Devlog: Final week!

So I’m a little late on this devlog because quite honestly, not a lot got done last week on my part. Life still goes on even outside of game jams! Even though Frogmint has continued creating more spritesheets, my favourites from their most recently made collection is intended for the end of the game so I didn’t want to spoil it by sharing too much in this devlog.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to have the game- or at least what we’d planned for the game-  done in time for the jams deadline. However, one of the great things you can take away from game jams is to grow and learn from your mistakes for next time- and for me, it’s important to document this. Looking back, there’s a handful of reasons Canary & the Crystal Cave hadn’t gone to our original plan:

• Scope Creep

 Me and Frogmint has a lot of ideas for this game jam and given that we had roughly over a month, we felt pretty confident we’d be able to pull it off. However, as the deadline drew nearer it became clear to me I'd been way too adventurous and the closer we get to the deadline, the more ideas i’m having to reluctantly  sack off. 

• Lack of exp

• Timeframe

The only game jam ive been successful completing was two weeks long. So in comparison, over a month sounds like a crazy amount of time that I got way too comfortable with.

• Bad timing

As I said, day to day life and responsibilities goes on while game jams are running. As well as my full time job and family responsibilities, it ended up being an incredibly busy month of events and tasks that simply cannot be put off or avoided, naturally leading to less time for me to work on the game. I also didn’t realise when I started the  jam that RPGM MV seems to have a lot of issues on Macbook, which is what I was planning on using to make extra progress on the game during my lunch breaks. So instead, I had to wait to get home from work to use my Windows PC in the evening.

Not all Doom and Gloom

With all this being said, I am still doing my best to have something playable by the deadline on 7th May 2024. It’s important to share what we’ve managed to make during this time, no matter how unfinished the game may feel or look.  And if you disagree with me I’m just going to throw you a Reddit thread I've been reading to make myself feel better! :’)

If anything, I've had an absolute blast making a game with one of my closest friends, bouncing ideas back and forth and getting excited about them over the past handful of weeks has been so fun.  Plus I’ve learnt so much from doing so! And I think Frogmint would agree that they've improved at their pixelart craft so fast purely from this jam alone. 

Either way, we’ve both ended up creating the building block for a game we’re excited about and enjoyed making. There’s also the option to continue working and building on Canary once the jam is over, without the pressure of a deadline.

Thanks so much again for reading and for the kind words people have sent to share their excitement about what we’ve been making.

 All the best,

~ drunksylvari