My game, Megalomania, is now live! This has been a very interesting process as I've never quite made a game like this before. No graphics to speak of, no physics... the entire thing is done through what is essentially menu screens and UI.

Part of my thoughts going into LD49 were that I wanted to figure out how to use Odin Inspector for Unity (I recently picked it up in a Humble Bundle and want to use it in other projects). I think it's safe to say that this was a success in that aspect.

I could dissect the game further and go into design details, but I have purposefully designed to game to be partially about going in blind and figuring out what everything means...

A bit of a delayed post but a post nonetheless. For this LD compo, I decided to do a grid-based puzzler heavily influenced by the Zachtronics-style "programming puzzle game" genre. The grid-based approach was partially due to strange bugs in my previous entry related to utilising Unity's physics system. I figured I wouldn't bother with any of that, so grid (and turn)-based movement that's nice and predictable was what I went for.

So this is a bit of a post-mortem. Obviously results aren't anywhere near out yet, but I've learned from the comments I've received.

A few spoilers are mentioned here, so if you're interested please check the game out before reading on. The picture above is a link to the game page.

What is the game?

Out of Memory is a puzzle game based around sequencing instructions and giving them to your robots so that they can move into place (among other things). It's a pretty intuitive system, I'm sure some of you have played games like it.

What did I focus on?

I focused a lot on UI responsiveness (button feedback mostly) and trying to keep the screen as clear as possible while allowing for a lot of depth. The most elegant games in my view get their difficulty from complex interactions between simple components, and I think that's what I really tried to accomplish here. Above all, I wanted to make a game that was simple enough that I could spend a good amount of time on polish.

What worked?

I'm proud of a lot of what I accomplished with this game. The UI design is among my best, the SFX are also a highlight for me (I think this has more unique sound effects in it than any of my previous entries). The individual puzzle designs are also something I take a lot of pride from, I think there's some really interesting thought processes you have to go through to solve some of them. The overall game mechanics are also very clean, and I think they feel good to use... a very important factor in any game.

I always put a good amount of time and effort into the soundtrack, and I think this one works really well. It leans well into the sci-fi feel, and isn't in-your-face enough to distract from the puzzles. Last but not least, I'm also pretty happy with the visuals. I don't ever claim to be a good visual artist, but I think the tricks I used for this worked out pretty well for me - I'm especially happy with the UI icons.

What didn't work, or needed more work?

The difficulty curve is a little strange, to say the least. The first 5 levels are reasonably easy, level 6 is extremely difficult, 7 is pretty easy by comparison, and then 8 is monstrously hard. Not enough players have made it to level 9 to give feedback on that, but I definitely acknowledge that the puzzles needed a more steady ramp up in difficulty. I can attribute it to the 48-hour time limit and the fact that it's really hard to test puzzle difficulty by yourself when you already know the solution, but it's definitely something I should keep in mind in future.

In addition, there is one glaring UI flaw which I started kicking myself over when the comments started coming in and when I watched a few streamers play. The fact that the "NEXT LEVEL" button turns into "KEEP GOING" without really drawing much attention to itself has caused some frustration among players, when it wasn't an intended "gotcha" moment. Considering my focus on UI design this time around, it's my biggest regret of the compo.

Final thoughts

I'm really happy with Out of Memory. I've never picked up one of my LD entries for future development, but this is a strong contender for one to continue working on. I have a lot of ideas, and not just for fixing the two main issues with it (as mentioned, the difficulty curve and one glaring UI mistake).

For this LD compo, I figured that everyone would be doing farming games, so I thought I'd flip the genre on its head and tell the story from the perspective of the vegetables. I mixed it with a bit of cheesy 80s-style action movie character tropes, and ended up with a setting I had a lot of fun writing and recording things for. This post acts sort of as semi-promotion and also as a post-mortem even though results are a good couple of weeks away.

A few spoilers are mentioned here, so if you're interested please check the game out before reading on. The picture above is a link to the game page.

What is the game?

Revengetables is a 2D action game based around character-switching and quickly adapting to waves of enemies that approach from the sides of the screen.

What did I focus on?

I focused mainly on making sure that the game didn't get in its own way. I prioritised UI polish (even though the game doesn't really use UI that much), and I wanted distinct and recognisable visuals over something more "gritty" or sensible. I also spent a LOT of time on the sound design, the music, and the humour. The way that enemies flash when they get hit is a really nice bit of polish, and in fact subtly informs the player of the fact that tumbleweed is impervious (it doesn't flash).

What worked?

This is, without a doubt, my most sound-rich entry. It's the first one I've done that's featured extensive voice acting, and the SFX and music were also big highlights. I wanted to make sure that there weren't any glaring holes in the sound effects, and I used a neat trick for the music that I'm pretty proud of. The soundtrack consists of three distinct tracks, each in a completely different style (70s/80s style rock, smooth jazz, and electronic rave music), but with the same tempo and chord structure. All three are played simultaneously so that they line up exactly, but when you switch characters, the volume fades between them.

I also quite like the art style, although I would have liked to have added background details (such as clouds, buildings, other vegetables). What I did make, I'm quite happy with. It's a departure from my normal style, which is much more of a pixelated affair with zero blurring/smoothing.

The crown jewel of the game, however, is its humour. It is filled to the brim with cheesy one-liners, that I haven't received a single bad word about (so far). Each of the three main characters has five puns they choose from at random when they spawn in (plus some extra silliness during the tutorial), and the players love it. I am beyond proud of the jokes I put into this thing.

What didn't work, or needed more work?

