Postmortem - One year of gamedev

Hello friends, people I met this year, or anyone else who has stopped by and is interested in the gamedev topic,

I decided to write this post to reflect on this specific game/jam, but also on what I have learned in this year of 2024.

Background

Although I have been working as a software developer for a long time, I consider this my first year as a hobbyist gamedev. I started testing Godot at the beginning of the year when I decided to participate in GWJ 69.

The theme was "void". Many ideas came up, but I really wanted to make a garden game, and given my little knowledge of Godot, I could only make a very limited version of it.

During the review phase of the jam, although I had finally finished a project, it was clear that it was still a long way from being a fun game, and actually matching the theme. The game got the 14th position.

In the months that followed, I participated in practically every GWJ (Godot Wild Jam, a monthly jam), I even got first place in one of them, and among the top 20 in many others.

Winter Garden

It's now December, the jam has started, and the theme this month was "freezing", but I really wanted to make a garden game again, I felt that this time I had the necessary knowledge of the engine to make something closer to what I dreamed of at the beginning of the year. The theme would fit better, and the mechanics would be more fun.

Winter Garden was without a doubt the project I put the most effort into polishing, details, art, sounds, etc. I worked on it for 9 days in practically all my free time after work and on the weekends.

As the deadline approached, I began to realize that, despite the advances to its first version, at the beginning of the year, the same problems were present. It lacked fun, it lacked objectivity, and even the theme that I thought would be super simple to fit in, was nothing more than a mechanic that could easily be removed from the game without affecting its concept too much.

The last few days were a bit melancholic, I forced myself to keep working, but I didn't have much hope that it would be that much better than the old version I had made.

The jam ended, the reviews came in, and finally, the results. Although many people liked it, which made me very happy, the problems were repeated, practically all of them, and the game ranked 13th, 1 position ahead of its first version.

Well, although this is far from bad, it made me think a lot about game design, about how technical improvements don't necessarily make a game more entertaining (which is the ultimate goal of a game, I believe), and how big the gap is between what we imagine and what we actually manage to turn into reality.

Conclusions

I think that's it, I don't want to make this text too long, I don't know if anyone will read it, but I definitely want to come back here at the end of 2025 and reflect on this with a fresh mind.

Thank you to everyone who read or participated in some way over these months, whether by reviewing or submitting their own projects that opened my mind to what is possible to be achieved with this incredible technology.