Alrighty- it is time for a postmortem for Stickman John, mainly because nobody plays that frequently anymore.

I figure I’d like to make this post regardless if anybody will actually read it.

The Origins

Stickman John, surprisingly, didn’t start out as a game about a stickman named John. In fact, it wasn’t even a point-and-click adventure game, and featured a significantly different story.

The initial game, titled “A place unknown: The Missing World,” started out as an ambitious text-based adventure story, featuring light character customization and a mystery narrative inspired by games like Portal, MYST, and others.

A world unknown

“A World Unknown,” which was the successor to the original text-based game, was a point-and-click adventure from the start.

The prototype was simplistic. It re-used any assets I already had lying around. Among these were photos of various locations on a beach in Mexico, some stock photos from the internet, and renders of my original character “Blue the fox” from several angles. (and an old artwork of mine, but I’ll revisit that later.)

The premise of the prototype was also simple. The main character was stranded and needed to find parts to fix the vehicle he had arrived on.

Despite the random assets, the prototype proved promising, and I assembled a small team of artists to work on a much more ambitious game.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t work out.

Initially, the game’s development progressed smoothly. With one artist working on backgrounds, another working on character art, and a musician standing by to compose a soundtrack for the finished art, things looked like they were going to go perfectly according to plan… until, after long discussions about the story, we realized there was no actual plan.

Because of my poor team-management skills, the project ultimately stagnated.

(However, I eventually plan to revisit the story as it was written in the original text adventure.)

Ideating Stickman John

After a break from game development, the desire to work on a game returned. But what game? What would it be about?

after roughly a collective week of brainstorming, I realized that my previous projects would work perfectly as a basis for a new game.

For the gameplay, I decided on a point-and-click adventure, having grown fond of the gameplay in “A World unknown.”

I reused the premise of “A World Unknown’s” prototype for the story: the player must find parts to fix the trike-train.

For the art style, naturally, I would attempt to re-create the style found in that artwork.

Finally, for the main protagonist, I sought inspiration in my childhood sketchbook. As a child, I was creative but lacked the skill to draw characters. So, I had created an original character to feature in all my drawings: an expressive stick-figure whom I had named “Stickman John,” unwittingly parodying the famed musician “Scatman John.” Now, as an adult, I thought it would be fun to reuse the character in my new game.

Developing Stickman John

Finally, with everything planned out, I began work on the full version of the game as it is known today. This time, development went smoothly till the end. The simplistic art style allowed me to work on several backgrounds without feeling burned out. Working with the Adventure Creator significantly simplified the process, requiring very little code to be made.

Finally, the game was finished.

Releasing Stickman John, and the lessons learned from doing so

Despite my passion for the project, stickman John Went mostly unnoticed upon launch; in part because of its short length. Despite the short length being fully intentional, people were not satisfied. After only a week, the game all-but ceased to be downloaded. People moved on quickly.

So, although the game was not as successful as I had hoped, I learned an important lesson: The shorter the game, the shorter its lifespan.

I also learned that it’s always a good idea to have a plan for everything that will happen through the whole game development cycle, right from the start. If possible, leave no gaps or unknowns.

Finally, I learned to know my limitations when planning a game development project.

Conclusion

Stickman John was a fun project to work on, with a long history behind it. And although it went unappreciated by most of the public, I appreciate the lessons I learned from it, And I enjoyed creating the game.

I plan to revisit some of the game ideas that lead up to Stickman John, but until then, I hope you enjoyed reading this article.

• Blue The Fox, Solo Developer of “Stickman John.”