a late post-mortem

This last project was the most successful in terms of development. We had a more defined process for development that mimicked the stages of development of a full game. Our pre-development stage lasted three days. it started with us talking out ideas on Monday. Then on Wednesday we talked some more and had a physical prototype (or whiteboard prototype). The difference was the physical prototype which was extremely helpful. It helped with two problems. One was it solved some simple problems we had with our development ideas that we did not notice until we saw them. With that it more fully developed the ideas out and gave us what the actual game would do. So instead of saying you can have a conversation with an npc, we decided one buttons for the answers. Also that the npc has his/her response show over their head and you have a certain amount of time to click one of the response buttons. The other problem that the prototype helped with was everyone being on the same page. A problem I have had in other groups was someone develops a feature and it isn't what I was expecting, or the other way around. This problem wasn't solved, but overall being able to see the game run and go through all the player options in front of the whole group gave everyone a good understanding of the game.
The other good thing about this prototype was that we decided from the start to have a working game at the start of the third week. This gave us a chance to look at the game and see what was fun and what wasn't. At this point we decided what needed to be in and what didn't. Also what would make the game more fun. Then we spent that last week doing that one iteration off of our initial game.