Paper-Dev update

My concept for Paper-Dev was to make a game in the style of a children's pop-up book that introduced players to the different disciplines of game development.

After participating in this game jam, I was left feeling a bit conflicted. I had definitely given myself a massive challenge doing my 1st game jam solo with very little programming and game design experience under my belt. It was a crucible of fire though and I learned some valuable lessons.

During the process, I focused on making nice art assets in a charming hand-drawn cutout style using Clip Studio Paint and Blender.

I was happy with the aesthetics and the concept, but I struggled a lot implementing features and bug fixing.

The build of the game that I submitted was missing some important features, like a pause menu. Some of the mechanics were broken at the time too, such as the enemy ai, the player not taking damage or respawning, leading to players getting soft locked if they fell off the platforms.

I decided to go back and work on the game some more after the jam and managed to fix these issues and add some much needed polish. The game is now in a much better state and I'm much happier with the end result now.

In future, I will be much better prepared. Even though this was quite a difficult challenge, part of me can't wait for the next one.