Postmortem / Retrospective Meeting - Teddy Gainz V1

Game Maker Version 2.3.5.589

Agenda 

Welcome back! It’s Egg-cellent to see everyone! 

Best feedback you have gotten from friends or family who you shared TG with? 

• Overwhelmingly positive feedback in general 
• Dialog boxes with a picture of the character would help clarify who is talking 
• Smoother level transitions would be less jarring 
• People think our game is really cool! 
• Very difficult 
• Difficult in a good way / motivating challenge 
• People love chicken with arms ( we do too)
• Friends and family love the art, love how cute teddy and thicc and the realistic bugs
• People love the contrasting art styles  - v charming 
• Fun game 
• Partner kept hogging computer to get past the puzzle level! 
• Shared it with a speed runner, they found a bug to glitch through ‘the mario brothers bug’ refine the glitch (to by pass the too high stair) 
• Level 3 - because its difficult and you die early on you only get to hear the start of the music and not the whole song, maybe we could have the music play continuously instead of restarting the song when you die 
• The characters for this game are cute, thicc is wearing pants, teddy is not wearing pants, what happened?

Go over Itch Game Jam Results 

https://itch.io/jam/themed-horror-game-jam-2/rate/1259335 

 4th overall out of 19! Not bad! 1st in many categories!! 

What if anything didn't go well on the project?

• The way we scoped the project could have been better. At the end of the day we needed to cut more/ smoother way to build the game. (not sure how to solve) 
• Looking back now maybe we should have scrapped the end or made level 2 the end of the game instead of scrapping level 2 (this created more work in the long term) 
•  Was the work load too much on any individual team member? Lets make sure we have a realistic deadline set for the future scope. (if we are not submitting for a game jam we can make the next parts of the project at a more relaxed pace) 
• The last week was really tough with the game jam deadline 
• We are all new to making games. 

What if anything would you do differently next time?

• Better crumble down plan 
• Unified musical direction and sound theme (similar instruments in each level, overall theme) 
• Would love to have a single level sample web version of the game (may need to be a separate build) 
• Missing a full screen option? (how to make it full screen? ) 
• What is our max resolution? 
• Volume control for music and sound effects 

What went well?

• Production went well, having things organized. 
•  Meeting break down was good 
• google calendar was helpful 
• liked being able to attend other teams meetings if you needed to 
• like the discord and how we utilized the discord 
• liked team responsiveness 
• loved being able to get asynchronous input between teams and team members and make quick decisions on the discord 
• comms was effective 
• choice to use game maker (beginner friendly program) 
• art was fantastic, whole team loves the art and seeing the art assets added to the game 
• the game was fun, it feels smooth, the controls are good. 
• very positive team 

What are you especially proud of?

• The art assets created for the game jam 
• People with little to no game experience made a game (a beautiful and well put together original game) 
• Goal of going into the IGDA Foundation program was to learn about games, and this project was a great personal kick start. 
• Seeing the fruits of our labor and our people enjoying it
• The narrative part and the ending
• Thicc “you were really brave and that's what makes you, you” 
• Proud of narrative ending, able to put things I am passionate about into shape with words. Possible because our team did amazing work. 

Anyone(s) on the team you specifically want to praise or give a shout out to? 

• From - to - 

• Ricardo - hats off to the production team and everyone else too! Thank you for keeping us organized! 
• Cindy - shout out to the art team for always being in communication with cindy. Really happy working together and bringing everything to life 
• Kenna - rika thank you for all your hard and meaningful work on narrative 
• Amber - Design team, big snaps to learning a new program and creating the puzzles and the designs 
• Cindy - thank you for teaching me how to use git 
• Kenna - Ricardo for doing all the design and dev work AND writing an original musical composition for the game 
• Rika - Ricardo thank you for making it happen! Thank you for working on bugs quickly! Very impressive and super reliable 
• Rika - Kenna thank you for bouncing ideas with me. 
• Kenna - Cynthia, Anfer, and Dawn thank you for coming to our meetings at off hours and sacrificing sleep and work time to work on this project <3 

Schedule discussion for when to work on Level 2

• Ricardo planning to bug fix this week while on holiday in US 
• Estimate a 3 month deadline for level 2 
• Excited to do carnival stuff 
• Cindy is busier over the next 2-3 months
• Look at what needs to be done for level 2 (full MVP and scope) 
• Bi weekly goals/ deadlines 
• Kenna schedule a kick off for level 2/ next 3 months   

Friend and family playtest 

• Kenna create a when 2 meet and schedule this video call social event 

Marketing

• A thumbnail? (banner on itch Io page) 
• A website 
• A linkedin project blurb 
• A playable web demo 
• A logo 
• A making of video (kenna) 
• Polish trail

 future goals for the project

• Clean up what we have right now, smoother and more presentable 
• Fix bugs 
• Unify sound design 
• Full screen option 
• Volume control for sound effects 
• Design a custom font for the game and marketing materials 
• Address the teddy doesn't wear pants and that thicc is wearing pants in dialog 
• Design a logo 
• Work on translation and localization (rika, japanese, what other languages and who to help?) 

MISC

• Platform that would work well, mobile? Feels like a game to play on the subway. 
  • How do we accomplish this? 

- like that the music plays in the pause screen