Duckcell was made for the Goedware Game Jam 3, over 8 days. 

I'd say I came out pretty satisfied with this game. It was a lot of fun, and I did all the work - coding, art, music, etc all by myself. It was a challange - I'dve never done a gamejam solo before - but I managed to take it like a champ. Here's how it went down.

These were my notes on day 1. I never go out of Day 1 without knowing what I'm gonna do - no time to waste doing nothing. So, I've went with the zoom enhance approach. Interestingly enough, the main gimmick - that when you zoom in the background would become the foreground - ended up bringing far too many troubles that y'all see later to work.

On Page 2 you can see my actual  game deving notes rather than concept. I set up the to-do today, to-do another day and the to-do tomorrow. I've managed to stick with it, mostly. The only funny thing is how the "Make PC position transfer" was supposed to be day 1 - ended being day 5. Oh well!

Also in this page is pictured my chart for the angles you can shoot at - originally you were only going to be able to shoot between 80 and 280 degrees. That ended being too complex and frustrating me a bit, leading me to write "I AM IN BOOLEAN HELL" after not figuring out where my True/False statements were breaking.

Day 2 notes. Adding background deco - the only "for today" that I didn't do - ended coming way later, with the Ameba and the Big Bacteria. I also started the background music too. As you could have heard in-game I'm not a very good composer so the original plan was to keep working on it all jam. Thankfully I got it on a finished state the next day. 

This day I also got some cuts in my hand - that's why the handwritting got so bad there. A window had shattered the glass and cut my hand, but I was OK and could still code: Bless visual coding. Eitherway, this wasn't a huge problem as it healed quickly. Today, 6 days later it's basically all gone. 

Day 3 notes.  Probably the most intense day, I've added a bunch of stuff and made a bunch of notes. Here there's also my Layers note - through the jam I've kept comming back to this page to check on it. I've also went back to the circle on the day 2 page a lot too.

This was the day I decided to switch from a high score based game to one with an ending and set levels. Page 2 was basicaly just writting down the new plans of the restructuring.

Day 4, or as I put on the header of the page: "halfway!". Here I reorganized myself, setting what I need for the restructuring and the polish left to do. This is also the page where I start to write coordinates on the page so if you see a bunch of numbers floating around, that's why. Also on the top-right is what color has what ID number. This is another that I kept comming back to.

I also gave the game to a few friends for feedback too. The main thing was to increase the turning speed, to fix offscreen kills (it was terrible) and some audio fixes.

Day 5, aka the last truly "big" day. After Day 5 I was motly content with what I had and decided to lay back for the last 2 days, having deemed it finished - note the "damn I have 3 days left idk what I'm gonna do" on the top-right. I've also setup the Github page too. Many things were added here: UI, the big bacteria, the moving trail on the bullets, etc. 

The main addition was the upgrade system that I wasn't sure if I had the time to implement. With the zooming in mechanic having taken several cuts so it's only on the story adding the upgrade system was something I really wanted, in order to get a good Theme score. Very glad I got to add it in time, and with spare.

There's also a big list of polish to do there too.

This is day 6, the day where I wrote a "NICE" that looks too much like a "NKE". Lots of coordinates around. I didn't add anything here, it was just bugfixing and polish.

Day 7, the last day I worked on the game - I didn't touch the project at all day 8. I optimized the game to run on lower end hardware (might still not work on lower end hardware) but I didn't endup adding more background decoration. I didn't really had any idea that really clicked.

Overall - having a devjournal like that was excellent. Helped me organize myself tremendously, with the to-do lists and other resources. Plus, not having to take your monitor off the code to check your notes is a big plus. 

Another thing learned: Give in if needed. The limit on rotation, for example. It was hard, it was frustrating and was leading nowhere. So I just took it all off and gave full 360 movement. Another example: I was having trouble with the bacteria when you made the jump from foreground to background as they'd be on the entire screen and it was a mess. So I just cut that and the game helped tremendously.

What I'm trying to say is: Organization & cutting wins gamejams.