My aim was to do this in the spirit of the old Ludum Dares — i.e., get a game done in 24 hours. Thanks to the fast work of @bcav and @genie we were able to do it this time (albeit including an extra hour for submission and final adjustments).

* Friday 5:00 pm: *

By this time I had an idea in place. It was an old idea I had from years ago, after designing the smash hit, Gretchen’s Head (LD 42). In its essence the game would have an old tree in a dark woods with the heads of several children — presumably Gretchen’s offspring — attached to the ends of the branches. It was going to look something like this:

I worked until midnight. I had high hopes for it, as I’ve been toying with this idea on and off for quite some time. I got the skeleton code and some graphics in place, but I wasn’t very close to a finished product.

Saturday 3:30 am:

My alarm went off. My plan was to get up around this time, or maybe 4:00, but I went back to sleep.

Saturday 6:58 am:

This is when I got up. I had breakfast and worked further on the game. I kept thinking: what if I got rid of the tree and allowed the player to move around the screen? The problem with the tree was that it couldn’t move. All you could do was open a mouth on a child’s head and eat a growing heart. That could have been turned into a game but I lost all inspiration for it. Part of the problem is that @genie would have to draw several heads, and with a 3:00 pm deadline, I doubt she wanted to do that. Aside from that, the game was too static. It occurred to me that maybe a single protagonist that the player could move around would be a better idea.

Saturday 10:00 am:

By this time I had the skeleton of the new game in place. Fortunately some of last night’s code was still usable.

Saturday 1:00 - 2:00 pm:

By this time lunch was done and I was 100% into coding and design. Also, @genie and I had decided on the look of the protagonist — as usual, she would be a derivative of Alice, Lewis Carroll’s beloved angel. Surprisingly it didn’t take long to animate the drawing that @genie sent me. Sound effects were quickly added using https://sfxr.me/ — an old mainstay if there ever was one. Yes, I know, the sound effects in this game aren’t the best in the world, but they do add a little spice, I like to think.

Saturday 2:00 - 3:00 pm:

Mainly I spent this time play-testing. I wish I had more time for this, but I was able to iron out all the major bugs (I hope). I am confident that the game is beatable, but not too difficult and not too easy. We’ll see — you folks will be the judges.

Saturday 3:00-4:00 pm:

Submission hour. Yeah, if we include this, it took us 25 hours — still, close enough. No major changes here, except for adding a final music track that @bcav sent me. Mainly I made minor adjustments — e.g., I added in-game instructions, a game title, and so forth.

* Lessons Learned: *

1. Sometimes doing a major re-design is a good idea, even when very little time is left. Last night’s idea — I’m glad I ditched it. In hindsight, it seems too lackluster. The one we finished today has a certain aura to it, and it’s good to see Alice again.

2. It was a lot more fun with only 24 hours to finish a game. In the past, Ludum Dare weekends really dragged. I squandered the time trying out too many ideas and often waited until the last day before I dug in.

3. In the final hours, @bcav suggested an extension but fortunately he pulled through. Oddly enough, his music is just as good this time, if not better — a shorter time-frame seems to have helped us.