Post Mortem: Lab Trouble

// 2022-12-26, 2 min read, #game design #lab trouble #post mortem

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I think most of what I'm unhappy with boils down to two things: I am not an artist, and this is my first game.

I am not an artist

While [collision detection] was my largest technical hurdle, creativity is just my largest struggle in general. From the level design to the bland visuals, as well as the simple sound effects and the lack of background music, it's obvious that I am not an artist in any way. It's something I've always lamented, and maybe doing simple game work like this can help me build some of these skills.

collision detection

The visual and auditory limitations of PICO-8 are what drew me in actually. A skilled artist can do a lot with the limited palette, limited sprite size, etc, but for a non-artist like me it's also really easy to put together some simple-but-good-enough graphical elements. The character, enemies, and sprites aren't anything special, but they are recognizable and easy to discern, which is a success I think.

This is my first game

It feels like it took me a really long time to get this game ready for publish. It was my first game project, and I learned a lot along the way, but it took me months to get from initial game idea to release. As a result, some things are rough around the edges. There's a weird collision detection bug I'm stumped on, for example. Or like gravity being a fixed velocity with no acceleration, which is something I've solved in a new prototype. Now I'm debating whether to backport that functionality to *Lab Trouble* or to just leave it as is and fix bugs instead. There's arguments to be made for doing and not doing big changes like that.

But where do I stop making big adjustments like that? Do I keep fiddling with the probability tables, or the way the door logic works? Should life ups no longer be an item drop, but gained after every maybe 10,000 points? None of that ever felt quite right, but making these changes would be changing the flow and functionality of the game post release.

This is my very first game and that is going to show. Which is okay, and future games will show improvement.

And perhaps it's unfair of myself and to myself to be bothered by the quality of my *very first ever* video game. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. And perhaps the biggest lesson I should learn from this game is that nothing bad happened when I released an imperfect product.

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