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Hey everyone! In today's post, I'll be writing a post-mortem for the Anachronome Demo.
In the context of game development, a post-mortem is an analysis of a completed project. I'll be talking about things like how development went, what I think went well, and what I think can be improved in the future.
Starting Out
In April 2021, I started a small project not really knowing what I was going to make of it. I was bored. I set up a very simple server where you could basically just choose a name and chat with other people in a lobby. Very basic stuff. I didn't know what sort of game I wanted to make, but I know I wanted to make something. I thought perhaps I could make a card game with turn-based combat, akin to Wizard101. I tried my hand at making some assets, but I never really felt a clear direction for how it'd go. I continued adapting this project a bit by setting up a 3D landwalker with placeholder character models and a placeholder zone I modeled myself. Even though it was essentially a multiplayer landwalker with chat, I had a lot of fun doing it. I got my friends to log in with me and we messed around. But at this point I got busy with real life, and nothing really happened for another year and a half.
Then in December 2022, a composer friend of mine sent an old song of theirs in a group chat. It was a very early version of a song they were making for a Toontown project we used to be a part of. Although, it honestly didn't sound that Toontowny. I mean, the soundfont did, but what I mean is the song feels like it could've worked in another game without feeling like it was made for Toontown. Not to mention, some of the trumpets in the background felt like they'd be used in a more... jazzy setting. I pictured some sort of fight in an arena where, if fully fleshed out, this theme would play. So another friend and I commissioned our composer friend to fully flesh out the song and see where it went. A few revisions later, and that's the Slotbot battle theme you hear in the Demo. It used to be a lot more electronic-sounding, but I asked another friend of mine to take a pass on it and remove that, opting for more of a cartoon/jazzy vibe. I used to listen to this song on loop all day, every day. When I took the bus to work, when I took the bus home, when I got home. I was always listening to this song, thinking up ideas for it's context. It was at this point I started formulating concrete ideas for the Demo.
Mental Roadblock
I've wanted to work on a game project for a long time. I just wasn't sure what kind of project it would be. For a while, I was insistent on it not being Toontown-adjacent whatsoever. I wanted to make something completely and utterly unique, that didn't feel like it was a cheap knockoff of something else. I had harbored these thoughts for years. I don't know what changed, but suddenly, I started looking at it from a different point of view. It's not that I am going to make a knockoff of Toontown- rather, I am going to take all of the best elements that game has to offer, and take all of the best elements my other favorite games have to offer, and jam it into one product. I would try to leave out as many weak parts as I could. Then, surely, I can have a really good game on my hands. So that's my approach with Anachronome. I want to take all the best parts of Toontown and what makes that game so fun and memorable. And I want to flesh them out, and create many other elements of fun gameplay to go alongside it.
The Actual Start
Now that I have overcome that mental roadblock, I had nothing holding me back from wanting to start. I began practicing 3D modeling so I could create this Arena for myself. I also reached out to a friend I worked with before, asking if he'd take commissions for texture art. He said yes, and I began to commission him to make the Arena's textures. I am not a skilled 3D artist, so, my goal was to have the detail flourish through 2D as much as possible. After a couple months of iteration, I ended up with a half decent Arena model. And it was mostly textured, too. (Later in 2023, another friend helped by remodeling it for me. He got it to around an 80% mark and I finished it up)
As I went into 2023, I began fleshing out more ideas for the Demo, but also the game as a whole. I focused a lot on worldbuilding, mechanics and whatnot. It wasn't until the middle of 2023 that I had ideas for combat fully fleshed out. Honestly, in retrospect, I didn't do much work on the project in 2023. I did things here and there, like working on a UI backend, improving the landwalker experience, touching up the Arena, facilitating commissions for characters and other assets. But I didn't do much of the actual content you see in the Demo. This was partially due to poor planning on my part, and being unable to follow through with the monumental task that is creating a battle system from scratch. It was daunting. Another reason for my lack of follow through was multi-month breaks in between working on stuff. I have a life outside of the game, and depression/lack of motivation is a real thing. Things really picked up in May 2024.
Full Blast
Whenever I travel somewhere and return to home base, it truly gives me a fresh perspective on life. In May 2024, I visited some friends and family in England. And when I returned, I went ham on Anachronome. I grinded hard on the turn-based combat. By August, it was pretty much done except for bugs, balancing, and The Producer's tutorial dialogue. Even though I wanted to get it done fast, I did try my best to code it with the long-term in mind. So although the Demo is singleplayer, combat itself was coded as if you're playing on a multiplayer server. I also added important systems that will receive more use in combats post-Demo.
Once I felt combat was in a playable state from start to finish, I began showing it to as many friends as possible so I could iterate on it. It went through a ton of balancing. The Slotbot's Bar attack was way too difficult, and people were dying to it too quickly. I also fixed probably a hundred different bugs, made dozens of quality-of-life changes to get the combat in good shape. The pacing also changed a bit. There used to be an additional wave of Slotbots you would fight, to give you more time to experiment with the different attacks. But it dragged on for too long, so it was removed. And honestly, I'm really happy with how everything turned out.
Combat is now perfect, and there is a ton of room for iteration. One of the most common criticisms I've seen after releasing the Demo is how the pacing best suits a singleplayer experience, and it wouldn't really work well with others. And to that, I agree! The pacing does need to be improved. If the combat remained how it was, then if you were to go into an instance with waves upon waves of enemies, it would feel like a slog. Not to mention, having to wait until all your teammates have played out their attacks. Each round of combat would simply take too long. We plan to rectify this for the full game. A huge focus on our first development sprint will be on improving the flow of combat. Whether that means speeding up animations, to shortening minigames, or making other large intrinsic changes to how combat works. We want it to be as frictionless of an experience as possible.
Final Stretch
After turn-based combat was done, I took another break for several months. Then in June 2025, I began the final stretch of work on the Demo. I had already done bits of pieces of work on the Starstruck fight, but now I needed to finish them and pull it all together. I hate working on real-time combat. For me, it can be difficult to keep a leash on, which is why I felt I put it off for so long. But before long I finished the fight, and got a few friends to try it out. They helped me improve the balancing and the feel of the various movement mechanics. But I still had quite a bit to do! The week after Starstruck was functionally done, I still had to create a transition cutscene between the Slotbot and Starstruck fights. I also had to create the mid-fight cutscene for Starstruck, so the gates can open up. I had to create the post-Starstruck cutscene that ends off the Demo. And a bunch of other smaller things like the game's Chapter Select screen, the website, improving the patcher, making a small trailer for YouTube, and so on. It was a lot, and most of it was grinded out a week before release. Although I probably should've given myself more runway, I didn't want to dilly dally any longer.
Post-Demo Release
With the Demo out, progress has begun on the full game! In the past week we've brought several new Team Members onto the project and I look forward to working with them all. We've filled some very important roles within the team, but are still on the look-out for a few art roles. If you are interested in joining the project, please take a look at our open positions.
It will be a while until we come out with another update on Anachronome. We'll come back when the time is right, and we have a considerable amount of work done on the full game. Until then, we appreciate your patience.
Thank you for reading this post-mortem!
