Post-Jam-Mortem

Thanks for all the feedback and taking the time to try my silly first game! It turned out as well as I could've hoped for the ~10 days invested while working too. I'm writing a quick list of things I think are valuable to add/fix in Shooty Orbital Blaster Beam, either because they're good enhancements and/or will be re-usable code/skills for future projects.

• Music - I'm no musician but will be good to acquaint myself with the free to license music out there. That way I can find and source it more easily on any future projects and maybe stash a few jams I like into my saved assets right now. More and varied SFX potentially too.
• Transition animations - The instant upgrade screen is very easy to insta-miss-click on, as many remarked. The start game would be cool to have graphics of the space weapons platform and a pan to earth. It seems extra-effort to do this after the jam but making that would be a first for me and I want to see how doable it is with my skillset.
• A quick "How-To Play" at the start of the game and in the pause menu (which was bugged on release due to some Z-axis stuff). Some people didn't find the mechanics as intuitive as I had hoped.

Less user-facing things are the slapdash constructed systems that I want to refactor - just so I have 'good bones' to source from for future skeleton prototype projects:

• My dialogue system. I did see Godot plugins for dialogue but want to experience the DIY approach (pain?) before resorting to those. In general, I need more UI experience too, so this helps there.
• My scene/level/stage system needs an upgrade for the next point
• Level selection / Save states / upgrade devtools whatever for playtesting different stages in the game without having to edit any code and revert it back to 'normal game mode' after, as I did too much during the jam. The more variables that effect balance (player upgrades, enemy spawn waves, level design in my case), the more testing tools become a requirement and worth investing development time in to save time in the long run.

I'll add more to these lists if I think of more or get any great community suggestions.