Week 16 — Dec 8 — Post Mortem

Milestone: Post Mortem (5 pts) — a live presentation plus a written retrospective. The final class meeting; attendance is still worth a point here same as every other week.

Fed by: the whole semester, but especially Ex 10's playtest notes and the Game Build critique from last week — a post mortem grounded in specific playtest feedback and specific build issues reads as far more substantive than general reflection.

Lecture topics, expanded

Wrap-up and portfolio packaging. What to actually keep and show: the published build link, a short gameplay clip (30–60 seconds, not a full playthrough), and two or three screenshots that read well out of context. A portfolio entry is a pitch for the next viewer's five seconds of attention, not a complete archive of the project.

Reflecting on scope decisions. The post mortem's real content: what got cut, what took longer than expected, and — most usefully for next semester's students — what a do-over would change about the original pitch's scope. Framing this as "what would you tell yourself in Week 2" tends to produce more honest answers than "what went wrong."

Next courses and paths. Where this course's skills lead — advanced Unity/Unreal courses, a portfolio-focused capstone, or independent continuation of this semester's project. Worth pointing students toward whichever of those Collin College actually offers next, by name.

Connecting it to the milestone

The post mortem is graded as presentation plus written retrospective, not as a defense of the game's quality — a student whose game fell short of its pitch but who can clearly explain why and what they'd change is demonstrating exactly the learning outcome the course is built around (SLO 7: run a structured playtest and iterate on the results, extended one level up to iterating on the whole semester's decisions). That framing is worth stating outright before presentations start, since some students will otherwise treat this as a chance to oversell a rough build rather than to reflect on it honestly.