Intro
I started making Metatanks some time during June 2020, give or take a month. So it's taken me a whole year to make this game... Considering its length, I'd much rather it have gone faster.

Now, let me be clear... I do "want" to add more content to Metatanks. In fact, I want to more than double the amount of levels in the game. However, I have more thoughts on that that I'll come back to later.

What I did correctly
Metatanks is a game. It's a complete game. For the first time in my life, I have finished a game that's worth a darn. It's not a great game, but it's complete, and I'm proud of myself for finally finishing a major project after years of abandoned projects.
I'm not totally sure why I finished this game and not most of the others I made... But I'm guessing it's because I gave myself less pressure. I didn't talk about this game at all (except to my buddy Mr. Q, and my dad) until I knew I was going to finish it. Which is something I have had a bad habit of not doing, which I think overwhelmed me in past projects. The stress of knowing people expected something that I didn't know if I wanted to finish it was too much for me. Luckily I didn't do that.

I had originally planned on not making my own soundtrack, instead using royalty-free music. I'm glad I didn't do that. I became a better music artist, and learned a lot about music theory, from making a new soundtrack. Plus, having an original soundtrack helps give the game a bit more identity, which is very important, considering the first paragraph of the next section.

The feature I'm most proud of is the level editor. In my opinion, any level editor should be good enough that one can make content of the same quality as the main game, if not better. And I enforced this upon myself by forcing myself to make all the levels of the game using the same tools any player had.

What I did wrong
Metatanks does not have a very strong identity. I meant it to be a fast-paced copycat of Wii Tanks, but that's never what it was supposed to be. However, by the time I saw the identity the game had, it was too late for me to lean into it. I would have hadto scrap the whole game. The result was a fun but... very messy game, and one that doesn't put up much resistance until the very end of the game. I do want to add more content, but all the new content in the world isn't going to fix the fact that Metatanks is fundimentally flawed.

There's also a lot more I should have done. I should have added an in-game tutorial, I should have redrawn some menu graphics, and I probably should have remade some other assets. However.... I couldn't. Physically, I could. But Honestly, after a year of working on a game I am only just barely proud of, I was exausted. I needed to finish Metatanks. I was burnt out by the time I got started on making the last of the levels for 1.0.0, and the only reason I was able to properly complete the game was a combination of the level editor streamlining the process of making levels, and some friends of mine that I dragged into making some of the levels for episodes 2 and 3.

My personal review of Metatanks
I have 3 metrics for determining if I did a good job making Metatanks.
The first one is if all the collective hours spent by the player base enjoying Metatanks exceeds the amount of collective hours spent working on Metatanks. I am not well known enough to expect that to happen, though.
The second, if someone gets better at Metatanks than I am willing to get, at any measureable metric (be it time, score, or shot count), than I did a good job making Metatanks. For the same reason as before, I can't use this metric either.

The third metric, I invented for the sole reason of the first two being unusable until I make a name for myself: I look at what I have created, and ask myself "if I hadn't created this game, would I want to play it?" And the answer is...

eh, maybe.

If it was a flash game that I stumble upon when I was 12 years old, doing the thing I did best when I was 12 years old (searching the internet for flash games for hours on end to entertain myself between meals, chores, and whatever else I did when I was that age) I probably would have either played it once and forgotten about it, or it would have been one of those games I randomly latched onto and played over and over again for no discernable reason. If nothing else, the level editor would have drawn me in.

However, it's not a flash game- or an HTML game for the modern equivalent -and I'm not 12 years old. I'm an adult with an even shorter attention span than when I was 12. Which means I doubt I would play this game unless I was exceedingly bored and that desperate for a new game, or in the even more rare case than if I had a hankering for Wii Tanks but didn't want to die to the green tanks for the six-billionth time. (or, you know, because I don't actually own Wii Tanks)

So, what does that mean? It means that, in my eyes, it's passable. I am, of course, my own worst critic. In my experience, projects tend to either be better than the creator thinks it is (if they have a low opinion of their own work) or worse than they think it is (if they have a high opinion of their own work) My opinion is... right in the middle, I guess? So what does that mean? I don't know. But I think I hit the nail right on the head: Metatanks is passable. It's good enough. No better, no worse.

What's next?
The short answer is "I don't know".

The long answer is this: I'm going to take a long break (I'm planning on a month but who knows if that'll work out), and after that I'm going to do one of two things: Either get started on Metatanks 1.1, or start learning the Love2D engine.
Metatanks may never be what it should be, but that doesn't mean I can't make it better and closer to what it can be.
In version 1.1, I want to add three new episodes, totalling for somewhere between 80-90 new levels. I'd add a few new enemies and several new bosses, but more importantly, I'd explore more of what's capable with the tools at hand.
in version 1.2, I want to add a survival mode, Primarily having user-made levels, complete with a competition for users to get their levels in.
I also want there to be a version 1.3, but to be honest, that's being far too optimistic to expect, so I don't want to talk about it until near the time I want to start it.

Conclusion
What's there to conclude? Hopefully, not the game itself, yet. All I can think to say for now is I hope all y'all enjoy Metatanks.

I'm glad to have finally finished a project.