I think the game would have worked better if it was, instead of a "beat all of the waves coming at you and get to the end" type thing, more of a "here's a big level with a bunch of enemies, go kill them for points" thing. Considering how the setting really makes you aware that you are being aggressive, you sure do spend a lot of time reacting instead of pushing towards enemies. I would have also liked to have included more varieties of enemies - currently there's only three (four if you include tumbleweed), although I will admit that the game is short enough that it doesn't really matter. It's more of something I would have to consider if I did go for the larger approach.

I also decided mid-way through that there would be no score tracking, which I think was a mistake. Even though players who beat the game will often have the exact same score as each other, people like seeing a number go up.

Final thoughts

I'm very proud of Revengetables. I don't personally think it's my best Ludum Dare game overall (that honour goes to my previous entry), but the individual components of it are really what I like about it. I feel that the UI, the sound, some of the visuals, and of course the jokes are among the best I've ever done. But with all that put aside, at the end of the day, it's just plain fun to play - I had an absolute blast making every part of it, and I think it shows.

So this is it! My game is finished!

It's been a crazy weekend but I'm really happy with what I've put together. After eight LDs in a row (and 19 total), this'll most likely be my last Ludum Dare for a while as I'm going to become a dad in about a month and a half, and I doubt I will have the time after that.

In a few weeks I'll see about making a proper retrospective post for The Wrong Book, but for now, I'm happy to have it out there. Enjoy!

For this LD compo, I had a very distinct mindset going into it... it'll likely be my last for a long time as I'm going to become a father for the first time in just a few weeks, so I really wanted to sum up everything I've learned and done over the years making Ludum Dare entries. What I ended up with was a game I am immensely happy with, and based on the reactions so far, I'm not alone. This post acts as a post-mortem and also semi-promotion (even though results are a day and a half away).

There are big spoilers below - if you haven't played the game through to the end, I highly recommend doing so. It takes around 15 minutes.

What is the game?

The Wrong Book is a 2D strategy/idle game based around hiring cultists, summoning demons, and putting them all to work to contribute towards the summoning of The Great Old Things.

What did I focus on?

Knowing that humour and audio have been huge winners for me in the past (achieving 3rd place in each of those categories over two consecutive compos), I figured I would lean into my strengths. I did more voice acting than ever before, and spent a good chunk of time on audio design and music composition. In addition to this, a few days before the compo started I was having a conversation with a friend about how games (specifically Civ and Factorio) manage to achieve the "just one more turn" feeling and thought I should implement some of those philosophies into the game design.

What worked?

To be quite frank, a lot worked. The reaction from everyone (fellow entrants, family, friends) has been overwhelmingly positive. The humour landed very well with people, and the audio has impressed many, especially the wide variety of voices and voice lines I managed to put in the game.

The UI design is probably the best it's ever been for any of my games, which I can tell purely by the fact that nobody has commented on it at all. It's my first game with extensive tooltips and context menus, and I think it's worked in my favour to an incredible degree. Everyone I've seen play the game managed to figure out very quickly how to interact with everything and what the gameplay loop was, with no confusion or ambiguity (a first for me). Speaking of...

One of my favourite things about the game is how automation is not available right away. Everyone, by the time automation is researched, has become very much used to manually clicking on units to queue up resources. Taking some inspiration from Factorio, I decided early on that in order to make automation feel useful & fun, the player needs to spend at least some time doing things manually first. The feeling you get when automation is finally unlocked is one of relief, and it might be the best gameplay moment of the game. The whole game was designed with this feeling in mind. Give the player an obstacle first and then give them the tools to overcome it.

But, in my view, the crowning achievement moment comes right at the end (again, massive spoilers). I had so much fun putting that silly little polka song together, and my friends and family haven't stopped singing it at me since the game came out. Very rarely have I seen any of my entries cause people to laugh out loud, but this one managed it.

What didn't work, or needed more work?

In all honesty I feel this section is much more "nitpicky" than previous post-mortems because the game has been so well received there isn't anything huge here; certainly nothing on the game design or balance side.

There was an annoying bug with the Unity engine that caused UI text to disappear midway through the game in the WebGL version only, but I managed to put a fix in a few days later. I'm hoping this bug didn't affect anyone's enjoyment of the game too much - it was infuriating for me to see something so key to the game being ruined by something in the engine itself, unrelated to anything I'd done.

The other thing was also kind of a bug - UI scaling for high resolution monitors. The maths I put together to determine where the tooltip shows completely falls apart if the UI has any dynamic scaling on it. I only learned this right at the end of dev time, just before submission, so I had to turn off scaling and make the UI a fixed size instead. Unfortunately this meant that the text was tiny on very high-res screens.

Final thoughts

I'm so happy with The Wrong Book. I think it's my best Ludum Dare game yet, and if it's my last one (due to impending fatherhood), I'm very happy to go out on such a high. Thanks to everyone who's played it and left such wonderful comments.

I was expecting to do worse in this one than my last few entries. This is for a number of reasons.

• It had been two years since I last entered into a Ludum Dare.
• I decided to use Godot this time instead of Unity, meaning I wasn't as familiar with all of its quirks. Because I wanted to do a web embed, this also meant no C#.
• I am now running Linux instead of Windows, so I expected there to be some point in my pre-existing gamedev workflow that would be incompatible (spoiler alert: everything worked fine).
• I have less time to commit to the event as I now have my own family.
• My game idea involved no humour whatsoever, which is a category I have historically scored well in.
• Despite all of the above, I still decided to enter into the Compo rather than the Jam

So, how did it go?

My personal best in Mood, my third best ever Overall ranking, and my third ever top 10 Audio placement.

I am in shock. What an unbelievable result.

So, for anyone who's interested in playing, come and check out After The Fact:

I'll hopefully see you next time,

Adam