Hey folks, 

The Game of Fourtune has been out for a while now.  So I figured that this would be a good time to chat about the game as a whole, what I think worked well, what I think could've been done better, and what I think I really should've fixed up in some better way.  I've got a lot of thoughts that I'd want to share.  In hopes that you'll understand where I'm coming from as well as for myself so that I know what I can do to make things better.  Even if this is my first game, I'll admit that there were things that I was hesitant to act on just because I didn't feel like it.... but hey, you live you learn.  So let's get started.

What Went Well:

• The Story:

The story of the game did change a fair bit since its first inception.  There were a few changes here and there but I think that the general plot and how it was delivered through all the routes I think was well received.  Which is great in my book since I was worried that people might rag on the kind of story that I wanted to tell and use each character route to explore the complex relationship between events and characters that they themselves didn't even know about.  

• The Characters: 

Similar to the above point, from what I've gathered many people seem to really enjoy most if not all the characters.  Not that each one was perfect, but they each filled their roles out well and were well-received for what they were meant to do in the story.  Each character has at least one person that has a favorite and as a writer, I'm glad that not one character seems to be extremely disliked.  At least, not disliked on the bases of bad writing, more so that they just didn't like what certain characters did.

• The Music and Implementation:

This is a big one, lots of compliments for the music and soundtrack for the game.  Like really, I will never stop complimenting Jeff about how amazing he's made the music work for the game!  And from what I've heard from various players, they really loved the music as well.  And I think that I did a good job at placing the music where it needed to go and using the soundtrack to the best of its ability.

• SPEED:

This is a more personal thing, I think that I did a good job with going at a good pace for scripting out the routes.  I was usually able to script and functionally test in about 2-3.5 weeks depending on the route in question.  Which I think is impressive speed considering the nature of each game and then having to script out the audio, sprites locations, and other details and also making a few ending screens and such.  Of course, such speed comes at a cost in focus and uh... other things, but we'll get to that later.  All the same, the speed let me get the game out in what I'd consider, a reasonable timeframe. 

• General Art:

Sprite, CG, and Background Art all came around at a pretty reasonable rate and all with very high quality.  Especially considering the volume of art that needed to be there for the whole game.  I'm proud of all the artists that helped make this game possible, and a lot of the charm from some of the game comes from the unique backgrounds for the setting.

What Didn't Go Well:

• UI Implementation and Adjustment:  

Let me preface this by saying that I enjoy the UI that I was provided with and that Re: Alice did an excellent job making some of the UI assets that made their way into the game.  What I mean here is more of my lack of planning on what should've gone into the UI itself and how to make it better for the player.  Text sizes, text blocks, the history screen, various buttons, there's a lot that we're currently sprucing up that I could've adjusted for earlier for in the general UI if I decided to put more effort into it.  Just to make it more lively, more impressive, more polished.  While we're making it better now, I just wish that I could've done more to make it more palatable earlier and is something that I'll certainly be more aware of in future projects.

• Typos... grammar... typos... Typos... MORE TYPOS...!:

I'll say that my speed with writing and scripting came at a cost to... accuracy and there were a number of typos and grammatical errors.  To an extent, the volume of text within the game means that there would be an inevitable amount of typos here or there... but the amount was still a lot even with a number of my beta testers and editors looking through the script.  Even now there are still a number of edits to make.   A slower approach would make it easier to prevent these from happening, that or possibly writing the script in a text editor rather than in the actual game editor would probably help a ton more.   I feel like it'll always be a unique flaw of mine but I could try and be more careful of it in the future.

• Scope Creep & Unplanned Design:

There were a few features that weren't part of The Game of Fourtune's initial design... but that I figured I might as well pop in because hey, why not?  It's the classic story of scope creep.  This is most notable with the profiles and flowchart sections of the game.  The profiles didn't have much work put into them at first, and then when I later tried to expand on it... the whole t thing became a sort of mess that didn't really feel all that useful for the game itself.

The flowchart on the other hand seems like something that should've been part of the design from the start.  It's crazy to think that a game with this many routes and branching paths didn't have something like this at the start.  I clearly wasn't thinking right with this one but it became evident that I needed to have something like this to make playing the game as smooth as possible.  At first, it was a rather clunky setup but it was functional.  But I had to spend a bit more time and money to make another flowchart that looked presentable with the UI and had to find a way to fit it in the game in a pleasant manner.  Ultimately, what I have works, but I still feel like it could've integrated it better and designed the game with a more unique flowchart appearance.

• Demo to Full Game Issues:

There were a few issues with the players who moved from the demo/early access version of the game to the full version.  To the point that it messed them up in being able to get the true ending... which is a pretty sad thing to mess up on.  Luckily it's cleaned up now, but dang I really wish I didn't have that mess to worry about.  Plus there were some other bugs that came in through adding in a few potential fixes... which in turn made more problems.  I will certainly be more careful about that in the future.

• Route Locking:

Initially, I didn't want to really lock players out from various routes.  I tried writing many of the routes in a way that they would feel independent.  That you could enjoy each route for what it was without it ruining the story or spoiling the others too much.  However... it seems that quite a number of players ended up going through routes that I imagined would be played later and ended up spoiling quite a number of other routes in a way that didn't really feel satisfying.  In some cases, some players were playing some of the later routes right after one another, I figured people would jump around the flowchart more but it seems more often than not they preferred to go down a particular branch and explore all the options in said branch rather than explore in a breadth style.  Which in one particular case could lead to problems... so ultimately, locks were added in a couple of routes to help the flow of the game.  

The Uglies?

These are things that aren't quite good or bad but just provide a unique challenge for development.

• The Cast and Route Size:

The unique challenge of having a cast size of 16 characters and getting routes that highlight most of them means that there was just a lot of writing that had to be done to give each character a chance with the spotlight.  I think that I did a good job at that, but it certainly was a challenge in being able to show off each character using the flowchart system.  I planned early on how the routes would be structured, but there was still the issue of having to make each route unique and entertaining.  Plus, balancing out each character's appearance was difficult at times.  Some characters appear more often than others in games while others get much less time.  While I think I did a good job, I think that I could do more to have balanced things out a bit more.

• Presentation

I think that overall, the presentation of the game is good and solid, but I think that there was a lot more that I could've added.  Camera movements, adjustments to text, sound effect usage, special effects... another thing that I'd like to have done is make more of the games a bit more engaging.  Though, that would've been extremely difficult due to the sheer volume of the games within.  It's something I'd want to play with some more next time.  Something to bring it up to the next level.

So yeah, while we're still updating and adjusting the game, these are the thoughts that I've had and I'm certainly going to be more thoughtful when I go about devving more games in the future!  But it was an amazing experience, and I'm extremely happy that I was able to learn a lot about the development process with this game.