Tetrenga Retrospective
tetrenga was probably the best ratio of work to good response ive ever experienced with a game. it took a very-comfy not-crunchy weekend to make, and the feedback has been amazing. im so glad people like our funny little suika
the results were great:
we were in the top 10 most popular games in the entire jam,
and we came #33rd in enjoyment out of 7,700 ENTRIES, that is the top 0.4%!!
good grades for a jam this gigantic is definitely all luck and thumbnails, but if you're curious, here's a list of things i'm very very glad we did:
1. we ideated explosively
one thing i stand by is that the best way to get good ideas is to just absolutely fart out 50 very terrible ideas
this completely stops the "think of only 1 idea and then keep rotating it in your brain until it explodes in scope" issue. ignore judgement, ignore scope, ignore """"game design"""", just explode out ideas. if you have an idea and you think it's bad, figure out why it's bad and make a new version. now you have 2 ideas. shuffle your ideas, mash 2 ideas together to make a secret 3rd idea. make GIGANTIC leaps, don't stick around one place too long, and DO NOT think too hard about any 1 idea. don't try and mental gymnastics your way to justifying any idea - the reason you're making so many ideas is because you're fishing for what gives your gut instinct the best response. if you find yourself having to convince your gut about an idea, it's probably best to move onto making new things, your gut is usually right!
*(this is maybe harsh but.. this is also why ideas guys aren't very valuable, and why i don't really believe that a beginner artist's "dream game" would actually be their dream game. both groups of people usually have 1 idea that they rotate in their heads and justify to themselves, rather than truly testing their theories by doing the work, and finding ideas that are organically exciting through the process)
me and miredly both came up with >10 ideas each, discussed them, ranked them, mashed them up, split them in half. our best mashup out of many was "build a structure on a small platform and score based on how heavy it is". the game very very easily grew into the tetris/jenga idea with the risk/reward random generation. out of all of the ideas we had, this one just felt the most intuitive and air-tight, and we both felt excited about it and everything felt very natural. we already drew similarities to it and popular games like Suika Game, so we had examples to work from and a known audience
2. we scoped TINY
to make a game as fun as it can be, you really have to experiment. if you scope your game to the limit of your ability, you by definition don't have the time or skill to experiment. you WILL NOT get a game perfect in your first shot, you gotta give yourself a lot of breathing room to try out different stuff
to give an idea of how small we scoped, it took just 1 hour for miredly to make the core game. all we needed was the wobbly physics tetronimoes, the base to build on, and the zone at the bottom that restarts your game if a piece touches it
it was fantastic to have something playable so quick, because that meant we could spend the rest of the time experimenting, polishing, making art and menus. you have no idea how important menus are and how long they take lol
one thing im REALLY happy we got to experiment with is the randomly generated shapes. my original idea was for it to generate a random polygon, and you have to somehow incorporate it into the rest of the tower
miredly instead really wanted to have randomly generated tetrominoes, following the same formula of having a connected set of squares but just in a random formation. i was actually averse to this idea and i didn't believe in it.
"like, if they're all just squares, surely you could just stack them too easily"
i was absolutely wrong, having randomly shaped tetrominoes was far more fun
the reason this was more fun is because in the old version, it'd pretty much always be ultra-high-risk low-reward to try and stack a totally random polygon into your tower. miredly basically never pressed the button. i pressed the button at first, but found myself deciding against it when going for the high score, which basically meant i was just stacking regular pieces like i was playing regular tetris. the intelligent decision was to not interact with the mechanic at all
but in the new version, it's a lot more hopeful, reasonable, and high-reward. incorporating the strange shapes feels pretty similar to saving yourself when you missdrop in regular tetris. infact, the risk/reward ratio changes completely on the state of your tower. if you're on the brink of collapse you're definitely not going to try and incorporate a huge 32kg block into your tower lol
this random tetromino system was readable and made sense - this, the physics, everything about the game felt approachable and readable, people knew what they were in for and enjoyed it
my point is - im very happy and thankful we had the time to actually try out this idea rather than me not having time to implement it and dismissing it at the ideation stage, or dismissing it due to sunk cost in the previous polygon system. our game would have been far, far less fun if we didn't give ourselves time to try out new things :3
3. we added a gorl
im so happy we added tetrenga-chan!!! she was inspired by Rhythm Heaven minigames and Nintendo's Nikky from Swapnote
it's a small detail, but having her there made this game more emotionally interesting because there's a girl Live Reacting to the stuff you're doing!! if shes nervous im nervous, if she gets happy because you saved your tower or integrated a super heavy piece, it feels nice
idk if this is just me, but she makes the game feel less like an abstract shape-puzzle game, and more like you're building an actual tower. the tower feels physically there, in tetrenga-chans world, and she's watching you piece it together and is cheering for you. ok i may be going insane do you understand what i mean
4. we didnt do pixel art
im quite happy with the art on this one. it feels a bit soft and approachable, like a medium-budget mobile game of olde a la Cut the Rope or Suika Game
we were originally toying with the idea of making it look like Money Puzzle Exchanger for the Neo Geo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnZAy_CNlA
i don't know if this is even partially the reason it was so pupular, but a lot of people really, really dislike pixel art. even beautiful, masterful pixel art. often, even the crappiest vector graphics would get the popularity vote over good pixel art, and i'm still not sure why. i straight up do not share that same taste, i don't understand it, but it's something ive witnessed and keep witnessing
(i actually wonder if it depends on if you were brought up on rasterized retro games vs vector flash games? i grew up with the SNES so i love some good pixel art..)
i've always drawn pixel art as a creator because it's a very helpful limitation to stop yourself adding infinite detail, and its far easier to make every asset of your game harmonious, and im far more attracted to that harmony than i am to high-fidelity
BUT, drawing scribbly high-res graphics in this style was SO much easier than drawing pixel art, and some players felt that the game was higher quality for it. maybe i should try it more...
but yeah!
im just happy with tetrenga! its teeny tiny, it was a lot of fun, and i'm very proud of the results
for most of my jam games, i ask my friends to play it and they play it for that evening and they're very lovely about it - but this game was one of the first times it sprung a life of its own in my friend group. so many friends would join call like "toffee ive been playing this game for like 4 hours"
even weeks later - people are STILL playing and are posting their high scores and screenshots
its incredibly flattering, this has been a huge success, and im very proud of this project & honoured to have worked with miredly on it!
