Polymorph

This was my first game jam ever. Hell, it was my first game ever. A few of friends were talking about ludum dare 2 weeks before and I felt the need to butt in.

What went wrong:

Preparation. They were lacking a programmer so I thought maybe I could learn some unity in those 2 weeks. My knowledge of programming goes back 5 years to my highschool days which is really all a haze now, I was really in for a surprise when I was trying to make stuff happen in unity. Two days before the jam started I suggested we use construct. I ended up going into the weekend having finished 2 very basic construct tutorials which led to me learning how to use everything that first night.

Time management. By the end of Saturday night I were so sure that we were close to finished that I kind of just took Sunday very slow not realizing that I had overlooked a few things. (being a jam entry we had till Monday, but everyone had work on Monday)

Graphics. We didn’t really have an “artist.” Our original plan was to just keep everything very simple, black and white with very basic platforms. When it came down to running the prototype everything looked very dull. On Saturday I asked one of the random friends to mock up some background images on extremely short notice.

Physics! So understanding exactly how to implement the physics was the biggest hurdle I ran into. A lot of the problems we started running to towards the end I just kind of threw a band-aid on and moved on, just for the sake of having a “working” game. But of course this all goes back to preparation.

What went right:

Ideas. We met up on skype right before the theme was announced. Within an hour of the theme being announced we knew exactly what we wanted to make. Hardly anything was changed from our original idea as we were developing the game.

Audio. The audio really helped with the atmosphere of the game. The time was spent implementing the audio mechanics of the game were the most productive.

Organization. Lucky for us dropbox is a very easy solution to share files. Everything was neatly organized and easy to access.

Summary:

Overall I felt like this jam was a success. It was great fun, and I learned a lot! The nervousness I had going in just seems so silly now. I will definitely be back next time!