Looking back on the development of this project, I can safely say that I’m still not very happy with it. I spent far too long trying to tweak the image filtering to look just right. Even into the final stretches of completion, I was still experimenting with the color grading, framerates, and other such things in an effort to make the images carry the aesthetic as well as they could. I hope that for future projects, I’ll be able to continue to refine my image editing processes further. The result of this excessive experimentation is that many of the images have inconsistent details that would have been corrected had I managed to settle on a concrete set of alteration parameters and been able to get a macro working to automate the process.
Unfortunately, the time spent handling the image presentation meant the story suffered. I originally envisioned multiple paths that the player could take, but had to scrap the concept after it became clear that it was infeasible with the limited scope of the assets. Were I to ever revisit this concept with a bit more time to develop it, I would have developed 3D models based on the photographed locations to allow for the creation of more images from different angles as the story demanded. I would have liked to make the reduction of sense more gradual as the story went on, as well as a proper ending rather than simply using a “toad tunnel” meme.
Despite my dissatisfactions with how the project turned out, at some point one must throw up their hands and say “it’s good enough, just ship it out” so they can finally move on to something new.
