This is the second time I have finished a game for Ludum Dare, and I think I’ve learned lessons from my previous entry. I didn’t have most of Saturday or Sunday available, but I made a big push on Monday to get something playable out.

What went right:

• Polish. My previous entry lacked a lot of polish, and it showed in a lot of places. This time, participating in the jam, I had plenty of time to add little bits to my game to make it more presentable.
• Testing. My previous game had many bugs remaining, as I rushed it out for the 48 hour competition. This game is relatively bug free (besides a hi-score saving bug in the original upload, which was swiftly fixed).
• Aiming for jam release instead of compo. I was rather busy with work commitments during LD weekend, so I didn’t want to push myself too hard, especially after being pushed hard at work.

What went wrong:

• Work commitments. I’m usually very busy with work during the festive season, and LD weekend was no exception.
• Tiredness. Because I’ve been working all day Saturday and most of Sunday, this has left me physically tired, and with little motive to code.
• Coming up with a game idea. I really liked the idea of the theme, but I just couldn’t decide what I could actually make from it. It took me about 12 hours to come up with a simple pickpocketing game.
• A little too easy. Especially running from the police. The reason behind this is that I reduced the time limit from 5 minutes down to 3  towards the end of development. I didn’t adjust the sprinting speed (which slows down based on the amount of pockets you picked) to compensate.

What was cut:

• Music. I tried algorithmic music generators, but nothing I could find could produce a suitable 8-bit style sound.
• Road / Police car. I was originally going to put a road at the bottom of the screen, where police cars could drive past, and catch you in the act of pickpocketing, but I dropped that feature, as I was running short of time.

Well, it’s been a fun Ludum Dare. I’m looking forward to playing a load of entries (I’m aiming for gold coolness this time). In the meantime, you can play my game HERE