Hey there,

After taking a break in game development, I tried to get back into this hobby with "Of Rats And Humans", made for the Pirate Jam 14. The jam finished yesterday, and since I got quite some rust from the time away from gamedev, I thought writing this postmortem would be useful to get me up to speed again. I also hope you get to learn a thing or two here, as well.

About

Keeping it short, just for context, "Of Rats And Humans" is a 4X game where you manage a rat colony. It takes inspiration from Civilization 3, Age of Empires 2, and the "To a Mouse" poem (which the famous "Of Mice and Men" takes its name from, in fact).

The jam's theme was "It's Spreading", and one of the first things that came to our minds were rats. In 4X games you also spread your empire, so the idea just naturally came together.

TLDR

• What went right:
  • Working with a funny idea instead of working with something mechanically novel
  • Working on the game even if, at first, it seems like just too much trouble
  • Having spare time to test
• What went wrong:
  • Scope creep, as always
  • Not knowing how to make music for a 4X game
  • Not having enough time to balance the game

What went right?

• Making something that sounded fun to develop
  This is kinda obvious, but if you are working on something you don't enjoy, the process is going to suck. 
  What was new for me is that this time, instead of looking at the idea "4X rat game" from a mechanical viewpoint and thinking "so, it's just Civ3 with rats", I tried to look at it from the fantasy viewpoint. At the early stages it still was going to be "Civ3 with rats", but the added fantasy allowed other mechanics to pop up, and the game slowly became more unique, and therefore more interesting to work on.
  Also, being realistic, I would not be able to solo develop "Civ3 with rats" in two weeks from the start. In one way or another, changes would happen.
• Just giving it a shot
  Me and Sucraiso brainstormed some ideas for this jam, and the rat one seemed like the most fun to work on. Later that day it became clear that he just wasn't going to be able to help this time, for personal reasons.
  With the dev team then being reduced to, well, just me, I had to take on all the roles. I considered giving up, but decided to try to have fun with the process. Anyway, this project was good practice overall, which I would not have had if I had gave up.
  (In the end though, Sucraiso helped with testing, which was essential.)
• Finish early
  Another kinda obvious point, but a good part of the project time should be destinated to testing.
  The jam time window was roughly 2 weeks IIRC. The last 4 days where basically alocated to testing and polishing extra stuff while people tested the game and found more issues.
  I should follow a similar strategy in the future, for sure...

And what went wrong?

• Have you ever heard of realistic scope?
  Well, I have. But I magically forget it everytime I start a new project.
  I'm glad I had a good amount of time dedicated to testing, but if the game was more focused, maybe I would've been able to develop the game with less stressful moments.
  At the same time, though, it is a 4X game... those are not exactly simple 😅
  To prevent this problem, I think having a "real" prototype would be helpful. With "real" I mean that the game will be finished soon, and it should be playable as well, but not very polished. This could limit coming up with random ideas that break the focus of the game, or at the very least, make you notice if new ideas are making the game too complex and should be scrapped or reworked.
• Making the music myself
  This is subjective after all, but I'm not satisfied with how the music ended up sounding like. 
  Usually I make more hectic stuff, so I was at a lost on how to make a more... 4X-like music.
  The way to prevent this issue would be to get someone more experienced to make the music, get some music from asset packs, or get more practice myself.
• Leaving balancing to the end
  Just as it happened with testing, there should be some time dedicated to just tweaking some values.
  This would've made the game more interesting.
  Preventing this is quite simple: having a better planning at the start of the project would do the trick.