Post Mortem for Infinity as entry for #gjgdcjam

Jam Entry Page: http://jams.gamejolt.io/gjgdcjam/games/infinity/123977
Game Play Video by Selzier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqk_uGbtcME

Team
I am myself. Like always, I’ll manage every bit of the game.

Plan
The time is 2-5 till 2-8 which covers the lunar new year eve in China, which you got to spend the night gathering together with families. So I can take only 2 days, yet still enough. I am in UTC+8 zone, so I got two full days right from the start.

Theme
Theme is NUOVO which is not quite a theme. It just tells you to bing your most craziest idea and make it happen quickly (as it’s Jam).
And I always like the idea of recursive screens stuff. I just need to thought of a way to make it playable.

The Mini-game
The mini-game is a little twist of classic 8-bit block breaker. The game must be easy to implement and easy to understand, as the main idea is about the recursive screens.
The mini-game must also be able to play when rendered in small screen.

The Recursive Screens
You start as full screen, playing a simple mini game. But each level you pass, inside your screen there will be a man who is playing the minigame with a smaller screen. This goes on infinitively.

The Experience
Everyman in the game is facing a display and holding a mouse, and the real player is excaly doing the same. So I hope the player to feel that he is also part of the game.
That he himslef is the missing Level 1. (The game starts with level 2)
That the game is about him, that he is no longer safe outside the magic circle.
If the player realise this, game would feel a bit scary, a bit weird.

The things I could not do.
I can not link the outside of game with the inside of game.
Originally, I designed that smaller screen would have larger delay. But in realty, it feels really bad if there is any delay larger than a frame. So I removed the delay system for the minigame.
So, now even the recusive screens looks interesting, it does not affect the actual gameplay (which is bad design). Also, it feels bad that levels beyond 8 or so are not accessable simple because of the screen size.

I still believes there is potential for those screens to be designed as real good core mechanics.

Thanks for reading. Infinity is an experimental game, I hope you can have a look and BANG, get yourself some other idea. As the game is not about being fun, but being inspiring.