Essential 5 Rules for Successful Indie Game Postmortems

Essential 5 Rules for Successful Indie Game Postmortems

Let’s talk postmortems. You just shipped a game. Congrats! Now comes the hard part: figuring out what the heck just happened. Too often, indie game postmortems turn into blame-fests or vague ramblings. That’s a waste of time. We need actionable insights to improve.

I’ve seen it happen too many times: a team, exhausted and stressed, throws together a postmortem doc that’s mostly venting. It’s cathartic, sure, but ultimately useless. Let’s fix that.

Imagine “Cosmic Critters,” a fictional team of three who just launched their first game. Their postmortem went something like this:

“Marketing was bad. Game was buggy. Took too long.”

That’s it. No specifics. No solutions. Just a general feeling of failure. This is a dead-end.

Here’s how we can turn this around using five key rules. These rules will transform a postmortem from a finger-pointing exercise into a powerful learning tool.

1. Define Clear Objectives Upfront

Before you even start the postmortem, ask yourself: what do we want to get out of this? Are we trying to improve our project management? Level design process? Marketing strategy?

Cosmic Critters should have defined their goals beforehand. For example: “Identify bottlenecks in our art pipeline” or “Understand why our marketing campaign didn’t reach our target audience.” Specific goals lead to focused discussions.

2. Dig Into Specific Successes and Failures With Data

Vague statements are useless. “The game was buggy” doesn’t tell us anything. Instead, ask: “Which bugs caused the most frustration for players?” Use analytics, playtest feedback, and support tickets to find concrete examples.

Likewise, don’t just focus on what went wrong. What went right? What systems worked well? Which features were a hit with players? Identify your strengths and build on them.

Cosmic Critters could have looked at bug reports and identified that 80% of crashes occurred in a specific level. That’s actionable data. They also could have noted that players loved the character design, highlighting a strength to leverage in future projects.

3. Assign Concrete Owners to Action Items

A postmortem is useless if it doesn’t lead to action. For every problem identified, assign someone to own the solution.

“Fix the crashing bug” becomes “Sarah will investigate the crashing bug in Level 3 and propose a solution by next week.” This creates accountability and prevents issues from being forgotten.

Cosmic Critters needed to assign someone to investigate the level 3 crash, and set a deadline for a fix. And someone needs to figure out marketing for the next game!

4. Schedule Regular Follow-Ups

A postmortem isn’t a one-time event. Schedule regular follow-up meetings to check on progress and ensure that action items are being addressed.

This helps maintain momentum and prevents the postmortem from becoming just another forgotten document. These meetings are also great for iterating on the action items themselves. Were they realistic? Did they actually solve the problem?

Cosmic Critters should schedule monthly check-ins to review progress on the assigned tasks. This ensures that the postmortem results in actual changes.

5. Foster a Blame-Free Environment

This is crucial. A postmortem should be a safe space for honest feedback. If people are afraid of being blamed, they won’t be honest about what went wrong.

Focus on the process, not the people. Instead of saying “John messed up the animations,” say “The animation pipeline was inefficient and caused delays.”

Cosmic Critters needs to establish a culture of open communication where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, not personal failures.

Following these five rules transforms a potentially demoralizing process into a valuable learning opportunity. You avoid repeating mistakes and build on your strengths in future projects.

And to really maximize the impact of your postmortems, you need a way to track your learnings and progress over time. That’s where a game development journal comes in. A game dev journal allows you to consistently document your process, reflect on your decisions, and track your progress towards your goals. Think of it as a long-term memory for your game development journey.

By consistently using a game development log, you’ll be able to easily review past projects, identify recurring problems, and see how far you’ve come. It becomes a powerful tool for continuous improvement. Tools can do wonders in helping you track game development progress, stay consistent with devlogs, and organize the creative process.

Want to take your postmortems and game development to the next level? Try using our specialized game development journal to document your learnings, track your progress, and build on your successes. It’s the perfect way to turn those postmortem insights into actionable improvements and unlock your full potential as an indie developer.