The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and other things I learned making my first game

After a month and a half of near-daily work, Mechanical Failure is "done"! It's playable, with the only bugs I know of being non-game breaking, which is an accomplishment for me. It took some time, and we definitely had to crunch at the end to tie up a few loose ends, and there are things we really wish we had had time to expand on more... but it's done!

Making Games Is Scary

This post takes us a bit to write because after publishing the game, we spent a few weeks just, like. Not touching it. We spent a few days getting folks' opinions on it and gathering criticism, and then we hit a point where we just needed to not look at it anymore. I remember reading an interview once from Iconoclasts' developer, Konjak, about how difficult it was to talk about the game for a long time after it came out. Obviously, this is on a much smaller scale, but I think I understand that feeling a lot better now.

I got a lot of fantastic criticism of Mechanical Failure, including from close friends and some people I deeply respect, and I read all of it, but it was difficult to look at this thing I had made and not ONLY see the failures. More importantly, it was difficult to have such a personal work seen at all on a scale broader than "my handful of social media followers", as previously, the world Mechanical Failure takes place in had more or less only existed inside my own brain.

There are a lot of things I saw people enjoy about this game! The characters, the writing, and the concept of the battle/conversation system (as much as I didn't have time to flesh it out like I'd hoped.) I know some people felt especially seen about Atlas' portrayal as a character who does not speak, but has a lot to say. The critique I received was largely focused on a few very small things about the game: sequence-breaks, bugs I could only replicate on web, and a few specific moments of progression that were unclear.

All things considered, I feel like these are relatively minor issues in comparison to the accomplishment of holding out to the finish line at all!

For a bit of clarification here, "I" am a plural system. The "me" people usually see is an amalgamation of many smaller identities who don't always have full access to our skills, interests, and memories, which makes it difficult to see longer projects to completion. Working on Mechanical Failure made me realize that making games is not only possible for me, but enjoyable. I was able to plan it out in such a way that many different parts of us could all contribute in whatever ways spoke to them the clearest.

I do think the pace I was working at was a little unsustainable, and I've spent a few weeks only doing small bits of personal art while I recover my creative juices. But I'm glad I made this game.

What I Learned

I didn't catch all of Frankie's streams for the workshop, but since I don't actually play a lot of JRPG-type games, I took a lot of notes when I was trying to catch up. (I think this is also why Mechanical Failure is somewhat more of a walking sim about meeting funny people. Those are the kinds of RPG Maker games I love most. )

Combat is a big weak spot for me, because I find it mostly a hinderance in RPG Maker games. Because of that, I don't know a lot about what makes combat fun for other people... But I might like it a little more, having been taught some of the logic that never came to me naturally. I think MF's combat suffered largely as a result of that combined with spending lots of time on assets, haha. And some of the critique gave me a good idea of how to make things more intuitive to the player.

Also, it turns out being creative about combat is pretty hard. Combat is part of many different game genres, and has been for a long time, which is great because you can really see what works for others, but I feel it also was difficult to truly think outside of the box.

My system was pretty clearly inspired by games like Undertale, but also from Sorry, We're Open, which I played recently and has a bunch of recoil-y moves I thought were cool. Aesthetically, it was also inspired by old-school VNs, of course. If I'd had more time, I had the idea of using a separate UI for combat that looks like an old PC-98 VN.

I had to pick up some Javascript for a few things, like the system where characters are all ??? until you learn their name, and also for adjusting the UI. Luckily, the RPGM community is really cool and shares a lot of code snippets for free, so I was able to see how people solved similar problems and implement something that works for me.

Actually, the name system in general gave me a lot of grief. What I ended up with was an annoying spreadsheet tying together common events, switches, variables... Way too much, but I wanted to be Done, not Efficient. If I go back to this, I want to streamline that. I learned that you can set variables to arrays, so I'll probably change some things around, because... woof.

Oh yeah let me go back to graphics for a second. I had a really poor idea of how much time graphics would eat up... it was a great break to just work on assets sometimes and to create an aesthetic that was my own, but MAN it was hard. I'd never made walking sprites I was happy with before, or made a tileset. I'm really bad at drawing objects compared to people, but doing it in pixel art made it easier at least. If you aren't on a time crunch, I really recommend learning how to make your own visual assets even if they look really crummy because that stuff totally changes the game, literally and metaphorically. I also don't think MF would have been the same without Puck making a few songs for it, tbh.

What's Next?

Someday I would really like to go back and fix all of those bugs.

Because I know I'm forgetful, here is a list of things I really want to fix, or work on, or improve about this game later down the line.

• There's still a minor sequence-break involving completing the side room (with Deryn, the bird-looking person, and the Duo) before speaking to Kirby for the first time. You can totally miss some of her dialogue that way.
• You can't actually learn Deryn's name! I don't know how I missed that. I want to add dialogue so you can get to know them a little more.
• There's a bug where sometimes Magda (and maybe Jan..?) don't clear properly before Leroy shows up in the final fight. I haven't been able to replicate it, and I'm worried it might be browser-specific.
• You know that one spot where everyone gets stuck? There should be a sparkly bit on that, or else it should be a lot clearer that you can Also interact with objects like that... Maybe I could stick that thing to the mirror instead of having it on the bathroom floor, LOL.
• Just in general I think the combat was really lackluster and sad. I had some ideas for it but struggled to flesh them out in time! I want that part of the game to feel more fun. I think what I really want is to balance the risk of getting to know someone with the consequence of getting hurt because of it... food for thought.
• Also, a toki pona translation would be interesting...... but that should come after I know I'm done changing the dialogue and stuff.

Before I touch back on Mechanical Failure's combat, I want to make a game with more traditional combat, so I can understand more what I'm working with. I had the idea of a magical girl dungeon crawler that's kind of PMMM-esque... dunno. I might make another game, I might only touch Mechanical Failure up, or I might never make a game again. But the latter option would be sad, so hopefully I don't do that.

This was kind of a long read, but I appreciate anyone who stuck it out, or even just skimmed it. If you liked Mechanical Failure, please give me feedback! It's scary but I need it. And if you want to see more of what I do in the future, maybe consider checking out my social media pages. Thanks for playing!

- Leo (& co)