It’s been about two months since Derelict was officially released. It’s time for a debrief. I’ve posted it on here and on my website. I’ve also shown it at my uni, on Reddit and many people got to try the game. The most common reaction is the curiosity and surprise when I say I made a game, or when they saw the installation was playable. Games aren't common in my uni. People generally made compliments afterwards, about the ambiance or how fun the cat is. But I’m not sure I achieved exactly what I had in mind. So, what worked, what didn’t? It’s time for a postmortem.

What I’m happy with

I shipped a finished game! Okay the bar is pretty low on that one but  I’ve never done anything like it before, so I want to congratulate myself for all the achievements. Temptation to give up was constant, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. So it’s not a given to finish a project of that type as a beginner. I’m very happy I was able to push through and to keep my motivation up.

The overall ambiance of the game is a success. It looks fairly absurd and eerie. There’s a bit of discomfort that’s not really in your face. It is balanced with the colourful patches on the floor and other surfaces. A big part of the immersion is due to Geoffrey’s sounds. I’m so happy about the coherence the sound adds to the experience. I don’t know how much you notice it but trust me, it’s a night and day difference before and after adding the sound design.

I managed to add some accessibility features such as subtitles in 3 languages and key-binding allowing people from different regions and different keyboards to play. The UI is basic but works well and is functional.

The writing is fun. It’s a bit absurd and I had a ball writing simple things in a very strange way. Thank you Meagan for proof reading and making some ideas more compelling.

I think if you like exploring and don’t mind some frustration, you’ll enjoy walking around and discovering the few places that have been built (cinema, underwater, buildings, elevators…). I personally enjoy exploring a game and wonder what the people creating it wanted to communicate.

On a personal level, I learnt a ton of things and enjoyed the process of trying things out to see what effects it had once you test play. It is a little bit of a dream come true, even if the game is far from being perfect or even very interesting.

What I’m not so happy with

Overall, I think I’ve been indecisive about the whole project. At first it wasn’t meant to be a game with classic FPS controls. It was more planned to be a visual installation. But it drifted little by little into a game. It made it harder for me to make important decisions about what I wanted to say through a game. That’s also linked to the fact that I have next to no experience in game design, level design or writing. So it was hard to know what features to prioritize, and what features to put in at all. Which leads to the 2 following problems:

1. Some things in the game are just there because I randomly put them there. Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn’t. Like the fact that the supermarket’s name is in French, or these horses that are confusing everyone. Why? Because.
2. I spent a lot of time on features that were not important or crucial to the game. For example the subtitles. I think making the game accessible is a great thing, but the priority should be put on making a good game to begin with. It means focusing on narration, tone, gameplay and level design. Making it accessible should come after that.

I worked mostly alone, and it’s okay for a first game where you learn along the way. But it’s nuts, and I wouldn’t do it again unless I really knew what I was doing. In the future I would maybe buy more third party code  so I don’t have to code everything myself. Or have more team members. It would allow me to get better code overall, but also to focus on other things so that I can have a more meaningful impact on, like art direction or game design.

I don’t know that the level design is very good. I tried to make it somewhat open so I didn’t take players by the hand too much, but every time I watched people play I thought they were going the “wrong way”. It triggered in me a sense of amusement, and I think some amount of frustration is okay. But also I worried that they would just get bored because they weren’t going in places that were intended to be visited.

Although I like the writing for the choice of words and the text in general, I think I could have been a little more creative with its treatment. If we imagine that aliens discovered the Earth as a derelict planet and found some remains of humanity, it would have been logic that they make many mistakes in their interpretations. There was a lot of potential for humour, or to angle the content more towards alien phenomenology from Ian Bogost. It might be one thing that I regret the most, the final game feels a little bit shallow in its intentions. While it’s good not to take the player by the hand too much and let them connect the dots, reducing the wrong things may be detrimental for the final piece. I think I was hiding behind that as a way to avoid criticism or failure. But again, I didn’t take the necessary time to write, because I also needed to code, find/make 3D models, model the terrain, record the voice, translate the text…

In a nutshell

I have mixed feelings about this first game. I’m happy I made it and I’m proud of myself for finishing it. But I’m not super proud of this game, especially when I look at how much effort I put in it. I don’t want to be too mean to it or to myself, and it’s important to remember that a first try is always a way to learn and a base to build on. But I feel like I cared too much about the finished result. I spent a little too long polishing it, and could have finished it sooner to start something new. It probably would have been better for me to learn.

As a comparison I feel better about the VR installation I made with fellow students called Room 37 in the Chelsea hotel in Cologne. Even though it was less refined, we focused more on what we had to say and we worked as a team. I feel like the ratio between the effort put in to make the VR installation and the quality of the result was more balanced.

That said, I’m looking forward to making other interactive things and seeing where it leads. Some ideas are already buzzing in my head, and I can’t wait to see how to put them into playable things.

It also made me reflect on video game as a medium. The industry is getting bigger by the day and with it more diverse, which opens the door for indy games and people using the medium as an art form. Still, it is a new media that has very strong codes. People associate all sorts of ideas with it, which puts a barrier between potential players and the game. Connecting with it requires a certain equipment both in hardware and in playing experience. Not everyone gets it and sometimes getting a hold of a controller is already a block. As a comparison, most people who come to exhibitions know how to approach installations, videos or paintings. The same can’t be said about games. I think I expected it to be easier to access, which may have been a bit naive. Something to keep in mind for next time.