PostJam - Postmortem

Hello there, I'm using this Devlog both, to share my stuff and a sort of postmortem to PiP & PoP, this little game I made for my first game jam ever

The details of how i started are on devlog 1 and my feelings about the end result are on devlog 2, so if you're somehow interested, give them a read.

that being said I'll take this opportunity to show my concept doodles of what I envisioned the game to be

first off level design

so here are some doodles I did for level I didn't get to make, but they followed the same logic of the ones I could manage to get in (I can't find the other pics I took), so early on developement I decided to limit my space to a 9X9 grid of tiles and scribbled some signs to later know where certain thing should go when I need to assamble a level, things like, circles of Square to determine where I wanted my characteres to start the level at; little mechanical doodles for movable platforms and 'X' for the objective point, you know because X marks the spot. you can also see a little tile with some notches on it...

which brings me to my characters design

so I began with the upper left guys you see there, which ultimately became the final rendition of PiP & PoP, but I wanted them to have a cooler design, PiP the square guy, would have been this sort of blocky golem with an unfitting name, since day one I had this idea of having pop standing on PiP regularly so PiP's design revolves around having a flat platform on his head for his partner to stand safely. as for PoP I thought of bubblegum, everytime i said or thought of the name I could hear a gum bubble popping in my head, that's why I picked pink for PoP's Color; I ddin't know if I wanted PoP to be a she or a he, and so far the last concepts show him as a he, but if I ever work on this later, that might change, who knows. if you play the game you'll quickly notice that PiP can only walk, while PoP can jump around.  I thought, that's lame! the level design will be shaped by these factors,  asymmetrical gameplay tends to favor certain characters, if you can barely do a thing with a character, then what stops you from just using the other one. so I thought of giving PiP the ability to move boxes around

*these are the afformentioned tiles with notches*

which unfortunately had to be cut as I couldn't implement the mechanics in time, but the concept is there, have pip move boxes and traverse hazardous spots while PoP jumped around on every safe platform, I think that would add some variety and an extra layer of complexity to the levels.

my major obstacles where both, trying to amke this by myself while being rusty at Unity, but like I've said on previous devlogs, it sort of unlock a new way to see things, my ideas where goal oriented and not some vague whirly wisps floating around, "what should I do to make this happen" was the only thing I could think of, and that proved to be good in a way. What I'd change is maybe try  to work on a team, while my ideas are fine to me, sometimes yo need some outside feedback, also having talented people working with you would make some things easier..

In conclussion, while I couldn't make the game I envisioned, I still think this was fun, and I'll definetly gonna try to do it again.