With my third ever LD (and second ever Compo) entry shipped and a few days now passed, I felt a little closure report is a good way for me to reflect on the jam and, most importantly, some lessons learned.

Quick and dirty

I originally did not intent to participate in this Ludum Dare. And I held that intention until around 14 hours into the Jam, when I found myself coming home, switching on my PC and telling myself 'oh well, might as well try'. I didn't at that time really picture finishing anything, but just participating as long as my motivation held.

However, this non-commited attitude actually helped me to quickly decide on a very small idea that was actually concievable for the remaining time - with minimal art requirements and a compact gaming loop that could stand on its own without many bells and whistles. And, lo and behold, when my Saturday came to an end (at this point around 21 hours into the jam), I actually had a working prototype. It was not exactly nice to look at, didn't have any sound whatsoever and some implementations were still a bit wonky - but it was a working game. Which, in turn, gave me the motivation to actually commit and try to finish something I felt good submitting.

And I did!

Granted, it's still not particularily pleasant to look at, but it had a few more mechanical tweaks, another gameplay feature (the lovely managers distracting you) added and sound + music.

Obviously, it's far from perfect. The mode switch in particular is way too sudden and can screw over the player. Plus I had ideas for more variations and challenges that just didn't make it in. And the last hours were mostly some stressful building and fiddeling with the UI (more on that below). But considering the tighter schedule, I'm still very pleased with the outcome and glad I did participate in LD again. It was again just a great experience and an opportunity to learn a lot in a very short amount of time.

Lessons learned

Speaking of learning. Here are some things this jam taught me in particular:

• I feel like this is the way to go for jams, at least for me: start very small, with something that can be made into a working prototype in the fist 24 hours. Then add gravy if there is time. This is especially true for the core gameplay mechanics - the foundation should work, with the option of adding more spice to it. The motivation from having something running relatively early should also not be underestimated.

• Basic sound and music is comparatively easy to make and implement (at least in Unity), but adds, in my opinion, a lot of value to a game, so I want to basically never skip it again (like I did in my first Compo entry).

• Get better at UI scaling and think about different resolutions/builds from the start. I basically ignored that part until the last few hours and it just resulted in avoidable stress and some actual gamebreaking bugs I needed to fix.

• The Ludum Dare web embedding is nice to have, but very restrictive, especially concerning the resoultion. I did not know this beforehand and it threw me off quite a bit, especially as I implemented the game with a different aspect ratio in mind. Next time, I'll try to decide early if I want to support it or not.

• Look into non-default fonts. Using the default ones just automatically makes it look a tad cheap. I did not have time to actually read up on what is acceptable in this regard and where to get some nice free fonts, but this is something that could easily be prepared beforehand.

The End

And that's it! If you want, you can check the game out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/fulfillment

Thanks for reading and until next time!