I’m both proud of, and really disappointed with my entry, “CRTs are Ancient, right?“. Gameplay-wise, I think it’s probably the most polished, and with the most potential for continuation. Content-wise, I’m really disappointed. There’s a lot I wanted to do, and a lot of potential, but I was too focused on all the mechanics to be able to get any of it implemented.
All of my other entries usually take at least 10-15 minutes to play through and get a good idea of, whereas this can probably be done in five or less. There’s one proper level in the game. One. That’s the shortest of any Ludum Dare entry I’ve ever made. Considering how much effort I put into making the mechanics, I’m really sad there’s only one puzzle to use them with.
I think the biggest mistake was trying to make so many features; it’s a stealth game, a hacking game, and a first-person shooter all rolled into one. You use the computer terminals to achieve your objectives, doing things like printing important documents, toggling lights, or working with elevators. You can hide in the shadows and move swiftly, like a ninja, and never have to kill a single guard. You can rambo through and shoot all who stand to oppose you. All these mechanics are pretty decently polished, but I spent so long making them all that there wasn’t any time left to build a game around them.
Level creation for puzzley games is always a pain, there’s no denying that. I was lucky to get four made for Shift back in LD35, and it was a real struggle to get them all working; and the number of mechanics to juggle was *way* smaller. I wanted this to have lots of interesting puzzles built around timing, working with lights, shadows, etc; true light-n-dark stealth is hard to come by these days. I wanted the computers to feel like an important part of the game; out of everything, they’re still the most clearly ancient. But instead, they’re more of these simplistic things that you type away at for a couple of seconds, do whatever it is you need to do on them, and then go back to running/gunning/doing whatever it is you do.
I had these grand dreams of putting some social commentary on them; if you stopped and used “viewData” on some, you’d get these little insights in SCI-style files, where someone at the coropration (aka: me) would have written some info on something or another. An entry on Tulpas, or psychology, social studies, even OS security holes. Social commentary and story building. It was going to be awesome. But when it came time to write them, I realized there wasn’t any time to spend sitting around writing walls of text; not many people would end up reading them, and I needed to focus on level-design or gameplay mechanics.
In the end, I’m happy-ish with what’s out, but disappointed by all the lost potential. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go relax in No Man’s sky for a few hours before going back to playing and rating some of your games.
Tags: post-mortem
