Hey Space Octopus Fan,

We are here today to talk about what it took to make this game and the thing that went well and not so well.

To get down to it, let’s talk about how this is the first game jam that we didn’t finish. We got really close, but ultimately we made a few key mistakes.

• We based too much assumption of what we did for Do You Copy?

• We used Unreal’s Media Player and Playlists for the First Time

• We made too much content

• Not enough one off Voice Over

We had a strong couple of previous game jams and it’s good to learn and grow from past experiences. This year we had a lot of new people, which was awesome. That’s part of why we do these is to bring people into the group and have people grow. However we didn’t do as well of a job to accommodate planning. We did a lot of work over that weekend, but we underestimated what it would take to make this.

This leads us to using new systems in Unreal. The Media Player is awesome but there were things we simply didn’t know. We used it because making characters is expensive and we wanted to try and record someone live to make up for that. In the end it prevented us from even packaging a build. Always be sure to know how to make something work properly early instead of waiting near the end.

Here is the funny thing, we actually made too much content. We built some good extensible systems and foundation for the game, but hooking everything up was a much larger task than expected. We just didn’t have the time to do so. Our content team did such an awesome job producing and we need to do a better job at learning when to start helping put things together.

We wrote and recorded VO like we did in Do You Copy? The main difference is that before it was fine because it was all responses to answers. This time it was to inform gameplay. So unfortunately some of the challenges are a little unclear. If we had one lines that said “Go here!” or “Look Here”, we would have had more tools to work with to help stitch things together.

So why did it take so long for us to release? The main thing is that the holidays and life happened. We didn’t have time to work on it and finish it. And then only a few of us were able to work on it at all. Eventually we got it all together and released, and it came out pretty polished. We were really happy with it. After watching a couple playthroughs, we saw a few small edits that could be done to help some things out. This is a big lesson here, always thoroughly test every change. Even though it did make things better, it broke the secret endings to the game. Watching that broken bug in a video was heartbreaking after making sure it was polished. Luckily it was an easy fix to update again, but it’s a good lesson than any little change can have massive consequences.

In the end, we are happy with our little game, and we hope you all have too. It was a great learning experience and really helped inform us a lot of how to move forward with Do You Copy?

If you want to know anything more about the development of this game or just have more questions, comment here.

Thank you for all of your support.

-Space Octopus Studios