Shiny Gauntlet, The Postmortem
Shiny Gauntlet is a Dungeon Hack n Slash, Bullet Hell, Rogue-Lite Adventure. In which you select your champion and explore the Gauntlet, collecting weapons, enchanted rings, bottling and/or consuming the mysterious remains of defeated foes. Its the fourth game that I’ve completed, and the first that has received any notable monetary compensation. This compensation, while small, marks this project as a success in my eyes.
At the time of writing it has been approximately 6 months since the game was released on Steam and a whopping 1 year 2 months since its official release on the Humble Store & itch.io, October 1, 2015.
Its fair to say that enough time has passed in order to disentangle the complex emotions that accompany any personal project.
What Went Right?
Visuals
While not especially polished. The visual presentation fit with the original idea of the game while being simple enough to allow for rapid iteration on a number of ideas and design configurations. In this regard, at least from a development standpoint. The game suffered from a lack of “juice” and would have benefited greatly from more detailed animations and greater polish.
Experience Gained
Over the course of this project I’ve gained a tremendous amount of understanding of the ins and outs of the game development cycle, specifically with regards to Marketing and Distribution. The concept of “SHOW YOUR WORK” has been deeply entrenched in my mind.
What Went Wrong?
Gameplay
I tinkered with player movement, narrative, and gameplay objectives extensively through out the course of the games development and it shows. I attempted to incorporate too much into the final design and so some (see: many) gameplay elements do not mesh together as well as they could have.
Feedback integration / Marketing
I was inundated with feedback and criticisms. While invaluable and assisted me in refining my game, a few of them made a few especially mean jabs at my self esteem. As I started sharing my project the rose tinted lenses cracked and fell away. I was confronted with the flaws in my ‘baby’ and grew disenfranchised with the project overall. This resulted in my lapsing in promoting the projects and interacting with players. I needed to get feedback sooner, to head off these flaws, and develop a more objective outlook overall.
Conclusion
At the end of the day I am very proud of Shiny Gauntlet. In my opinion I succeeded where a number of other game dev’s have failed, I’ve shipped. I cant wait to apply what I’ve learnt to my next project.
