Postmortem - After The Jam: Burnout, Rebound, Reconnection

Hey, Joey here. 

This is a reflection on how I felt after the jam, and what I intend to do moving forward. 

If you've ever felt burned out or dissatisfied after a project, isolated while dumping time into one, or just want an honest view into how things feel after a creative grind, this is for you.

For context, it might be helpful to read the pre-jam and during-jam postmortems, but I wrote this in a way so that it isn't strictly necessary.

Enjoy!

The Day After (Oct 1st)

It's the morning after the jam.

I didn't feel very positive about getting the game done, I was just thinking about how I needed to go and implement all the sprite expression stuff. Also, I felt like I should be trying to market the game and get more people to play it. But at the same time, do I really want to be funneling people into something that feels unfinished? This was very frustrating.

Another important thing. In the jam discord, it's common for people to be sharing their games, chatting about it while making it and after, playing each other's games, etc. But I've just never been someone who talks in big chats like that. I never spoke in there during the jam, and it does give a feeling of being left out, even though it is purely self-inflicted. Just send something, and all will be well.

Fortunately, I did send something on this day.

Notice how I framed it as improvement and getting it done. Nothing like "Hey, check out my game.", despite dropping the link. I wanted to shift the focus onto that and not the game, as it's really the only thing I could feel proud of. Analyzing old messages is an interesting way to get insight on your mental state in that specific time period.

It's also interesting, how this one self-reflective message made me feel like I should expand on that more, and now I have a 10k word postmortem series for this jam. The act of forcing myself to send a message into a group planted an interesting seed. It's made me enjoy writing stuff like this and will likely lean into that for future projects. I'll expand on this in a later section.

Something that I almost completely forgot I did, I clicked through the game, and fixed a few bugs that were super simple to fix. They were misnamed background files making it not load. Seeing those bugs in the v1.0 that the judges downloaded was very frustrating. I wasn't expecting to win, but I at least wanted them to play something presentable. At least, they are later in the game and don't crash it.

I also decided to make a devlog about it, I've never actually made one before, just did silent updates.

Then, a tweet.

They aren't super high effort, but I just wanted to put something out there. Put in reps, if you will. Work that sharing muscle. No more being apprehensive about sharing, and leaving myself out of things for no reason. It's time to start existing.

I really wanted to get sprite stuff done as soon as possible. When I say implement sprite expressions, I mean this:

Implementing all the show statements, which cause the character's expression to change. I'm sure there's a far better way of doing this, but I was too hard-headed to learn a better way, I just wanted to get it done the way I know how. 

This game has well over a thousand lines. If I want to make it look good, especially without CGs to rely on, the sprites need to change a bit with every piece of dialogue. On top of that, closing their mouths after the line if they opened it, and moving around based on the situation requires a lot of custom sprite positioning and transitions. 

I needed to have the game open and see how it all looks too, and combine that with my perfectionist nature, this will take an eternity.

With all of this stuff considered, while staring at this brick wall of a task, I just felt really bad overall. It's hard to explain it well, but it creates negative thoughts about how I did that are simply false. it also creates a cycle of getting a spark, then going to the computer to work, then instantly the spark dies, and now I want to do literally anything else.

I needed a plan to get these sprites done. I will never be content otherwise. It was not optional. The sprites that Apririnn made are the spine of this game's visuals, and I needed them to be used to their full potential. There are a bunch of different expressions and I needed to utilize them.

And so, I went back to my plan in the last rut: time blocks. Set a defined section of the game to implement sprites into within that time period. I did two blocks each morning (well, most) before eating. I personally find eating derails my focus, and I've never been a fan of eating in the morning anyway. Now, I have a plan.

An interesting thing about retrospection, even on days where you feel like you threw the entire day in the garbage, you can find some forward progress. I fixed bugs, made my first ever devlog, shared that Discord message and made a tweet, which sounds minor but for me, that's a foreign activity accomplished.

The Sprite Grind (2nd - 9th)

I woke up, and felt way better. It's interesting how that works, it's a brain factory reset. Now, it's good to go. Time to work.

I made a devlog to announce what I'm going to do, to force myself a bit. "Version 1.2, updated consistently, with expressions being slowly added throughout the game." Now, I have announced it to the world, and must do it. Public accountability. I'm sure barely anyone read it or cared, but still. And of course, posting works the sharing muscle again.

This ended up being a grind (the header isn't lying) but I just chipped away each day, until I was done. I won't talk about the process, it's boring.

During this process, I also did some tweeting. 

What did Lucy do wrong? In retrospect that's pretty funny. I really don't know how to tweet. It's a good show of the sprite stuff I've been doing though, making Lucy peek out like that was fun.

Now, it's the 9th. I'm done! 

The anchor has been lifted off of my abdomen. And now, I can go make my devlog saying I'm done, a Tweet, and announce it in the Discord.

I'm starting to get the hang of the sharing stuff, and it's worth it. Seeing people, even if only a few, give a quick heart reaction to my message, does a lot. It doesn't feel like I did something for no reason. 

Now, it was time. For the first time since before the jam even started, my first day off. Working is illegal. Ridiculous I went that long without one. 

But, I checked Itch.

Seriously? I cannot enjoy my day off with that bug existing. Fortunately, it only took 30 minutes to fix and upload v1.3.1. Feedback is good, I never would've found that. I broke the law and worked on my day off, but whatever. I had to.

Now for the not-working part of my day off, I went to the lake and walked around, and had a ton of ideas for a cool, future project. Letting my brain wander into new ideas was really nice.

