Stem is ready to be played !
First of all, I have to tell everyone : MASSIVE WELL DONE ! This was my 3rd Ludum Dare, and I’m always impressed by the amount of awesomeness I can see every four months here ! Wow !
As usual, I did enter the compo challenge. And again, it felt like 48 hours were not enough ! 
But I guess the feeling is shared with every Ludum-darers ! But I managed to ship a game right before the deadline. The game ? Stem, a game where you control a growing plant with your left and right keys.
What went right ?
- The gameplay. The mechanics are easy to understand: collect good stuff, avoid bad stuff ! I think most game during Ludum Dare should keep mechanics simple for two reasons : one, it is way easier to develop; two, a lot of players spend little time rating each game and usually give up when they have to spend more than 3 to 4 minute trying to understand the rules.
- The aesthetics. I love the clean, simple, minimalistic look of the game. I have been playing a lot to Two Dots & Mujo (both on Android) and loved them. Also, I am not good at pixel art ! 😉
What went wrong ?
- The difficulty. The game difficulty isn’t properly balanced. It is way too easy at start and gets harder too slowly. I released a post-compo version which solves partially that problem (but if you rate the game, rate the initial release only to be fait to other contestants). I’ll need to spend more time for future releases.
- The sound/music. Well, there’s no sound or music to the game. Unfortunately, I ran into game breaking bugs in the compiled version of the game (bugs that were not appearing in my IDE) and spent about three and a half hours debugging the mess. So, I had to skip on recording the music and sounds. Funny enough, I actually implemented the classes to play sounds in the game (you can actually see them in the source code).
And now ?
I will try to implements new features, some musics and sounds, and to balance the game during the following weeks. I’ll keep on posting updates here until the next Ludum Dare ! Oh, and of course, do not forget to…