete production plan would have done a lot.” - Vinh
If you could add one more week of development, what would we add?
We think we’d all like to develop the mechanics or the levels a bit further. A few more puzzles, maybe a few more mechanics or colors. With any puzzle platformer, there should be some scaffolding and difficulty scaling. Our game had one level per color, which is not enough time to properly introduce the mechanics to the player or create interesting interactions with our physics and our mechanics. But, that’s if we had another week.
“More levels.” - Team Gamer
That’s all for this blog post! We’ll be posting our playtesting feedback results and what we learned from it soon, so keep an eye out. Thanks for reading this blog and playing our game!