Lavender Hollow was a game I started on the 1st of October, as part of three challenges: Gentle Ghost Jam, Cryptid Jam, and Devtober. As a wrap-up of Devtober, I’m making a post mortem, both of the game and the challenge! This is mostly a collection of my thoughts on keeping up momentum for the past month, and what I learned from the process.

What Went Right

First off - I successfully did a little dev every day! That’s 31 whole days of gamedev! I also managed to accomplish my goal of making a full demo of Lavender Hollow, start to finish, in an entire month. I think that’s pretty awesome in and of itself!

Lavender Hollow is a very narrative-heavy game, and so the part I spent the most time on was the dialogue system. I spent a bit hard-coding all the dialogue, but it was extremely time-consuming and hard to keep track of. Instead, I ended up using Ink, which was my first time doing so. I managed to pick it up quickly, and I was able to transfer over my existing dialogue framework to it without much trouble! That’s definitely what I’m proudest of accomplishing this month, especially because I plan on using this setup (or a similar one) in the future.

I also broke away from my mold this month, and used some free assets from Kenney.nl. I’m a very DIY kind of person, in games especially so, so I’ve never really used free assets, even for a jam game. When using my own art I tend to get too caught up in the visuals, and not as much in actually getting the base game down. The result of that is a demo that’s very pretty… but without much substance! This also means that I abandon projects a lot, because while I like the way they look, I get frustrated with the way they work. Using premade assets mitigates that, while still allowing me to make placeholders that look pretty! Lavender Hollow looks pretty alright, and it also plays well enough that I actively want to continue development.

Last but not least, for the final week or so I used a site called HacknPlan. It’s a kanban-esque organization system specifically for game developers, and while I’d toyed with it in September, I hadn’t actually used it until now. I don’t have a great track record with task management, but once I actually got into it, it was really nice to have a checklist and idea saver for the game! I’m definitely going to keep using it, and I’m only upset I hadn’t used it for the whole month.

What Went Wrong

A lot of this boils down to poor organizational skills. The first three weeks were pretty chaotic - I tackled whatever seemed the most fun in the moment, which led to a bit of a crunch in the last week. Don’t get me wrong, I think that having fun with your gamedev is important, but I want to try and direct that fun in more productive ways!

I didn’t have a set goal for the month, except that I wanted to have a demo with a graveyard, a house, and a few ghosts. I had no idea what that meant, or how I would get there. Scope crept out of hand pretty hard because I didn’t lay out any sort of framework, and I just winged up. In the end, I did have everything I planned finished… but I have a full ghost whose story isn’t finished, with no explanation! If I had planned better that could have been avoided, and I wouldn’t have to put a disclaimer on the itch page or in the dialogue.

I also spent a lot of time working on things that weren’t really necessary. The lighting, shadows, and day/night cycle in particular - I spent so long trying to tune the look of them, that I didn’t even fully implement a day/night cycle! It’s very pretty, but the day resets every time you go in/out of the house, time doesn’t progress while you’re inside, and nothing reacts to the time except for the lighting. I’m honestly surprised no one’s commented on how disjointed that part feels. If I had planned the features I wanted beforehand, I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to get it perfect!

Finally, I spent so much time working on my game that I neglected a lot of other things. I found myself crunching at deadlines for other non-game projects during the month, neglecting house chores, and whittling away at my health (mental and physical). It really felt like an extended hackathon, and not always in a good way. I’ve crashed pretty hard the past few days and It’s been affecting my November project, so I definitely need to get better at managing my time in that respect.

Tips for Next Time

Technically, “next time” is right now! I want to keep devving every day all the way through December, as part of the #100DaysofGameDev challenge. Still, here are my goals going forward:

• I want to set goals/soft deadlines by the end of the first week working on a project. This will keep me on track, and also give me a clearer picture of what the game I’m working on even is.
• I want to limit the time I work on the game each day, so I don’t burn myself out so hard. My goal right now is no more than four hours a day, which I think has a good balance of giving myself space without cutting my momentum off early. (I’m currently job hunting, so I can afford doing that much - I don’t recommend this time limit if you’re working!)
• I want to use HacknPlan from the start, and make weekly sprints with my goals for whatever game I’m working on! I also want to get better at documenting my work and ideas there, instead of dumping them all in a text document and on Twitter.
• Finally, this month I want to give myself some breaks by working on other games from time to time, not just my main project. Hopefully, it’ll keep my mind fresh and help with burnout!

Thanks for sticking around, and I hope other devs (and aspiring devs) can learn from all this! If you have any questions, about the challenge or about the game, you can always comment here or hit me up on Twitter (@CicadaGhost)!

Stay cool!
-Cicada