Nobody Suspects Me - Post Mortem

Hello. My name is Shane Krolikowski and I enjoy creating things. Video games specifically. This is a post-mortem for a game I recently created, Nobody Suspects Me. The project took roughly 30-35 hours stretching over 3 weekends for the A Game By Its Cover 2020 Game Jam. I get excited about Game Jams and tend to choose ones that last ~30 days. One of these days I may build up the nerve to do a shorter Jam (~7 days), but as of now I’m still practicing my efficient planning skills. Hence this post-mortem.

A Game By Its Cover is an annual, non-judged Jam wherein you choose a cover from the Famicase Exhibition website and create a game based on the cartridge art. I chose the following:

Nobody Suspects Me webpage.

Design Phase

I started my journey like I normally do. Jotting down notes and gameplay ideas on paper; playing with ideas of a spy/espionage game. Something where the player would advance the main character through each level, while remaining unsuspected. Using my past projects, I like to throw together a quick prototype bed to test ideas.

The first idea that came to mind was a rhythm game. The idea would be to make it through each level keeping a beat. Each beat would make your character do one of 4 dance move that will either damage or heal your Blend Meter. Once your Blend Meter reaches a certain point it’s Game Over.

This idea soon fell apart when I couldn’t confidently get the feature to work across platforms or computers and thought it would create more frustration than anything. It was therefore scrapped for a simpler idea, which I knew I could fit into the now shortened timeline. This idea involved collecting pickups to refill your Blend Meter. Also, the levels would be made in the form of mazes making it a timed-run type game.

Development

Specifically for this game, I wanted to spend more time creating assets, and less time programming. Assets seem to be the biggest influence on the direction of my games. If I can’t find assets that I consider would create a visually pleasing gameplay experience the game will most likely adapt to assets I can find. Of course, this isn’t desirablable and takes away a lot of the creative freedom.

After watching hours of Pixel Art tutorials, and reading several blog posts I decided to finally jump in and just do it. I spent a weekend + a few days using Aesprite for animations and Pyxel Edit for tilesets, I created something acceptable.

Lastly, I created 8 levels using Tiled. I’m very familiar with the map making software and tend to leave it as the last step. My process of creating levels has changed very little.

Things to Improve on

• More confidence in creating assets (e.g. tilesets, animations).
• Spend more time on building Menus.
• Better difficulty balancing.
• A more streamlined distribution process.

References

• Pedro Medeiros Tumblr Blog
• MortMort’s Aseprite Guide for Beginners