Hey there!
Well, An Aspie Life has been out for a few weeks now. In that time you guys have sent me a few bugs reports. This update intends to fix them as well as some small tweaks to the game, nothing major.
There is the chance the game will affect save files. If you are worried then turn auto-updating off. Updates will be few and far between from now on, not like when it was in early access.
Anyway onto the Post-mortem!
You can view the video here
Post-mortem An Aspie Life
Well… 5 years.
You can do a lot in 5 years! Including doing high school and making some games.
So, now that An Aspie Life has been out for a few weeks, I feel it’s time to look back on what got me to this point and talk about the development of An Aspie Life.
It’s the year 2013… I’m 13 years old. High school is a strange place and you get less time on breaks. Only about 45mins every day to do what you want. At my high school, the IT room at A11-12 was open every lunchtime. With nothing better to do, I followed a few friends into the IT room over the first few weeks of school. That’s when I saw it! PEOPLE MAKING GAMES!
From then on, I was making games and messing with animation every lunch for the next 5 years. In the video below, you can see where I learnt new skills over the years, that found their way into An Aspie Life.
So, let’s talk about An Aspie Life. I’m happy with it. It’s in no way flawless, nothing is! My goal with An Aspie Life was a make a game that portrayed and emulated how I see the world with my Aspergers Syndrome. And I met that goal. In that way, it’s a success. From a gameplay standpoint, it works well. The experimental gameplay mechanics were difficult to create. Trying to turn my symptoms into functional Gameplay mechanics that all work together was flipping hard. Some parts came out alright, others not so much. I believe the diary, sound sensitivity and time mechanics work well. While the chat battle’s ARHHHHH they work, but not to the level I want it to. That would probably involve connecting the game to a database to have more responses. That would be time-consuming to set up, and not to mention would have been out of my knowledge when I started making the game in 2016.
Apart from the mechanics… I’m happy with everything else. The art style and pixel art are what I consider the greatest success with the game. The purples and blues were inspired by the 80’s and more precisely Blade Runner. The combination and layout of select colours adds to the beauty of each shot. While we’re talking about blade runner, it also inspired me in how to improve my model making. Over the last 5 years, I’ve also been making models out of cardboard and clay. These would be made just for fun, or as concept art. Sometimes on characters or machines to get a 3D reference for animating. Back to Sprites and art. The final count is 4,181 sprites. 3,000 more than my last game and that makes sense, considering how much detail I put into the animation. Therefore, more frame’s in each action. Arguably the greatest skills I improved when working on An Aspie Life was to do with art, colours and animation.
Another thing I’m happy with is arguably the soundtrack. A massive thank you to J.W MUSIC’s Joe Watson (https://www.joewatsonmusic.co.uk/) for composing the soundtrack to An Aspie Life. For weeks we were sending music to each other. I was sending examples of what I was looking for and he would send back what he’d cooked up. Most common soundtrack examples being Blade Runner (funny that) and Policenauts OST. So Again, a massive thank you to Joe Watson for helping me in this project. You can download the An Aspie Life OST here https://gamejolt.com/…/an-aspie-…/209217
Finally, let’s talk about everything that happened outside of the game… Where do I begin. Marketing! The one job you must do, that’s so repetitive you might as well have a twitter bot set up. This was the first game I tried to market ‘correctly’. Overall it worked out, and drawing the advertisement was fun (if a little time consuming). I have learnt that when advertising, the time you post is key! In the AU you need to time your post to when American and Europe are awake. They were my target market, so to post when they are asleep doesn’t work. I’m still bad at this but marking without a budget is down to luck and making sure your post is showing off the best you have to offer.
Well, I think that concludes this post. Hope you all enjoy An Aspie Life. I might make a sequel In a few years’ time, I’ve already got a few ideas.
Bradley Hennessey
EnderLost Studios
