Portmanteau

Instructions:
Box select letter to highlight them. If you select a real word, the letters will join together. Find the correct word for the blank to progress.

Description:
A game about combining and separating words!

highlight words within words to separate, then recombine!

Solo project for the GMTK 2021 "Joined Together" Game Jam


Postmortem - 6/24/2021
    This jam was very tough. It had been a while since I was part of a jam and I was itching to get back in. I definitely got over eager. of the 48 hours available for this jam, I clocked in 43 hours. The exhaustion by the end caused me to rush through things that I feel should have gotten more time.

    I started this jam by brainstorming ideas with a friend. Knowing that my biggest failure from my previous GMTK entry was the idea I went with, I spent a solid 7 hours grinding through usable ideas (nearly all of which I saw in other people's games.) Until I got to this idea. The idea coming from the idea of Portmanteaus, which are words created by combining two or more other words, like spoon and fork making the word spork. I was very happy with the concept behind this game.

    Given that I used so much time finding the idea, I didn't leave myself very much time for planning out the workflow. This caused a lot of problems with trying to get the core mechanic programmed correctly in time. Ultimately, while I did get it done, it feels rushed and I did not allow enough time for puzzle design or level creation. 

    The aesthetic I tried for sounded solid on paper. I tried to make the game look like it was taking place in the pages of a dictionary, but it quickly turned to look more like a notebook. This aesthetic definitely did not play to my strengths and suffered quite a bit as a result. I should have stuck to something cleaner and more simple, like pixel art of some kind.

    I truly believe this idea had a lot more potential than what I managed to give it this time around. A bit better planning and organization probably would have done the trick.