I thought it was time to write a post-mortem for my LD42 game Cube Disposer. You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/cube-disposer

Time

Normally the theme is announced at 03:00 where I live but because of the change of the start time being 3 hours earlier I felt I couldn't do what I usually do; Sleep, and when I wake up, see the theme and going from there. This time I waited on the announcement at midnight and thought about the theme for about 0.5-1 hour before going to sleep.

On Saturday after waking up I stated working on the game from 9:00 to 13:00 then after that I had other stuff to do until 21:00 and then I worked for about 2 hours more before I went to bed.

On Sunday started working 12:00 and worked until midnight with meals and some breaks.

Due to the time change I felt the deadline closing in fast. I'm used to have until 3:00 but now only having to midnight, you can say I felt the time pressure.

I managed to sent in my game around 23:45

Ideas

I had a few ideas this time around because I thought the theme was kinda good this time. I came up with 3 different ideas.

The first one was playing around with the idea that the game window would shrink as the player took damage.

The second idea was some kind of management game where the player would need to micro manage building, destroying and rebuilding because of not having enough space to build.

The last idea that was the idea that I decided to go with was that enemies would leave behind corpses that would block the player. I decided on that because I felt that idea would be the most realistically doable with the time I had.

How did I do

What when right

• I managed to finish in time.
• I managed to follow my idea.
• Got good amount of sleep.

What went not so good

• Path finding, the enemies can easily get stuck on the shredder.
• Forgot some sounds for the enemies.
• Balancing, early waves are way too slow and easy but later waves are too hard.

What went missing

• Pickups, I was supposed to add pickups such med-packs and coins after the player destroyed blocks, there is even a model for a med-pack in the project that is unused.
• Upgrade/shop, I wanted to add a shop/upgrade system between the waves to add more content with various upgrades and weapons.
• Music, well... there is no music.

Conclusion

I had fun LD42 and for once the theme was a theme that I liked, I just wish I had more time that weekend than I had.

I have been playing and rating around 40 games so far and are still always amazed with how much you can create in such a short time.