Postmortem

Successes:

I really enjoyed the designing of the levels for this project. I feel that the minimalistic aesthetic I attempted to go for allowed for some interesting platforming, especially during the later levels. I was also successful in creating a platformer that is challenging with enemies without creating a direct attack, which was my initial goal for the game. The shield and reflect aspect provided interesting gameplay without the player having any direct course of action to attack the enemies. The aesthetic also remained remarkably cohesive throughout, channeling a black and white movie or a retro game. 

Setbacks:

There were many things I feel I could have executed better for sure. Some of the levels are a little bit too short, or don't have enough depth to make them feel really progressive from the level before. The blocking mechanics also leave something to be desired, the player can currently block with their back turned without it being counted differently than when the shield is facing the sword (will focus on fixing this).  I also would like to create more interesting interactions between the enemies and the player, including directional blocking, and swords that don't just fire straight forward, but more directed toward the player within a radius.

Lessons Learned:

I should spend more time on the mechanics and less time attempting to polish every single level. Mostly time managements, it takes quite a long time to get any specific part of the game functional,  and even more time to work out all of the specific quirks created by the inception of these mechanics. I need to spend more time focusing on carefully crafting these mechanics and giving them an interesting sense of depth that makes the player want to play the game over and over again.

Next Steps:

Refine the mechanics of the game, and then focus on crafting more levels. Start with the sword player interaction, then maybe make more enemy types that have different sorts of interactions with the player. I would like to create more kinds of blocks (upblock, downblock) that send the swords in different directions based on the combination of keys the player presses. I would also like to make the game more skill  based, mostly by forcing the player to time their blocks better, and using the directional blocks to craft better levels. Static obstacles of some kind could also help to achieve a further feeling of difficulty.