The Way Home Post Mortem #13
Week 13 was a busy time for both the game and myself personally (due to unexpected sickness) - luckily things have now mostly wrapped up, after a scramble to finish playtests. Much of the week was a rush to implement feedback from about two participants each - a group ranging from friends to siblings who had never heard of the game before. Going into playtests we'd completed levels 2 and 3, both of which explored different concepts and themes - 2 was very puzzle focused, with the twist of needing to dodge a large enemy rat. 3 on the other hand, was almost entirely exposition and narrative focused, which felt like a good way to end out Bean's journey.
The results of playtesting were both surprising and expected. Playtesters quickly found issues and gave feedback that the team had never considered - things such as how it wasn't always obvious that objects could be used as platforms or clicked and otherwise interacted with. This hammered home the value of playtests being able to point out simple features and QOL improvements (such as automatic highlighting on interactables) that were simply skipped over because it was 'obvious' to us how things worked.
Overall the experience creating The Way Home was illuminating. I got to work in a group with other people sharing similar passions and collaboratively worked on a shared vision for a game. Being much less directed then previous endeavors in the class, I found it very enjoyable to go for a more unconventional spin on things learned in class - namely, the game's focus on the story of Beans finding his way home. While it didn't quite cover the depth of story I might have hoped for, I learned much about everything from Gdevelop, teamwork, playtests and just game development in general. Moving forward, I feel that I could do a much better job the next time around - always, in my opinion - an important feeling to be able to take away from any project.
Something I hadn't expected this semester was how much I've enjoyed writing this blog. While not always my best writing, expressing myself in a more personal first person perspective has been very different to anything else I've done at uni, expanding my horizons and comfort zone as a writer.


