Here's the pitch:

A palace sits alone, floating in the sky. Only clouds and the ocean are visible. Within the palace, a lone girl sits, with silver hair, and a dress matching the silver and blue colors of the palace.

She is sitting in the beautiful palace, completely alone. Bored. Lonely. Waiting for someone to take her away. But, will that ever happen? Eventually, she decides, no.

That's the pitch. I probably used the word 'palace' too much. I also need to integrate the idea of "beautiful on the outside, rotten in the inside." The rot would be her miserable psychological state, beauty is the environment. It would be nice to show some concept art, but I can't draw. You'll have to use my words to draw it in your own mind, or physically if you feel like it.

This is a devlog, not a pitch to a publisher. I'll leave it at that. I don't know when or if I'll get to work on that.

Writing Postmortems (11th - Today)

Writing about writing postmortems in a postmortem.

At this point, my routine of working in the morning within a predefined work block is etched in stone. Even if I really don't feel like doing it, it gets done. I went into writing them with that momentum. Every time I would get started, I got into it. It was a lot of typing, and a lot of work.

And don't worry, I only worked 6 days a week on this. I did mandatory days off each Friday.

I made sure to share each one in the jam Discord, which I believe caused it to get quite a few more views, since fellow jammers are most likely to care. I also posted them on Twitter/Bluesky. Each one got a like on Bluesky, but seemed to evaporate in the Twitter algorithm. 

I am glad I wrote them. Now I have more to show for this jam than just a game. I have a full experience to share. I know a casual player wouldn't read through it all, but I think fellow developers will appreciate it. 

Writing these was helpful to me, practicing long-form writing, understanding myself better by being forced to remember things, think about the "whys" of what I did. And I also aimed to make it useful to the reader as well, I wanted people to get some value out of it.

Something I plan on doing is going through all three, and extracting the valuable parts. This series was basically a mind dump, which was the easiest way for me to get everything out there, but isn't the most readable format. It's pretty readable to me, but maybe not to others.

The Future (Today - Forever)

Reflecting on the past without applying lessons to the future? Foolish.

But, I'm not fully decided yet. I don't want to go straight into another game. I'll do some writing on the side, but not towards any projects for now. 

What I'll be doing for the next few days, is playing and commenting on people's games, and checking out postmortems. A major thing I've been worried about is nobody seeing or giving feedback on what I did, so I may as well go do that for others. Also, it's really bad I haven't played any other games. I was just thinking way too much about my own game. Also, 250 entries to choose from is paralyzing if you overthink which game to play. I just got started yesterday, and I'll keep going.

Also, I should use Twitter/Bluesky more. I'm not following anyone, but I should go find people and interact. I'll need to figure out how to navigate it and find what interests me, and not get flooded with trending nonsense, I guess using these platforms is its own skill.

Anyway, to sum that up, interacting with other people also in this game development space that seem aligned with my interests is what I think should be my top priority. I'm kind of a loner. I think fixing that is more important than another portfolio piece at the moment.

Thank You Section

Big thanks to:

• Apririnn for the beautiful sprites that were the artistic backbone of this whole game. 
• D.ray for the atmosphere-setting music, handling the voice acting stuff, and helping recruit pre-jam. 
• Ellie Grace for reading the messy scripts and relieving my concerns about the story. 
• Miriam Lopez for saving it at the end with backgrounds, jam page, etc. 
• Soli Edna for bringing Lily's personality to life. 
• ESHA for bringing Lucy's pain to life. 

This is my first time writing out a full thank-you section. I've done credits of course but this is different. I think it's important, and I'll make sure to do it in every collaborative project moving forward.

Bonus: Postmortem Performance

Just as promised, I'm going to write about how posting the second postmortem affected my game's views and downloads compared to the first.

Here's a zoom on the part after I posted part 2:

So. Nothing really happened. But, it got 2 likes!

That's a first. It didn't get quite as many views, but it's a part 2, not surprising. If they didn't read part 1, they now have an investment to get caught up. That view to like ratio is much better though. Since the same thing would likely happen to part 3, I did some trickery and didn't put part 3 in the title.

Overall, the analytics show that the first postmortem might've pulled some people in, though it isn't certain. The second one didn't, I'm guessing a lot of the views were returning viewers from the first.

I do think writing something like this shows the more human side of creators and make them easier to connect to, but it's too soon for this postmortem to prove that. That's also hard to measure, you'd have to analyze things like engagement within their communities. Unfortunately, I don't have one (yet?).

End

I should go through these 3 postmortems and extract the good bits, it might be good Twitter material. This kind of long-form 10k word soup isn't for everybody. But maybe it is for you? You did make it to the end, and hopefully didn't skim too much. I wonder if you read all 3? If so, all this heavy typing every morning was worth it.

I'd recommend trying this kind of self-reflective writing, whether you're doing game dev or not. You could even try it with your progress in software, crypto scamming, or janitor work at Starbucks. And if you do, I'd like to read it!

Now, I'm banned from working on anything towards this project for 1 month minimum. Then I'll think about a Steam release with a more polished version, and definitely better death scenes. Making Steam achievements sounds fun. "Beaned" -  "You hit Lily with a can of beans! Jerk." (If you don't get it, go to the kitchen and experiment.)

This was my devlog series for the Forbidden Cellar. I hope you enjoyed! If you have any comments or questions about anything, please leave them below! I'd love to discuss my experiences around the jam.