Play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=17874

Ludum Dare 25 (48 hour Compo)was my first Ludum Dare, and only really my second attempt at starting and finishing a large game. Of course I had tinkered making variants of Snake and such beforehand but other than Neutron Craft I hadn’t much experience going start to finish on a big project.

As such, I kept my scope small and aimed to make sure I had a finished game. I’m happy to say I completed that goal, but of course there’s always more you wish you could have done:

What went right:

1. I finished the game.
   Really happy about this one. But pretty much mentioned this above.
2. The aesthetic.
   I am not an artist. Heck, I can barely draw a straight line. But I feel by taking advantage of a minimalist theme, and making use of effects like particle emitters I was able to get a lot more mileage out of my bad art. Heck, people have even been saying the art looks great in the comments!
3. It doesn’t break (mostly).
   Luckily, I haven’t had anyone complaining my game is downright broken (yet – touch wood). As far as I can tell it shouldn’t actually crash (at least not my work). There is a slight issue but that’s for the next section…

What went wrong:

1. It’s not that clear how the scoring works.
   I probably should’ve listened to my peers earlier on about getting a much stronger game aspect into this, as for at least most of the first day it was just an interactive weather simulator/toy. I spent so long in the first day implementing the three weather features that day 2 became making a scoring system out of it, and left no room for anything else. I’ve had criticism that the scoring method isn’t clear (which I agree with), however I also didn’t want to just spell it out so people knew the exact formula. But also, I was distracted more by my “cool idea” for the theme, than actually how I was going to make it a game.
2. The format isn’t that accessible.
   I used XNA, as it’s something I’ve been messing around with a lot recently. I wanted to keep practising with it so I stuck with it, but next time I’d like to make my game easier to play for more people.
3. Something crazy happened with the compiled executable…
   So, the weirdest thing occurred in the dying hours of the compo. I (stupidly) only ran the compiled executable of the game, outside of the debug mode in Visual Studio, for the first time, and found if you clicked off the window, and left it so it wasn’t the “active window” for more than about 5 seconds, the game crashes. For no reason at all.
   It’s funny too, that the game logic and audio still runs in the background (I can hear it get to the game over screen). And yet the window is unresponsive, due to some AppHangB1 error. I’m certain it’s not my code (at least directly). I tried so hard to fix it but just had no time. Thankfully it’s not a game breaker – just don’t click off the window while playing! (Which I assume most people wouldn’t do anyway :P)

Lastly, I leave you with my timelapse! Thanks for reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SsaEmsWmUw