Hi everyone! I’m writing up a quick post-mortem about my #glitchjam entry Tonetracers. If you haven’t played it yet, give it a shot now! It’s an abstract obstacle avoidance / race game, with four levels and a secret ending that I’m not sure if anyone’s actually found yet.

I placed #44 out of #94, which wasn’t as high as my other games so far, but considering I was in the top half I’m happy with that. Anyway, here are my thoughts, split into pros and cons. I’ll start with what I think went well:

1. The visual design was attractive, interesting, distinct, and easy to produce. I came up with a good color palette, integrated it into the level design, and took cues from everything from Pivvot and Super Hexagon to Star Fox. It also has a strong contrast with the glitchier elements of the game.

2. The glitch mechanic was easy enough to communicate and fit the theme well. Passing through objects is probably the best-understood glitch mechanic that you can think of, and I tried to build it around that.

3. I made a successful difficulty curve. The game becomes more and more difficult as you go along, both because the levels get faster, and because new, more difficult obstacles are introduced. I made it a point to introduce new categories of obstacles and show more and more difficult examples of each category, so you would constantly face new challenges. The very last one is my favorite - alternating bands of walls and glitch tiles in different configurations.

4. I also had fun making “moments” that were fun to experience. My favorite is in level 2, when you hit a bonus gate that sends you right through a channel dug in a block.

5. I got some great music from Jake Walters, whom I had the pleasure of meeting through Twitter. I’m one of the first #indieteamup success stories!

6. I reached out for feedback from Twitter and my local gamedev group. I didn’t have time to integrate everything that I heard about, but I made some improvements that definitely made the game stronger.

7. I was able to integrate cut scenes and multiple endings - in a slightly hacky way, but one which worked.

Now, here’s what I wanted to improve:

1. The split screen frankly did not work to communicate what I wanted to. Basically everyone who saw the game thought that you were controlling the left and right screens as well as the center, which isn’t the case. I might’ve been a little blinded by the technical challenge of integrating split screen, which is good for the future, but didn’t work for this game.

2. Remind me to never save level design for last! I had a generic “box full of stuff” level fairly early in development to make sure everything worked technically, but making the actual levels was one of the last things I did. This led to a moment where I was sure I’d have to seriously re-think my game - I realized I had to teach the player how to glitch through walls, but I also had to allow the other “tracers” to pass through without glitching! I got around that problem, but I don’t want to have to wait that long again to figure out if the mechanics I have in mind work.

3. I should’ve introduced the debugger (the box that follows you around) earlier. The debugger was more integral to the game itself - it’s the limiting factor on how often you can glitch, and it introduces the jail level that leads to the secret ending.

4. I should’ve waited to introduce the glitch tiles (you pass through them normally but crash if you try to glitch through them). The glitch tiles are less easily understood than some of the other game elements, so they should’ve been given more explanation. It would also serve the game’s narrative better. The farther into the game you go, the glitchier it gets.

5. The way that cutscenes were implemented was pretty hacky, considering it was one of the last things I did. I’d want to add a more robust system, especially if I start to do more cutscene-heavy games.

That’s about it for now - if you had any other thoughts, please let me know!