It has now been more than two months since I published Man Off Mars. It makes sense now to look back to the 'good old days' I was working on the development that would be my first officially published indie game and also to analyze what went right and what went wrong with the release.

Since the release, I have already published five devlogs writing about making GIFs, writing, recording and using voice-overs, discussing the ways of starting the development process, sharing my ideas about using assets and creating environments and then, finally, I wrote a little about my thoughts on narrative design.

But now, I'm trying to share a bigger picture. Firstly - Man Off Mars started as a project I did during David Wehle's online-course Game Dev Unlocked. I couldn't have done the game without the knowledge acquired during the first couple of modules of this course and I couldn't have finished the game without the cordial help of my fellow students. Thank You all!

That said, it's clear, that Man Off Mars isn't a really original game. Some may consider it weird a game dev saying stuff like that but from the perspective of my own journey, of my willingness to develop as an indie dev, it's important to admit something it. Yes, I managed to implement learned knowledge the way that the game looks original and has my handwriting written all over it, but the game functions on generic elements and my skillset was - and still is - too low to play around freely with the things I had learned. In a way Man Off Mars is a somewhat clever remake of something I did during the Game Dev Unlocked intermediate phase.

Is that good or bad? Both, of course. It's good, because I took the elements, I rearranged them in a fashion I saw fit, I also added bits and pieces learned elsewhere (like Unity Learn) and as a result I have something I can rightfully call my own game. But bad - well, there are enough similar games out there. And by similar I mean - really, really similar. Aside that: this game didn't really push the limits of my abilities. I just wanted to make a game which I could finish. And I did.

So, in conclusion - maybe the aspect I labeled 'bad' isn't bad at all. It's up to You to decide, who You are reading this and hopefully also playing Man Off Mars. I would appreciate any thoughts on that in the comment section.

Speaking of actually playing the game - Man Off Mars is playable, I know - but it's not challenging. I aimed for stunning visuals, for a beautiful and breathtaking environment and a somewhat myserious story, but couldn't really add much of an adventure. True, not every game is about adventure, but I see in hindsight, that there could have been at least some variety in the gameplay. I tried to add it with different voice-overs, but nevertheless - traversing the beautiful but empty Martian planes can be boring. Acknowledging that - I now know what mistakes to avoid in the future...

Man Off Mars was also an experiment about game release. I had watched countless videos on do's and don'ts of a release, Game Dev Unlocked also has videos on that, and I used learned knowledge: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, mouth-to-mouth advertisement etc. Something (Twitter) worked, something (FB, Reddit) didn't work, something was in-between. Release was an interesting experience and I learned a lot about the very technical side of advertising - how to make GIFs,  how to post on Twitter, what not to do on FB and Reddit. These are skills I can use in the future.

All that said - I don't regret anything. On the contrary. Man Off Mars is really close to my heart, it's for sure not an abandoned project for me as I plan to remake the voice-overs as I got a much better microphone shortly after finishing the game. I also have tweaked on the environment and plan to add at least one place of interest for the player to discover. Oh yeah, and the mouse sensitivity is too high! I now know that! Didn't notice it first as I have used to a rather sensitive mouse.

But these are the reasons I titled this text Post mortem is ante mortem. I am also thankful to all those people who bothered to download and try out my game. I hope it wasn't a disappointment. At least not a very big one!

Oh, and one last remark - all the devlogs I have made have been far more popular than the game itself. I do not know what it means or what to do with this information, but it just is so...