Im up for LD43!

But first I'm going to do a quick (and very late) post-mortem of my LD42 game 'Laser Rails: Chase' to see what worked and what I need to change this time around, as I find reflecting on a previous challenge is the #1 way to make sure youre developing and improving!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/laser-rails-chase

LD 42 in quick-review:

Pros - Had a game mechanic (the jetpack) which ended up being a lot more fun than expected, so it basically became the core mechanic

• Scrapped a lot of features and mechanics, but still ended up with a game, which wouldnt have been possible without feature planning at the start

• Didnt waste much time cooking. Lots of food prep and shopping done the day/night before the jam, which was a huge time saver! (also uber eats is nice for the occasional meal)

• Pivoted from the original character design very quickly (was going to make human characters), couldnt get the inspiration or design working quick enough so I came up with a fun robot design very quickly instead, which was the main cyberpunk element in the game and turned out well

• Endless terrain generation. Maybe spent too long on this, but it worked really well and I enjoyed how it turned out

Cons - Theme didnt apply very well. I had ideas for how it could, but didnt get around to executing them properly in time and rushed everything at the end - Should get the theme strongly present in the game asap

• Scope was too large, but at least easy to cut back - Need to avoid blowing out the scope in future

• Start area wasnt setup nicely, enemies attacking right away. Didnt give the player any chance to get to learn the controls and therefore the game was from the start not very intuitive - More planning and thought need to go into this, and perhaps a tutorial area (as I ended up making for the post-jam version)

• Got stuck (again) on a code/physics issues for far too long, ie with the train physics which in the end werent that important to the game. Always happens! - Need to learn to compromise faster or identify problem mechanics/features quickly and find ways to do it quicker

• Got sick. This was mainly from not looking after myself in the week lead up, didnt get enough sleep. Hit me hard on the first day of the jam which lead me to sleeping more than planned and feeling miserable for the first 24 hours, and pretty average for the 2nd day - Need to get more sleep in the leadup to a jam!

• Audio/sound, wasnt happy with this at all, I ended up opting out of the category because I had to throw in sounds and music that werent mine. Definitely the main category I need to improve on and put more time towards when it comes to game design.

• Food stuff: Could have snacked less, or had healthier snacks planned.

• Exercise: planned on doing some, but due to being sick I didnt do anything physical during the gamejam. Hard to avoid if youre sick, I feel like this point would have been ok otherwise.

One of my goals is to do a gamejam healthily, so this is something I’ll be working on in future jams!

And finally rough stats for LD42, always interesting to see where the time goes and what can be improved

Looking forward to some gamedev this weekend - goodluck everyone!