Permuter Retrospective 3 - Its shipped!
well its not shipped but its out in a week when steam lets me press the button, but you can wishlist if youd like! im doing literally 0 marketing because ive left most social medias so my marketing strategy is to Manifest it into peoples heads and then im assuming $1000000 will appear in my bank account a few hours after
🎉💥⚠️🩷 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3055780/PERMUTER/ 🩷⚠️💥🎉
wowww it actually only took 2 months instead of 3 months! this was made over 8 already-busy-ish weekends, so about 10-12 working days of time. making Permuter has been a breeze. i'm happy it's complete and shipped without much struggle, its got me feeling much more optimistic about gamedev as a hobby
ive made an effort to talk about my games more with friends & post about it more. ive always been a bit nervous to tell irl friends about my games but... they have been extremely supportive and have all wishlisted it >:3 DESPITE it being poopyshit
i dont have much to say, it's a simple game! i guess i'll go over my thoughts on how i made this project
one thing i took very seriously on this project was playtesting WITH OTHER PEOPLE
i playtested the 3-day prototype with about a dozen people, and every new batch of features i playtested again with another dozen. i released a shitty instantly-playable web version so people could playtest easier, and i took all feedback super seriously
playtesting has been completely indispensable.. it made me confident that my game was worth something, it showed what parts of the game to invest into, and what parts aren't working. lots of people had lots of different ideas, but importantly, when testing with a lot of people, you notice trends
ideas and criticisms are good, but they're naive to trust fully when the sample size is 1 Single Complicated Human Being With Unique Tastes.. but when everyone agrees on something, you can be confident that it's the right thing to do
another thing i took seriously was polish
making a polished game is a neverending pile of minutia that you dont really think about when you're making jam games for itch.io. like, i've never needed an accessibility settings menu for a jam game, nor had to care about controller support for menu-driven games, nor had to ever give a fuckkkk if the mouse is still visible on screen after you plug in your controller like what the hell josh from steam support like omgg who caresss
by making this game, i've learned a lot about polishing a game to a steam-acceptable standard, and the experience making it has been really worthwhile and id like to bring my other games up to this sort of standard. i think feel-good minutia goes a long way
also - in getting this game shipped asap - ive made peace with not including everything i wanted. ive scrapped a whole narrative idea which i was quite attached to. telling myself "ill save that for Permuter 2" has got me through this project and has prevented going too far into the pit of diminishing returns
i also tried to manage/produce this project better, primarily to prevent project-killing scope creep, but also to maximise how good i feel about progress. my #1 killer lately has been my mental health (which is crushing all of my hobbies atm) so making this as easy and feel-good as possible is a priority. this has easily been the best decision of the project
the #1 thing that helped my brain during this project has been this one gigantic Whimsical whiteboard where i track every stage of the project with kanban boards (i know its a meme but the physicality of it feels good) and have cute little progress bars for everything. every single task felt great to complete when i knew i could come back to my board, shuffle some cards to the "done" pile and inch the progress bar along. its a little instant gratification reward for my small brain. every little feature felt like real forward momentum! and even better, since it was all in stages, if i scope-creeped and had new ideas, i would put them into its own little block of cards. when the time came to start work on this block of cards, i could filter down to just the best ideas and discard the rest, and then strongly stick to the tasks that i chose
highly HIGHLY recommend setting up a silly feels-good system for your projects!! it sounds stupid but we're stupid creatures
but ya hm... my final thoughts on the game itself...
i think its a bit unimpressive. im a little embarassed that this is my Big Steam Project because i know i can do much much better, but i think that's a very natural feeling that artists have. it's bad, but it's real and finished
with this project being made so quickly, and with it being easy to manage and fun to work on, i'm pretty confident that my next project can be more ambitious
post-ship feelings:
mid-way through making this project, i made a love story about love which has felt like wringing my brain thorugh a wire mesh to get all the gunk out
i feel so much more secure after making this project and seeing the rly lovely reception (🩷 thank u). i think making it sorta re-centered my compass to the values i had before i started gamedev as a job..
i've realised i have much more fun if i dont think about an audience when making games or art
i mean that in many ways - i want to be more self indulgent with what i make, be less frightened of being authentic, but also.. i want to give myself permission to make some totally derivative trash game, because theyre fun to make!!! all of the design problems are solved ahead of time by other people and you can just focus on making it look and feel good!! Permuter was set out to be a completely shameless clone at first for the sake of shipping something without worrying about innovation, but i ended up meshing so many fun ideas together that it's become something a little bit more novel and stands on its own..
so in future.. id like to make something more open-ended. my greatest value in games is making something which lets other ppl express themselves. not even just in a minecraft-way, but like, fighting games are also quite expressive. id like to figure that out..
idk! ill keep experimenting, making more 3-day prototypes and see what's exciting
yayaya!!! thank you all for being so supportive of this game! its inspired me to take it easy, have fun, and scope very very small
have a nice one! 🩷
