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This has been one of the best experiences in game development since I started roughly 1 year and a half ago. I made my first completed game at the last Ludum Dare, and while I was excited about it, seeing how much better I’ve gotten at art, programming, design, and sound in just a few short months is extremely motivating. Anyway, here’s what went down.

What Went Right:

• The biggest thing I was able to do for myself this time around was choosing an idea with a scope that was reasonable for me. I had never done a game remotely like this, but choosing to do single screen levels, with very simple, but understable mechanics helped a lot. That’s not to say I did everything I wanted to (I obviously wanted more than one enemy type), but I was able to get a game that was fun to play by midway through saturday afternoon. From there, I was able to really start added to the core experience, like sounds, UI, End game splashes and stuff. Not only keeping with a reasonable scope, but defining what was core to the experience was crucial.
• While my game doesn’t look great, I’m very happy with the amount of progress I’ve made in this area over the last few months. If you played my last entry in August, I think you’ll agree. Midway through the contest, I actually redid every sprite using a new pallete, and since I’m not totally sure how to use the color replacer in Photoshop, I ended up doing each one manually with the fill tool. It took more than an hour of time, but I think the results were well worth it. In the end, my game isn’t pretty by any means, but I would say that there is at least a consistent style throughout.
• My wife can play it! Since I started making games, this has sort of been the litmus test for whether a game is approachable or not. My wife not only picked it up and played it, but kept playing for upwards of thirty minutes (she wasn’t very good…). I don’t know if anyone else has ever experienced it, but this is one of the most satisfying things that happens.
• Finally, I think I did a much better job of selecting my tools. I had learned to program exclusively in XNA up until a month and a half ago, and was tired of having to package my games for windows only and with several dependencies. Now I can build games much faster, with a more powerful tool, and I’m also able to easily package them to platforms that other people can actually access them on. Being able to export to web is huge for me, since I can get people to play them, even outside the LD community. Seeing that hundreds of people have played my game is super cool!

What Went Wrong:

• Like everyone else, Time. This time of year is full of Christmas Parties, Graduations, and Graduation Parties. In all, I was probably able to spend about 15-20 hours on it total, but I would have liked to get another five or so in. I had to cut back on the ambitious number of levels I was planning to put it, as well as the new enemy variants and environments. I’m not sure if this should even count as a “what went wrong”, since having no time is kind of the point.
• Music. I was able to get full sound effects and music in this time around, but I spent at least 3 hours (as much as 20%) of my development time making a 30 second loop. I ended up with ok sounds, but I wish I could have found some more flexible tools. inudge.net is great in a pinch, but the variety in instrumentation is definitely lacking. I’ll definitely try to find another solution before the nest LD comes around. Ultimately, the problem here is that I didn’t have a firm enough plan going in.

I’m sure there’s more to share, but that probably plenty for now. I had a ton of fun, and I’m actually really happy with my final product, all things considered.

This may not be the place to post this last bit, but it’s been on my mind the whole time I’ve made this game:

I think it would be cool to work with someone (or someones) else for the next LD. I’ve done all of everything for all of my games, LD and otherwise, and I think it would be a  good experience to learn to work with a team on something. I feel like it would be really beneficial to start exposing myself to other peoples ideas and styles, not to mention possibly make something better than I could on my own. Sadly, I think I may be the only game developer of any kind for a 500 mile radius around my house. I know I’m not an unbelievable programmer yet, but if any artistic people want to give it a shot next go round let me know.