Devtober Takeaways

October may be over, but some say there are still Jack-o-lanterns burning bright deep in the Grumpy Grove!

First and foremost, joining Devtober was the right decision. We learned an important lesson, and we would like to thank the Jam host and all the Participants.

Forest Time has been in development for almost a year already. However, during this month alone, we managed to add more different content to the game than in the last half of the year. The secret was not devoting more time to the game, which we don’t have much of, but simply concentrating on one thing at a time.

At the start of October, we had many plans. At least two big things were in our mind: 

1. Introduce winter months to the game as a continuation of the autumn theme that we have now, but with new mechanics and characters.

2. Implement 8 Halloween-special levels with thematic content.

During the first week, we mainly worked on the winter content, but soon enough, we realized that a month is quite a short period. It turned out to be impossible to fit everything. Not three or four things, but even two main things we thought of were already too much. As soon as it became apparent, with a rabbit leap, we jumped back from winter to Halloween and worked only on it for the rest of the month. 

We didn’t finish 8 levels as we hoped. 6 of them were added to the game, and 3 more are currently under construction. (in total, it will be 25 levels, which means +50% content to the game).

There are also a total of 8 characters (3 hedgehogs, 2 ghosts, 2 walking trees, 1 witch and 1 scary gingerbread 😀) that were added. Most of them have new mechanics. This effectively doubles the number of characters present in the game.

However beneficial concentration was, it had a hidden but important flaw. Keeping yourself non-stressed, motivated, and naturally interested in your project was equally important. Maybe it is even more important from a long-run perspective. Balancing between concentration and over-stretching yourself is a subtle matter that can only be mastered with practice.

Another new thing for us was regular posting on X and, later, Blue Sky.  Socializing and simply telling people about our project is not something we have done a lot of. During October, we created social accounts and even got some followers. Hooray! We still need to learn and improve a lot here.

This is it! Have a fun weekend, Everyone, and please stay tuned for the winter updates!