It’s been well over a year since I last did a LD competition, so I’m looking forward to getting far too little sleep over the next few days.

My last entry was Bulldozer Blitz for LD13’s Roads theme.

I like to set goals for each competition, so I can come back afterwards and laugh at how hilariously I managed to not hit them. So, goals!

I’ll be attempting to make:

• Something playable, hopefully fun.
• Something quirky.
• Something pretty.

Things I’ll be ignoring:

• Sound. Who cares!
• High scores.
• Menus.
• My general state of health.

Things I’ll be attempting to do:

• Finish the actual game in decent time to allow for last minute polishing and tweeking.
• Take a better sequence of progress pictures as the competition progresses.
• Post more blog entries during the competition.
• Get early gameplay feedback on the first day rather than waiting until the competition is over.

Things I’ll be attempting to avoid:

• Spending too long on tools (like level editors).
• Spending ages tweeking the same couple of sprites.
• Working really late on the first day, then getting up at midday and wasting the morning.

Previously I’ve focused on getting complete, polished games made, at the expense of complexity. Bulldozer Blitz being possibly the best example, which has proper menus, high scores and legend text but the actual gameplay is quite minimal. This time I’d like to focus more on interesting game mechanics and leave out some of the ‘meta’ game.