Day 4

Overall, I think this was a productive game jam. I had a lot of fun even when the jam was much shorter than my usual jams (I had effectively 2 days to conceptualise, prototype, and publish the project).

There are certainly some aspects that I would have hoped to improve upon, such as the mistake of not correctly measuring the map with the camera when setting up zone transitions, or stubbornly using coroutines when I had little knowledge of it compared to something more familiar like Lerps. But in the end, I learned a lot about adapting and working under pressure, and the added limitations helped highlight those skills.

Several obvious improvements would be some proper UI designs, and better clarification of rules and mechanics in-game; I don't think I managed to explain thoroughly how combat works in-game, forcing the player to experiment with tough enemies to identify the limitations of the player within the system. I would also benefit from more time to select a proper BGM that is not commercially protected. I understand I took a risk using Deltarune's licensed soundtrack, and I would try to have more royalty-free options on hand for jams like this (or perhaps Kenney would be gracious enough to make more audio loop packs with serious/combat tones).

I feel like this project has potential to be developed as a small demo or prototype for a larger project. Aside from UI and audio, the project has enough modularity to easily scale, while still having room for more mechanical additions such as power-ups, character and monster animations, dynamic spawning, and even monster AI instead of active player hunting. If time permits, I would love to bring this project up to alpha, and perhaps get enough interest to possibly develop it with a commercial incentive.