Hey there, fellow jammers!

Results are almost out!

Have you ever noticed how, during voting, you always play one or two games that make you go like “Holy Crap, this guy is totally winning this LD!”, but then the final results come out and you actually haven’t played many of the greatest games? So many jewels are hidden right now beneath the surface (ha!) of the voting system, and in a few hours they’ll be revealed! What crazy, marvelous games I have missed this time? PRETTY ANXIOUS RIGHT NOW!

Anyway, since we have to wait a few hours longer, I decided to write about this struggle that was very present during the development of our game Last Dive.

In a nutshell, as you grow into a “mature” indie developer or whatever, you usually lean more and more towards being really minimalistic, going for the smallest possible scope, and then adding lots of polish to it. However, for this theme in particular, we got ourselves into an “all or nothing” feeling, where we felt that it was either a boring theme, or the most awesome theme EVER for us – as long as we had the time to make the game that we wanted to make. It wasn’t a minimalist game for a 72 hours timeframe, but if we cut anything out of the scope, the design breaks and we don’t wanna make it anymore…

Stupid and crazy, right? Have you ever felt that way about a project?

Anyway, I wrote a little thing about minimalism versus giving up your vision, in the context of this Ludum Dare. Considering the irreversible path towards simplification that we have been trailing over the last few years, our participation this time was quite a thrill. I honestly don’t think we could pull this together if we hadn’t been participating in Ludum Dare for a few editions now.

Here’s the game, if anyone still has the stamina to play through one more game! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=11099

So, as always, a big THANK YOU to this community! The things we learn here we are being able to apply on our main project, and that is invaluable to us. Seriously, dude. Pixel Cows is very much *defined* by Ludum Dare right now! 😀

Cheers!