Today is the big day. The demo of our game is being published on itch.io. This is a huge milestone for the team, and as with any huge milestone, it becomes time to reflect on the project. Here’s what the team had to say in response to these questions about the process:

Questions:

1. In your opinion, what went right?

2. What, if anything, do you think went wrong?

3. What would you do differently?

4. What did you like/dislike about the process?

5. If you could change something about the process what would you change and why?

6. Is there anything you wish could have been added to the game that we didn’t have time for? Or maybe something you would like to add in a future version/patch?

Answers:

Devin – Systems Designer

1. I think we managed to get a ton of stuff to fall into place in the last couple of weeks. The game has a really great feel to it now.

2. While there are definitely some places we could polish and some rough edges to smooth out, i feel like overall we achieved a ton and there isn’t really anything in the game that disappoints me

3. I feel like there was a stretch where a lot of other stuff was catching up to me and I didn’t manage to be as productive as I could be.

4. I think we had a great system down by the end, everyone had a good idea of what needed to be done and what they personally needed to do. 5. I think we occasionally had a habit of going off on tangents in the middle of important discussions.

6. A sandbox mode after you win where your only goal is to stay alive and cleanse as many corrupted circles as you can.

Yincheng – UI/UX Artist

1. I think the basic structure goes well and finished. Art is good.

2. Maybe the game play, current gameplay still too short.

3. Improve UI.

4. I like how we deal with the problems. We have three meetings a week and try to share our own concerns about game.

5. We could pay more attention on the design doc and gameplay.

6. Multi Ends, more creatures and more sophisticated eco system.

Alex – Project Manager

1. While a little slower than desired, I think the design process went extremely well. Every meeting was on topic for a majority of the meeting, and the ideas brought up were discussed in an inviting and accepting environment, which really benefits the process. 2. We had a lot of crunch work. I should have pushed everyone a little hard each week so that we avoided the heavy crunch here in the last two weeks before publishing. Thankfully we have some incredible members who dedicated as much free time as they could to this game. 3. Like I said before, just pushing for that little extra each week. In addition to that, I believe that I should have tackled issues in the team earlier than I did. I was a slow on addressing issues with resulted in lost time.

4. I enjoyed most of it! It’s all a learning experience, and I believe (or at least hope!) we’ve all learned a vast amount from this project and from working on a team. I’ve become better at managing people (although I can still improve) and I’ve also become better at managing my time. Now if only I can learn how to manage the stress haha 5. I needed to be sterner with my teammates. Everyone had times where they would become lax and that’s when I needed to jump in and really crack the whip and make sure they don’t slack too much. Obviously, everyone needs a break, but there are times when people took too long of a break. 6. Back in extremely early ideas, we had potions as an additional way to manipulate the ecosystem. Unfortunately, with the main system already severely complex, the potions harmed more than they helped; throwing an additional system in that just confused players more in the end. I’ll admit that I’m a little bias to the potion idea, since I spent time creating and balancing it haha

Nick – Narrative Designer

1: I think we managed to keep ourselves in scope throughout the project, and have been really good at keeping each other accountable for our tasks.

2: We definitely didn’t do nearly as much marketing as we should have, or at least not for as long as we should have.

3: Being trained as a prose writer, I wish I’d thought more critically about the differences between long form prose and game dialogue during the earlier drafts of our tutorial. I’d also have started up marketing and building hype around our game from the time I joined the project in August, or have it started earlier.

4: My favorite part would probably be seeing our efforts come together piece by piece.

5: I would definitely have made marketing tasks higher priority, as I think that will be one of our biggest struggles upon release.

6: I’d have liked to put in more interaction with the Fox Familiar, or any other characters, as the world has very little in the way of others to talk to. I’d especially like if you had conversations rather than a simple tutorial.

Jeff – Concept Artist

1. I think we really plowed forward and kept cranking out work at a good pace, and that enabled us to release on time.

2. There was a lull where there was a LOT of programming work, but not a lot of other work, and I think the rest of us started to rest on our laurels a bit and let the programmers go nuts when there was more we could have done.

3. I would have tried to hunt up more work during the period when it was mostly programming.

4. I enjoyed seeing the process of UI development, because I never really knew how that worked. What I didn’t like was eventually I ran out of concept art to work on (which is natural), so I tried to jump into some other roles instead (which was a positive experience).

5. I would have liked to have done more UI work because that looked really fascinating.

6. I would LOVE to see more biomes/zones in the future.

It seems like overall everyone is happy with the results of the project so far. If you would like to download the demo version of Witch of the Woods, please visit https://druidicllc.itch.io/witch-of-the-woods