As I said, I wanted to do a Post Mortem entry about this game. It has been a really hard-working and stressful week, but it was worth it.

I really like reading this kind of entries, it as always interesting to know how someone achieved something, how he did it, what he worked with, what was and are his though about it after finishing it… and, while I was working on this game, I thought that it would be a good idea to do a Post Mortem of it, telling everything about the making of the game. If it is interesting for me, it is surely interesting for others too!

First of all, I started my game a bit late, three days after the start of the contest, so I had 7 days instead of 10. I was not in the mood to start a game the first days, I was a bit lazy and depressed. It semmed like I couldn’t think about a good idea for the theme (“Chaos”) and I have that inevitable fear to the empty canvas. I didn’t have an idea, I didn’t have the motivation to start it… I was a bit upset.

But my girlfriend and family encouraged me to start a game, at least to try it, and they were giving me a lot of ideas and support, and it really helped me. I didn’t realize how important it is, because then, I started the game very motivated, but without a clear idea.

Anyways. To keep me focused on the game, I started to streaming everything I do. This was completely new for me, but I really enjoyed the experience, and there were some cool people that watched me! It really helped me in being productive, I didn’t loose my time in other things that were not related to the game.

I kept very motivated all the coming days. I started doing some graphics of the main character (that will be called “IAD” later, it stands for “Internet Addiction Disorder”, but I use it as a name). Then, I hold on some time to think about the game, to do some sketches and planification before starting the programming of it.

I came with two ideas: First, I wanted to add humor to the game. I usually want to make games that can be played by anyone, even kids, so I never add blood or that kind of things. On this game, there are some references to the violence (IAD wants to kill everyone, what do you expect?), but it is a “harmless violence”. When you defeat an enemy, there’s no blood, there’s no scream coming from the enemy.

So, when you hear about the theme “Chaos”, you come up with something awful. Well, the “Chaos” in my game is on the story, no one has internet, so everyone goes mad (and specially the main character) and goes out to the streets, making them a chaos. There’s no awful scene or story, there are some people that got mad, and they are causing the chaos in the streets.

And, with the humor, it is clearly on the enemies and the way it is all made. There are some internet freaks in the streets, like geeks or Star Wars’ fans. Well, I wanted to add some more, as cosplayers (I even have them sketched and planned) but I didn’t have the time to.

And, the second idea. I wanted some arcade features in the game, to make it more enjoyable. I did it, adding scores and a counter that works exactly the same as the old Super Mario Land for the Game Boy, one of my all-time favourite games. I think these features add a lot to the game.

As I didn’t have a lot of time, I did a platformer game. It is one of my favourite genres and I did some platformer games in the past, so I have some experience. I even shamelessly copy some codes of an old platformer game of mine!

It was my first time using Game Maker: Studio, but it was not really difficult, as I have some experience with Game Maker 8.0. I had some problems with the new audio system, as well as a new release that I had to downgrade later, but not big problems.

For the graphical side, I used Macromedia Fireworks 8, as I always do. It is a really old program that belongs to Adobe nowadays, but this old version works faster and better for me. And the Adobe version is very expensive, I can’t afford it. I don’t need anything more sofisticated, so I stay with the old version. This program is designed to be used for web design. I normally use it to design websites, but when I need any other kind of graphics, I use this program too.

For the sounds, I just use some free sounds that I found over internet. There are some others that I made with bfxr.

The awesome music was made by Jacobo Cáceres. It was made in a very short period of time, but he comes up with some awesome chiptunes! And they fit perfectly the game. You can hear some more tunes of him here or here.

And, after some days of working, I finally finished the game. As I said, I’m quite happy with it, it is enjoyable and fun. I really appreciate the support of some people, I know that their opinion is subjective (They will always tell me that what I’m doing is really nice, and foremost, they are not players) but it helps sometimes to hear nice words about what your are doing, about that thing in which you are spending lot of time and effort. Thanks you again!

And, that’s all. Thanks you for your reading, and I hope you like the game! :)