This year's 7DRL entry was a fail but I'm ok with that. Why do I consider this entry a fail? And Why am I ok with it?

The entry is a failure simply because it is incomplete. I wasn't able to submit a finished game by the deadline. Finished, I'm sur, has various levels of meaning amongst submitters. For me finished has evolved since I started submitting in 2020.

In 2020 finishing just meant literally putting a game up that has a core loop, a mechanic and a win condition. That was Flume. We took time off of work for that game and though we knew the end product wasn't very fun, we were proud to have done it. We also learned how unprepared we were. We built the game with a custom JavaScript engine that was still a work-in-progress. It is, to this day a work-in-progress. So we had to code a lot of basic roguelike functionality that week. But hey, the passion was there and we were pumped for 2021.

In 2021 my goal was to use what my custom engine offered during the seven days of the jam. I wanted to submit something with a core loop, an interesting mechanic, a wind condition all while avoiding the need to write a lot of new custom logic. I wanted to see what my engine could do. Well I was super proud of that entry, Jacinto. It was a step up in complexity, slightly improved visually, and I was happy with the core loop and additional mechanics. But I definitely had to do a lot of custom logic I wasn't expecting. This ate into the time I was hoping to spend on polish and maybe even visual/audio juice.

In I skipped the jam in 2022. I just felt I didn't' have the time that year. But honestly I just didn't want to spend the mental and emotion energy I knew it would take. So, in a way the 2022 7DRL jam still taught me some things. First, that I really like participating in this jam. And second, that it is hard, even if you've done it before. It takes a lot of energy and the outcome can be frustrating to bear depending on your expectations. And wow it can be hard not to compare to other entries and, well, other people.

So 2023 here we go. I've worked on the custom engine on and off for 3 years at this point. Both I and the engine are ready to just pop out a 7DRL entry, easy. My goal that year was to prepare like no other! I create a task log of and worked out the main mechanics, the core loop, the amazing mechanics, the visual style, the juice I'd be sure to add, the flavor text I was sure to write. Wow. I don't know what got into me. All the sudden I was making the most rookie mistake. Pre-jam, I was so confident in my engine, my skills, and my past experiences that I had planned to make a roguelike with Hades level of flavor. So anyways we get to day one of the jam and I'm staring at the backlog of items I've decided I'd do and I knew "This ain't gonna work". So with a big sigh and two shakes of the head, I pivoted. And it was for the better. I reset my expectations and made a todo list fitting of something more modest. And you know what, it worked out. Though the entry was rated super highly I was most proud. Not only was I able to catch myself mid-ego-trip to pare down the scope, I was able to put together the game without a whole lot of new complex logic. I was able to use the piece of generic code built up over time to sort of put a game together. So this left me with a bit of time balance the game and more enjoyable add some flavor into the tiny world known as Something In the Tall Grass. This was also the first time I got video feedback post-jam from a reviewer. Shout out to DavionFuxa! That really meant a lot to me.

Ok so 2024. Honestly what we had here was a 2022 situation all over again. I was 100% not going to join this year. But day one same around and I decided it'd be worth it to just try. I didn't have a lot of time in the week to dedicate toward the jam so I resigned to just accepting the outcome knowing I'd only have a few hours here and there to work on it. So that was omen #1. Omen #2 was when I decide not to use my custom engine? Or more precisely it was when I decided to use an engine I was excited to try but unfamiliar with. So day one I started on the entry in Godot. I still don't know why I did this. I was just caught up in the hype of a new engine and I actually really like GDscript and all the thing Godot can just already do out of the box. But you know what Godot doesn't do out of the box? It doesn't generate a 7DRL entry, or even any of the common logic you might see in a roguelike. Obviously I was aware of this but I just wanted to try. So to that end, yes this entry is a failure in the jam-sense. But I still am really happy that I tried. And I'm very excited to build a roguelike engine with Godot in the coming years. Perhaps next year I will have such an engine and be able to recreate the 2023 experience, just piecing together a game from existing pieces of logic. Or maybe I'll have gone back to my custom JavaScript engine. Who knows. Is it the journey or the destination? Ideally 2025 will offer both.

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I end with a list of thing I learned while attempting the 2024 7DRL jam which, itself, has been a brutal roguelike full of discovery and death since I began playing in 2020. 

• learned core Godot systems
  • node structure
  • tilemaps
  • particle fx
  • event systems
• had fun coming up with a core loop and core mechanic
  
• implemented cool missions system (not presently visualized in the game)
  • "cool" here just means I had fun building it and can imagine it actually being useful in the future
• do you even UI bro? no. no apparently I do not know how to implement UI in Godot
• had fun planning future improvements and logging ideas for more game content
• learned I could really stand to team up with a visual artist and story oriented person