Dental Defense was Escada Games second game, and this our first Post Mortem at all. Being less ambitious than our first game, Archer Hunter, but also more in our grasp to be made as we imaginated it, Well, letss talk about it a bit them, shall we? (Yes, I talking to myself I guess.)

 After we finished Archer Hunter, we were happy: it was our first game done, and even if it had its flaws (they were a lot by the way), it was our first game, made from scratch. Still, we weren't really satisfied: we could've, and should've, done something better. Sure. as a first project mistakes are destinated to happen, but we knew that we had to make something faster, and soon. Then we found the Highsight Jam, with a simple theme: choose and make a Atari 2600's game remake.

 Atari games have simple gameplay, so the project this time would be into our grasp, into our abilities to be made as designed. Sklaisor suggested doing Plaque Attack, a game that he played when a kid, where you control a toothpaste and have to protect some teeth from various foods. And I, Keyband, thought it would be a good game to remake. Very simple, but with lots of rooms to be modified, but we still would learn more things from this project.

 And we actually did pretty well! Of course, the first ideas did not come into the final version, like a Classic Mode were the game was equal to the old version, and we had lots, I mean, lots, of glitches, but I guess that is a good thing. The saying goes something like "Fail faster to learn faster" right? Welp, then I really learned a lot.

On the "How to make this game more interesting" part, at first we had nothing really. Put then I thought of adding a upgrade system, and immediately after tossed this ideia away: upgrade systems are too common nowadays. But soon enough it came to me the following ideia: what if the player had to choose upgrades AND downgrades? Stuff like move faster/food does more damage, or shoot faster/more food appears... now we had something interesting to work with. And then the glitches started appearing (laughs).

 Also, we needed to make the game more appealing, and doing it was straightfoward enough (not very simple though): adding particles, sound, screenshake, and a music. The music was a old one I made, and fixed some bits of. This took a good chunk of the time, along with the bug hunting and fixing. Oh, also balancing was a very big issue...

 Anyway, that's about everything to say in this first Post Mortem I guess... oh, and about the name: a simple inversion on the original one ( Plaque Attack -> Dental Defense ).

 If read this far... wow! Thanks. But I guess this one will be more of a kind of memory for ourselves, to see someday in the future, when we are good gamedevs, I guess. I just hope it doesn't take that much time...

-- Keyband