Postmortem

My game, Quantum Quest, represents me well as a game designer because it highlights where my skills are best applied, which directly influences the player’s experience. I’m particularly proud of the character's movements in the game—they are highly responsive to the controls and look aesthetically pleasing due to the animations I created for the main character. This reflects my strengths as a game designer, as I excel at creating player mechanics and matching animations to player movements. I take pride in crafting seamless movement, making this a central piece of my portfolio. While developing my game, I also learned a lot about design practices and time management. I found that I focused too heavily on one area of the game, like the character, which took time away from level design and art. This experience taught me that balancing time across different elements of a game leads to a more cohesive design. If I had spent equal time on art and level design as I did on character mechanics, I believe the game would look more visually appealing and feature a stronger storyline. To describe my design process, I organized my work into “sprints.” Before development began, I created a game design document that outlined the main details I wanted my game to have, along with the tools I planned to use. Once I chose an engine and solidified the concept, I started organizing my work by sprints. Every two weeks, I set a personal sprint deadline and aimed to complete the tasks on my checklist to stay on track with the game's design. However, I realized that this process doesn’t always work perfectly. When developing any game, it’s essential to account for potential bugs and other issues that might disrupt timelines. This experience taught me to dedicate time in every sprint for playtesting and troubleshooting to catch problems early. Many times, I found myself stuck for days on one issue, which would throw off my entire timeline. In hindsight, dedicating time to troubleshooting would have saved me from delays and allowed me to create a more polished final product. Despite my success in the game’s movement and animations, there were also unexpected challenges. Art turned out to be a major obstacle for me. Although I’m not bad at art—I paint and draw by hand regularly—digital art is one of my weaker areas. I scrambled to create textures and backgrounds that would make the game look polished, but ultimately, the art didn’t turn out as I had hoped, which was disappointing. This was especially surprising because I had a clear idea of the map layout, and the character movement worked well with the game concept, so I expected the art to be the finishing touch. Unfortunately, the visuals didn’t meet my expectations, making the game feel lower quality and sometimes visually confusing. Another unexpected issue was random errors in Unity. Although I have a strong grasp of programming and Unity, I frequently encountered compiler errors that added significant time and caused delays in other areas of the game. As I mentioned earlier, I should have set aside specific time for troubleshooting and testing, as I believe this would have saved me time and led to a more complete final product. I think that, to address these unexpected challenges, I need to focus more time on areas where I struggled, ensuring these issues don’t arise in future projects. Now that I’ve gone through the full process of creating a game independently, I feel more equipped to handle these kinds of problems in the future. In conclusion, I learned a tremendous amount from this project. Developing a game from start to finish on my own has deepened my understanding of game design and boosted my confidence as I approach my final courses as a senior. This experience has also prepared me to face similar challenges with greater knowledge and improved strategies.


“I do not wish to include my game in the class itch.io collection.”