Jam Postmortem

Storytelling

I'm rather happy with how the storytelling ended up intertwined with the gameplay. My original instinct was to have cutscenes between levels, but time pressure from the Jam forced me to take the approach I did (I just didn't have time to build a new screen/scene type). This could be more refined and expanded on, but I'm happier with this than my original plan. 

For example, the first level with cut scenes would have had the enemy asking you to join, you rejecting them, and the battle would have started. Instead, the enemy asks you to join, and the actual battle doesn't start until your forces reach a certain point on the map.

Gameplay loop
The game is trivially easy. 

Some of this is because the core gameplay loop changed when I pivoted. With a Dragonforce style overmap, the battles become more about setting up the right mix of troops ahead of time (their general uses X, so you bring Y to the battle), and less about your choices during any given battle. 

However, the game I actually built doesn't have that. It is more about trying to control your forces on the battlefield using this cumbersome control scheme. I did some things with this (putting obstacles in the middle of the level to force the player to route troops around), but it never gives the player enough meaningful choices. 

Tuning unit balance and AI might help this some. I wanted to have mages do enough ranged DPS that they'd kill heavy troops, but light troops would close quick enough that they'd rush in and disrupt the mages, while heavy troops would destroy light troops close up. In practice I don't think this worked out.

Some more unit types might help make all of this more interesting. I've thought about making a cavalry unit which does more damage when it's moving quickly, but little damage when it isn't moving, and some kind of pikeman unit which wants to be kept in undisrupted lines (bonus damage if they're kept in some formation). All of this, combined with some kind of unit economy might give the battle more strategic depth (you can bring 5 heavy troops or 1 mage, or whatever).

On the control side - it'd be interesting to take the futzy controls further. I've thought about trying a version where commands are sent on some kind of time delay. Maybe you shout out the command and it moves with a sound wavefront, or perhaps you send literal runner units which can be killed. I'd like to explore that design space in the future.

Finally, I did try modifying the game to have the units route using A*. While this looked rather cool (it's so satisfying to watch your troops route around the battlefield), it didn't actually play very well. It removed the little bit of strategy the game had. There was no getting the enemies hung up on terrain or trying to figure out how to get your troops across the bridges, they just did it.

Modular pieces
Building modular pieces for the game really paid off. It made everything easier as I pivoted or expanded on ideas. It took a little more work to set up, but all of it was valuable. I wish I'd use signals in more places to make this even more modular.

Asset libraries
I do wish the game had sound. The main reason it doesn't is because of how long it took me to find music and sounds to use. It's not something I have a library of ahead of time (and creating my own is not where my talents lie). 

I should try to have more of that figured out before my next jam.

Mechanics of using Godot
I learned a ton about building projects in Godot. I think I have a better feel for setting up Tilesets, UI controls, styling, signalling, breaking components into scenes, and level loading. All of this will help in future projects.