Being my first ludumdare experience and second jam, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about my game, other games, and jams in general.

–Make the game easy to play

Any sort of non-intuitiveness or early difficulty turns people away immediately.  It takes a lot of time to rate games and it feels like a chore to replay anything or not know what’s going on.  Death mechanics should be quick and painless into a respawn nearby before you’ve lost the player to the next game.

I made this mistake.  I didn’t end up getting enemy spawn waves set up properly with save points, death is a little slower to get back then I’d like, and I had zero tutorial-like early game structure.

My plan was to have a big contra style boss fight be the highlight of the game and most didn’t even see it. =(

–Get mechanics/gameplay done first, polish later

A fairly polished broken game will have you tossed before anyone can experience what you have created.

I was polishing as I went – sounds, art stuff (the water visual physics was the first thing I did and really had nothing to do with the gameplay…), particles, etc.  This had me freaking out the last day trying to finish the boss fight mechanics, before I’d have to scrap it to make sure everything is working and finish the build.

Although…

–Some polish makes a world of difference so plan accordingly

Many claim that you expect to play rough games and it’s all about discovering new fun mechanics.  This just simply isn’t true .  It’s quite obvious the games that look and play the best, get the most attention.

And rightfully so.

There is more to how a player interacts with a game then what their hands and brain are doing.  The visual and audio representations of those events are a large part of why a mechanic can feel rewarding.  Without these an innovative idea can fall flat and be left to die due to a lack of peer attention, which can be a major deciding factor for anyone thinking about bringing their jam game to the next level.

You can also definitely polish a turd into something people will enjoy.  To the resentment of hipster developers everywhere,  the world just simply works that way.  See half the COD series and Miley Cyrus for reference.

-My submission

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=37472