This is my first time entering the Jam instead of the Compo, and I did it with Tifu, a friend of mine that usually enters LD by himself as well.  Together, we made our entry, “Nightlight“:

I handled the programming, sound and music, while Tifu handled the characters, graphics and level design.

Things that went well:

• I loved the theme Tifu and I came up with while brainstorming ideas at the beginning.  Focusing on the “Growing” aspect, we implemented it three different ways: the growing fear, the doll growing in power, and the overall theme of the child growing up.  I feel that anyone who makes it to the ending will be able to fully appreciate the theme.  Also, though we didn’t specifically use the “Two Button Controls” theme, we did make a reference to it by naming the doll “Two Buttons”.
• I really like how the visuals came out.  Tifu had enough time to create separate animations for the main character for both normal and scared states, and I think little touches like that help add some additional charm to the game.
• Everything came together well for the sound, from the constant sound of rain outdoors to the intermittent flashes of lightning, and even very subtle things like the main character’s footsteps becoming louder with faster movement.  Anyone familiar with my previous entries knows that I like putting in dynamic music, so of course I had it increase and decrease the intensity of the music based on the fear level.
• I’ve never coded a dialogue system before, and while it wasn’t perfect, I’m glad I was able to get it working.  Using different fonts and colors for the text made it easy to tell who was speaking when multiple characters were talking.
• We were just barely able to get both the intro and outro completed before time elapsed, and I’m glad we did, as it would have felt very incomplete without it.
• The four photos that the player has to find are adorable; Tifu did a great job with them.

Things that needed improvement:

• While doing the movement coding, I had the semi-brilliant idea of making it so that as the player got more afraid, the main character’s movement speed would become gradually faster when moving towards light sources (or outlets while carrying the nightlight) and slower when moving away from them.  It made sense in a realistic sort of way, but in practice, I realized too late that no slowdown at all should have occurred.  As a result, some of the runs in the game ended up being more difficult than expecting, and the very first room of the game unfortunately ended up being difficult to pass (not a good first impression to make).  Unfortunately, I’m worried that some people may not have successfully passed it due to the difficulty, and this may have had an impact on the ratings they gave.
• As most LD entrants know, running out of time is the greatest problem.  While I’m glad we finished a complete experience, there were some things that were cut for time.  Most specifically, the doll (Two Buttons) was originally going to show up throughout the house to hound the player at random and not-so-random points, but we felt that this was secondary to the rest of the game, and focused on getting the core gameplay done first.  As a result, there aren’t any scares as we had originally planned.  In a way though, it kind of still works: there’s a constant fear of something scary happening that never comes, which fits in with the realization that it’s all in the main character’s head.  (I kind of wish we at least had time to implement the TV scare.  Tifu had animations ready for it, but I just couldn’t get it programmed in.)
• Originally I had set up a system by which light sources would cast shadows and consequently produce unlit areas that the player would still end up being in the dark and afraid.  In practice though, it didn’t look good with the perspective we chose, so I ended up cutting it out.  The only way it would have worked was if the perspective was directly top down, and I think I prefer the RPG-style top down we went with instead, since it allowed for more expression on the characters.
• I’d like to have put in a dialogue system that typed out what was being said, like most RPGs do (instead of having the text just appear), but this feature was very low on the priority list, so I cut it very early in development.
• With how much time everything else took, I didn’t have time to make a proper opening and closing theme to the game.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to cut music from an LD entry.

Anyway, there’s still time to play it if you haven’t yet.  We hope everyone likes it!