Not without flaws — prog.1 postmortem

It was a haze for the past couple months working on prog.1. Part of me wasn't sure if I could even finish in time and part of me thought I was "basically done". Boy was I wrong about the latter.

I find this (probably false) quote from Leonardo DaVinci "art is never finished, only abandoned" to be extremely prevalent in my life. I lock the doors and toil over a piece for weeks, whether it's a painting or design, website or game. I get about 90% done and then something happens. I assess. I stop. I procrastinate. It's this last bit that always gets me. When the piece is say, 50% done, you can look at it from afar and see its potential, you're excited to see where it goes. You're solving problems, making progress. But once the end comes into focus, I fear. I fear it will not be good enough. I see all the things I did wrong so long ago that it becomes too late to go back and fix. These issues eat at me and drag me further away from the project just because "it could have been better".

And it could have. There are things I wanted to do with the game that I never got around to or didn't fit into my schedule. The game grew organically into something I really liked, but was not prepared for. Had I known I was going to have images during the voice acting parts I would have started on that a long time ago. There are a few of these cutscene images I'm proud of, and a few that I wish I could disassociate with my name. But alas, I had to abandon some things for sake of time.

I really wish I had allowed myself room for more levels. As I got near the end I had all the pieces to make 30 more levels with new obstacles and enemies. But since I decided to tell a three act story over the course of the game, and I needed 2-3 drawings for each scene, I simply did not have the time or resources to do this.

Even though this was a personal project, I still wish I would have had some sort of team. I had a lot of help from friends on suggestions and playtesting, but as I progressed through the game I realized that I'm really not that great of a level designer. This was a huge problem because the game was ABOUT the level designs. I enjoyed making the tools and coming up with small puzzles to sprinkle over the levels, but overall there was just something missing. I wish I could have had someone who really knew what they were doing in this regard.

All in all I'm glad that it's over. There were a couple days where I woke up at 4pm and thought "forget it. I can't". I would be drawing or coding and thinking that all I wanted to do was a different game. But somehow I willed through it. It was one of the first times in a long time that I really felt like I was doing something substantial. Something I could proudly pin my name to. That mindset allowed me to push through the hard parts. I was making this game for an audience, sure, but its a game that I wanted to play. A game I thought was interesting and fun. No matter how the game will be perceived by a general audience, I will still be proud of it.

I plan on revisiting the prog concept again some time in the future. With more time and thought put into the level designs, obstacles, and enemies, I feel it could really be something special. But for now. I'm moving on. I have a few exciting projects just waiting to be worked on and I can't wait to get started.