Ninth Alchemist (game#9) postmortem
There was a moment near the end where I felt a bit defeated. I thought to myself, this level is a complex little knot. It's awful, and not good. I need to design a new level with simpler mechanics.
But... I tried, and took an hour or so trying to design a "good" level, and it ended up feeling like a... a very very linear puzzle. I was extremely not into it. In retrospect I had erroneously ascribed my bad feelings to the complexity of the game - there were doubts, but the bad feelings came from that attempted second version. That, more than anything else, had felt like a creative failure.
Anyway, I'm really happy with where the game is at now. It's tidied up a bit, but it's still the same complicated little knot of spell ingredients, the same little problem-solving maze, that it was always meant to be.
There was a moment near the end where I felt a bit defeated. I thought to myself, this level is a complex little knot. It's awful, and not good. I need to design a new level with simpler mechanics.
But... I tried, and took an hour or so trying to design a "good" level, and it ended up feeling like a... a very very linear puzzle. I was extremely not into it. In retrospect I had erroneously ascribed my bad feelings to the complexity of the game - there were doubts, but the bad feelings came from that attempted second version. That, more than anything else, had felt like a creative failure.
Anyway, I'm really happy with where the game is at now. It's tidied up a bit, but it's still the same complicated little knot of spell ingredients, the same little problem-solving maze, that it was always meant to be.