After 9 years of Ludum Dare, this was my first game jam not done from the exact same location. In the last few months, I started college, and have moved into a dorm with all the adjustment that came with that. I like to think I adapted, but hey, a new normal I suppose. And hey, the game still got made (despite the many hurdles this post-mortem is focused on).

Brainstorming

Shrimpwrecked! is one of the most fully cohesive concepts I've ever come up with for Ludum Dare, but this came at a pretty high price. When the theme was announced, I was fully defeated. I've been doing this thing for a while now, and "Limited space" just didn't give me much to work with outside of continually linking me back to LD42's "Running out of space". I spent right around 3 hours just utterly stuck with literally no leads to go off of. I had a couple ideas, but either the scope was too big or I just knew that it wouldn't end up being fun. 3 hours might not seem terrible for some people, but it is by far the longest I've ever gone in a game jam without any semblance of direction. Right off the bat, I was already frustrated and behind, and I get the feeling that this affected my overall performance during the remainder of the weekend more than I would've like.

Productivity

I was extremely inefficient with my time during the entire course of the jam. The concept, although definitely not simple, wasn't nearly as complex as the time each element took would lead you to believe. I think this was partially a symptom of the new environment. It wasn't that I wasn't focused, but moreso that I just was not getting things done as quickly as I know I could've. It's hard to explain, but I know that I felt it in one way or another. However, this is mostly a symptom of...

Scope

I've gotten much, much better about scoping jam games as I've done more of them, but this one got away from me. If you're at all familiar with Ludum Dare 53's Stork Serenity (currently being further developed!), you'd know that that was my smallest scoped game I've ever done, and it was frankly better off for it. With the gameplay so limited, I had the time and energy to really focus on the little things and make it by far my most polished experience to date. Now contrast this with Shrimpwrecked. While it certainly isn't one of my most overscoped games (Ethereal Exchange and Planet Vesta say hi), it was just a bit more than I could handle.

As I realized once I started working on it, the minigame "levels" present in each bigger level could have basically been a full game on their own, and I had all the extra wrapper of the bigger game around it as well. The currency system, the shop, the overworld, etc, all took about as much time as I had anticipated, but the minigame system ate up basically the entirety of my Saturday. Something needed to budge, but nothing ended up doing so, and the final game felt that blow. Polish was sacrificed for a couple extra frankly half-baked systems, and doing it over again I don't think I would have made those same sacrifices.

Atmosphere

Again comparing this to Stork Serenity (which I'll do several more times), the atmosphere was something that I really wanted to nail. Stork Serenity's atmosphere was the defining element of that game, and was what took it from a simple sokoban-style puzzler to a legitimately enjoyable experience. And again, I had time to do these things because the game itself got out of the way and let me work on it. Shrimpwrecked's atmosphere was not... bad, but it definitely didn't end up being as captivating as I was hoping. Scavenging shipwrecks for treasure at the bottom of the ocean is a great pitch for a setting, but without all the elements to really tie it together it can fall short.

Overall I did actually like how the atmosphere turned out, but it still feels like it's missing that extra punch of mood that would have set it over the edge. The god rays, background, particle effects, music, all contributed to this, but it didn't necessarily feel connected to the gameplay. This seems to just be a me thing, since all of the comments seemed to universally like the aesthetics and setting I created, but it still stands out to me as a thing I can improve on. It especially hurts knowing that I did really nail it in the past, and fell short on a second attempt.

The Starting Location

This is the big one that I'm still so upset at myself for. If you've played the game, you're almost certainly aware of some of the particular quirks of the level generation. Each minigame is randomly generated, so they're different every time you play. I stand by this decision, and I'm generally happy with how it turned out, but one particular issue became basically the sole critique mentioned by almost everyone who left a comment. When starting a minigame, there's a decently high chance that there will just be an enemy spawned directly under the player, and without inhuman reaction time you will instantly die.

There were so many solutions to this, be it better generation, altered enemy bounds, or any number of other things. However, the simplest solution would have just been to leave the starting location alone. As I was wrapping up my game and preparing to export during submission hour, I took the player character in the minigame screen, and moved it down one extra tile to start the level lower on the screen. This was an aesthetic choice, as I didn't love how it looked higher up at the start, and it especially bothered me on the tutorial screen where the player is static. However, this ended up being the biggest mistake of the entire jam. This extra tile was the entire cause of the big complaint, and I didn't think to test it because I had been playing the game the whole time with no issues. It didn't even cross my mind that I had completely designed the level generation around that position, and as such totally threw off the game balance with seemingly such a small change.

Results and Conclusion

I'm overall pretty happy with how this game turned out, despite the many many flaws I pointed out in the prior thousand words or so. Going in my goal was top 150 overall, and I achieved that. I actually added some humor in the form of the shopkeeper's dialogue lines, and placed in top 100 for that, and had by far my highest fun score ever. I struggled in innovation and theme, and had a distinct downgrade from Stork Serenity in terms of graphics, audio, and mood, but I'm aware of it and know how to fix it in the future. Honestly, this was one of the most fun jams I've ever done and I'm very excited for April. In combination, my last 2 jam entries have been by far my best set of scores, and it feels good to finally have genuine improvement happening. Hopefully I can combine the best of both games for LD54, and I'll see you all again when the time comes.