Jam Retrospective and What's Next

Thanks to everyone who played my game during the Jam. It was great to get all of your feedback!

Here's a quick point-form summary of what people noticed needed improvement:

• in game tutorial
• improved ui
  • feedback for moving/placing parts
  • inventory slots
  • generally hard to figure out what to do
• update instead of replace sale items
• music "would really elevate"
• speed controls
• wish I could save
• visual differences in machines

None of this is surprising, and almost everything was on my list of "corners cut" for the jam timeline.

By far the most complaints revolved around it being difficult to figure out what to do and how to do it. The interface really isn't built with usabilitiy in mind, and I'd definitely like to rework it with more natural controls - drag and drop, visual indicator and so forth. I did add a text tutorial to the game page to assist with navigating the current UI. I don't think I'll add anything in-game until I'm satisified with the interface.

In addition to the feedback, I noticed a few bugs over the course of the jam:

• lighting included in models by accident
• out of space (destroy machines?)
• ghosts might get stuck (I've seen this but can't reproduce...)

Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll be able to start to address some of this. I'll probably fix up those bugs, and get some music in there first of all. Then I'll move on to whipping the UI into shape. For now I'm going to treat speed controls and saving as nice-to-haves, but I do hope to get to them eventually.

I'll likely make a few smaller updates to the game as I work along here, and I'll post a "Major Update" when I've taken it as far as I really plan on going.