I finally found the time to write my entries post mortem. My entry is a platform game called Go Below with a pretty nice game mechanic. If you can’t proceed since your path is blocked, you can continue beneath the surface.

Go Below – Play and rate now

Before we start, my favourites

Senilescape is an awesome platformer, where you need to escape from a prison and flee from the guards. I didn’t get very far but I tried over and over and over and over so it seems to be very good.

Beneath the Surface is a disturbing, creepy text-based experience where you get send into a bunker and need to kill the big red. During the game play you have some options to chose from, but I don’t think you can finish the game without feeling bad.

Gun Bat This game requires headphones. You need to resist against enemies that you don’t see. It uses audio to give you an idea where you have to shoot.

What went right

• Nothing
  Just kidding.
• Create an ingame level editor
  This time I started coding the game with the ingame level editor. This saved me a lot of time, especially since I could test jumps and alike directly after editing. The levels tiles were then saved in the browser (using localStorage), so I could reload for changes without losing the level. When I was done I used a little console stunt to export the level. The editor can be enabled in the source (class World, property editing).
• Using Coffeescript
  Coffeescript is awesome. It allowed me to focus on the game logic without setting up the prototype chain and stuff on my own. The syntax is so much nicer than pure JavaScript.
• Handdrawn style graphics
  This time, I’ve gone a different route than usual with my graphics. Instead of pixel art, I used the brush tool of gimp to create graphics that are looking like drawn by hand. The process to create those was really simple so I consider the style for the next Ludum Dare.

What went wrong

• No music
  I tried to create a soundtrack with LMMS, but I have not learned usage yet so I skipped it. A little background melody would’ve helped atmosphere so much.
• Not using a framework
  Like at all the other LDs before, yet again I had not prepared a framework. The basic setup always costs worthy time so I will use a framework next time (hopefully).
• Level design
  The level is with a playtime of avg. 3 minutes quite short. On the one hand this is nice, since it allows the people who rate my game to beat it before rating. But too many seconds get wasted for simple walking and less puzzle solving. Especially in the middle of the game there is a pretty long walking part.

Finally, thank you to all those who commented, who created all the awesome games and to Jupiter_Hadley and shubshub for their videos of Go Below.

Tags: post-mortem