Now that I finished Clover's Space Beat and let some time pass, I want to take a little time to make a postmortem of the development. This will help me as a developer to get a good analysis of what I did overall and how I can continue from this point forward. Also, it's if you're ever interested to know how things went and still goes in my head while making stuff.

First of all, how it all ended up being made:

I started this game in July 2021 right after finishing my interactive animations Jayden's Predicament and Tickling Iris. Both were made in Game Maker Studio using the skills I gathered over the years, I realized how easy it have become for me to make some simple interactive stuff in the software, so I wanted to get back to making a full on game myself. I also got inspired after working on As One Against Our End with Adrien Dittrick for a gamejam. Participating in gamejams for me is amazing because you make a full game in just 2-3 days. And the games I've been doing with Adrien in the past have all been great, we're very happy about them. Check them out when you have the time: Holy Plague, Universal Thief, As One Against Our End, The Void Rolls Back.

I started to draw the main characters as I always do for projects. This is the first sketch of Clover and Miller. I made them simple in design because I already knew I wanted to make full animations of them having some intimate action. I also tried to make the "top" a bit more feminine than the kind of couple I usually draw (femboy bottom with a muscular daddy type top).

At first, I just wanted to make a lewd Shoot Em Up using a concept I made years ago about a Starfox fangame. It was supposed to be a very simple space shooter using mechanics of powerups and bombs as well as barrel rolls. This very old project was one of the first time I tried to make a full game by myself on Game Maker 8.0, so this is from way back. I'll probably make an entry about this project on my Archive Blog in the future.

Since I bought the Android license for Game Maker Studio, I also wanted to make it optimized for mobile phone. And thanks a lot to Adrien for helping me with the touchscreen controls code. I also went back to trying to make music for it using pxtone which I've been fiddling around with in the past, but just as experiments. Once I implemented the first song, I realized I accidentally made the shots in rhythm, so it came to me the idea of making a rhythm space shooter game.

I worked on the game for the whole month of July almost. Making the title screen, an animation of Clover dancing, the tutorial level and a bunch of other stuff. But I stopped because of personal problems and work responsibilities. Lost all motivations and kind of gave up on it for while.

I got a better handle of my life and went back to it during January 2022. My motivation came back and I composed some more music, made the inside of the main ship and a bunch of other stuff. But then I stopped again, instead focusing on improving my art skills and doing life stuff.

I went back again on it during May 2022 making tons of progress. Making a solid menu system, a solid dialogue system, a better HUD for Android, lot of art and a bit of story writing.

Then I stopped again to work on an animation project, Jayden and Ian Smash. This was a small little project, but helped me get back into lewd animations and I also tried myself at voice acting, which is kind of cringy here, but hey, I wanted to do it and I did. I didn't buy this cool Rode microphone for nothing.

I also worked on another gamejam with Adrien, The Void Rolls Back.

Then life happened, did a burnout at my job and was pretty freaking exhausted on any form of creative work, so I did absolutely nothing for months on to recover.

Then I got back to it on November 2022 writing the full story, making the rest of the menus, polishing some stuff, making animations, voice acted, doing a save system, optimizing for different systems, etc. 

At this point, I kind of worked on the game regularly every month. So not as intensively as before, but at least I was making some progress on it as time went by. It was a very slow progress though and I kept on leaving it aside for weeks on and went back for a few days and did this continually until I finally finished the game in May 2023.

So, as you might have noticed, the development of this was pretty freaking chaotic over the course of 2 years almost. And I calculated how much time I spent in total making the game, it was no more than 4 month and a few days of continuous work total (if I was working on it every  day a few hours).

Why though? Well, as I said, life happened and motivation is something that's pretty hard for me to find sometimes. On the other hand, it's the biggest project I ever did in my life. Counting all the projects I started and never ever finished, at least this one is completed. I still need to find a good balance in my own creativity to avoid that in the future. I'll get there eventually I hope.

Now, leaving the past to the past. What did I learn doing this project?

1- Making a game is long and hard (just like m...)

I've made some gamejams and small projects in the past. But when you want to make something bigger, it can quickly escalate exponentially to something that's immense and seams impossible to do. But you don't realize that at first. I guess, only experience can tell on this one.

2- It makes you learn so many things

I've experience so much in this project. I took it upon myself to chose the path of the "jack of all trades, master of none", but it's not something I regret. I love doing tons of different creative work. 

-Art: My main skill I'd say is art and animation, but even in those I'm not a master at all. My characters are pretty simplistic to make them easier to draw and animate. Though, I still learned a lot working on this project, I tried to push myself with animations and cool looking pixel art. 

-Code: Coding is a weird skill because I started years ago knowing absolutely nothing and just experimenting at modifying existing code to making my own. I thank my friend Adrien a lot for this because he did gave me a ton of good advices over the years, he's pretty much a master of Game Maker for me. On this project, I basically made a pretty freaking solid engine for menus and dialogues. And this might seam like nothing to anyone not into coding, but that's usually a pain for me to code, and now I'm pretty confident in my coding skills. 

-Music: I'm actually pretty terrible at rhythm and music theory in general, but I still wanted to push on and tried my best at it. Ending up doing a full OST for the game. Also having a friend of mine providing some helpful tips and also staring a guest song (Lunrae). 

-Voice Acting: I'm probably a pretty bad actor, but I still wanted to give life to Clover using my own voice. I also got tons of help from another friend who voice acted all the other characters (Sprung). 

-Writing: I love writing characters, but I kind of suck at writing a compelling story involving them. That's why my writing skill is more suitable for simplistic stories or slice of life. I used to write very cringy stuff in the past, and the story and dialogues in Clover's Space Beat might not be the best, but I tried. Again, thanks a lot to Lunrae and Sprung for helping so much on it. English not being my mother tongue is also challenging to me.

3- Having help on a project is important

Thanks again to everyone who helped me complete this game. It would never have been finished without your help. Having help on a project is crucial to me, because you NEED some outside feedback on what you're doing in order not to drive right into a wall. As I said above, I'm a "jack of all trades", and this comes with a lot of "I have no freaking idea what the hell I'm doing" and having help can make you focus and get a better idea.

Everyone who helped on the project: 

Kexwez, Lunrae, SprungCardinal, AdrienDittrick, Blood, Loon, Stune

4- Balancing is one of the hardest thing

My game is pretty spastic in terms of difficulty and the last level might be too hard compared to the other levels. I didn't realize that and making it well balanced was hard... And it's still unbalanced. I underestimated this. Having a beta testing phase did help a bit, but I should have done more of it.

5- Taking in the comments

Some comments are very positive, some are negative. But overall, it seams most people enjoyed my game and I'm so very grateful to all of you. It really brings me joy to know so many people loved playing my game and it motivates me to do more. I really didn't expect that much interest in it, but I'm so glad every time I see a new comment or review. Thank you so much.

What about the future now ?

Well, I want to do a sequel. I want to take in the mistakes I did and improve on them. I want to make a new adventure for those two boys. And I already have plenty of ideas for all of this.

But before that, I think I need some breather. So I'll probably work on smaller projects to keep me going, but not burning out. I already did a little side mini game : Clover Mini, check it out when you can. It was mostly just me messing around in GB Studio, trying to learn the software and the limitations of the GameBoy.

And this is my conclusion to Clover's Space Beat.  Once again, I'm so grateful to everyone who helped me on this and to all of you guys for being interested in what I do. That's the end of Clover and Miller adventures for now, but be certain they will come back.

See you next mission!

~ Shinlalala