Post-mortem

Since completing this project was a personal milestone for me, I wanted to take a minute to talk about how it shaped up the way it did, and what I plan to do with it next.  

The Point

First of all, what was I trying to achieve with Tower of Metal?  I don't really consider this a "prototype."  It's a complete and finished game, and I don't intend to significantly expand or overhaul this specific campaign in the future.  I do however intend to use the framework I've built here as a base to build bigger, better RPGs.  That's where the "Zero" comes in.  I hope for this to be just the starting point.  I've tried to get M&M off the ground before, but failed for various reasons.  A two-month jam seemed like the right motivation at the right time to actually finish something, even something small.

Scope

Two months is pretty long for a game jam, but I wasn't sure how much RPG I could actually fit into that time frame.  I've mentioned before that the Tower of Metal concept has been on the back burner for a while, so I thought that a compact dungeon crawler with a fairly simple rule set should be doable.  I set five dungeon levels as my goal early on, and decided to keep the levels at a small 12x12 (rather than a more typical 16x16) to minimize the time needed to build them.  This ended up being a little tight for the mazier levels, namely the library and the lab, but I think I made it work.

I spent the first few weeks just setting up the framework.  This included building out combat mechanics, event scripting, skills and spells, and GUI (which I have always hated).  I didn't finish everything up front, but I had a fully playable single-floor demo ready before I moved on to the rest of the tower.  I scribbled out the art as needed, choosing to work in low resolution (320x180) to keep things within an attainable range for my poor skill level.  Five floors with all the attendant assets turned out to be just doable, with enough time left at the end for polish and QoL.  This is by the far the most demanding project I have completed in terms of volume of art needed, but working with low-res sprites and flat textures, I was able to knock out most of what I needed without too much trouble.

The flat 48x48 textured quads that make up the walls, ceiling, and floor do leave something to be desired.  Older games in this style used perspective-scaled sprites to represent any needed angle on objects in the environment, which gives a cleaner and more convincing look.  Newer games obviously use 3D models.  What I've got here is passable and can be built out very quickly, but I may try something different in the future for better environment visuals.

The biggest cut feature that any Wizardry fan will notice right away was character creation.  I'm a big fan of building my own party, but I wasn't sure I had time for it.  Full party creation wouldn't just require a creation screen; it would also require:

• A bigger selection of portraits, especially if I chose to include more than the five currently represented species.
• More developed rules for species and classes / skills to allow for meaningful creation.
• Expanded itemization throughout the tower (or even a shop feature) to support a wider range of party builds.
• Much more playtesting to ensure that multiple party builds are viable, within reason.

I decided to start with the group that would have been the default party and mark down character creation as a nice-to-have, which I ultimately didn't have time for.  It's unlikely that I'll add it in later, just because of the amount of work needed to do it right.  It'd be nice for replay value, but I don't expect anyone to play a free game jam RPG more than once, anyway.  Still, whenever I get started on a more full-featured RPG, full party creation will definitely be at the top of the feature list.  There are tons of RPG features that I would have loved to add to Tower of Metal, but shipping the game is also a feature.  We're starting at the ground floor.

Playtesting

My target for this game was to make it decently challenging, enough to keep you paying attention, but not excessively difficult.  It is easier than the games that inspired it (maybe too easy), but it's a free jam game, after all, and my experience has been that making those too difficult drives people away very quickly.  If this were a more complete game, I would have pitched the difficulty higher, or maybe included difficulty settings.  For this little 3-hour adventure, though, I wanted people to finish it. 

In addition to running through each floor a few times after building it to tune encounters and level design, I've also completed the full game end-to-end at least twice.  The difficulty curve isn't perfect, but the game is 100% beatable.  It's hard to judge your own difficulty, though.  I know every inch of the game, so of course I can blow through it with no trouble.  But for someone going in blind, is it too obtuse or too basic?  The jury is out on that until I hear more feedback.

Final Thoughts

So, am I happy with what I made in two months?  Yes - I think MM0 is my best work so far, and it's very satisfying to finally get an RPG out of the dabbling phase and into a finished product.  I'm also pleased that I was able to successfully scope, complete, and polish a two-month project with plenty of time to spare.  Running at jam speed for two months was tiring and I'm going to take a little break before I start on a new project, but I had a lot of fun making this game and I hope folks enjoy playing it as well.