My entry 48 hour compo entry was Vale of Embers, a game where you play as a raid boss and must fend off various raiding guilds:

What Went Well

• The HTML5 port: Nearly every previous time I’ve done an HTML5 build I’ve had some nasty last minute issues. It hasn’t just been with UE4, but with any of the previous frameworks I’ve used (PlayN, libGDX). I was sure this was going to happen again so I delayed the HTML5 build until after the compo. But in the end the only thing I really had to fix was a couple minor lighting issues.
• Using UE4.9 Preview: The current stable version of Unreal Engine is UE4.8. But UE4.9 Preview has a much improved HTML5 lighting engine. This was a big risk, but in the end it paid off. While I did encounter a bug where config files didn’t save correctly, having access to decals and better lighting in HTML5 mode more than made up for it.
• The top down view: At the beginning, I had to decide between a more “Diablo like” top down view or a more 3rd person view. In the end I decided to go with the top down view as it does a better job of disguising how crummy my modeling job was, and I think it worked.
• The Idea: The theme was one of the ones I voted for, although it probably wouldn’t have been my first choice. I quickly came up with three ideas: A Godzilla like game where you’re a large monster smashing up a city, a horror movie like game where you play as the monster, or a game where you play as a raid boss in a fictitious MMO. I essentially rejected the first two ideas because they’d need to be “serious”, and I judged that my lousy art skills created too much danger of narm.

What Did Not Go Well

• Time Management: Every time I do the LD, I tell myself that I’m going to come up with a plan that’s simple enough that I will not have to stay up till 5AM on Sunday. Yet, this time I ended up staying up till 5AM on Sunday anyway getting the models ready. At this point it’s starting to feel like a tradition for me.
• Meteor Balance: While I’m fairly happy with how game balance turned out, the Meteor spell is still underpowered even after I tripled its damage and halved its mana cost. The problem is that meteor is the subject of a joke where it’s supposed to be easy for the raiders to avoid it so they look stupid when they get hit. The problem is that it really is easy to avoid, so they usually avoid it. I really should have gone with my original idea, which was to have certain raiders be extra stupid and fail to avoid meteor.
• No Difficulty Scaling: Originally as you killed off raiders they were supposed to go get their fire resistance gear and eventually alert more elite guilds who would teleport in. In the end I didn’t have time to implement any of this so difficulty is essentially flat throughout the game.
• AI Issues: The raiders’ AI is pretty complex, and I think there are a few bugs remaining where they’ll fail to attack the boss properly. Still, I am happy that they usually manage to attack the boss despite the bugs. See chart below: