Ludum Dare 28 was my first Ludum Dare, and dare I say, it was a successful one for me.

Things I did right:
-Accomodated time to have a complete game by the deadline.
-Didn’t have any ugly placeholders by the end of it (even though I would have changed some graphics)

Things I did wrong:
-Didn’t have enough practice with the program I was going to use before starting, which lead to me discovering stuff on the go.
-Didn’t have a game that could be played through until the very last hours, which was risky and made me nervous
-Didn’t add music or sound, which would have taken very little time, and be worth the quality improvement.

Having dedicated a weekend to developing a game has been very rewarding, since now I have completed a game for the first time ever, after years of just thinking about it. I also met many cool people at IRC, you should come hang out next time if you didn’t before :^y

You can download and play my game from its LD entry page:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=30054

I’m in!

I have a couple ideas, but I’ll probably do a game similar to those Japanese game-shows where the person has to fit through person-filled holes. Not necessarily as homo-erotic as Muscle March though.

I’ll be trying out libgdx, a Java game library. I didn’t take some time to use it beforehand, we’ll see exactly how bad of an idea that was…

Good luck everyone (especially fellow late-starters)!

Hi, I'm yellowlime :slight_smile: This is my fourth Ludum Dare, and second using Unity.

A lot of people are making games about gardening, myself included :laughing:

I've made some placeholder sprites and some NPCs:

Good luck and keep it up! Come say hi in Discord!

I'm making the map for my game :slight_smile: it will be a small Harvest Moon clone but with flowers

Haven't posted in a while 'cause I've been doing mostly code... but here's some improved graphics for my game :slight_smile:

And yes, most are seamlessly tilable :nerd:

12 hours left guys :muscle:

LD46 was one week ago, but I've been busy/tired with work all week so now's the time to write my post-mortem:

Saturday

I read the theme, "Keep it alive". I quickly set on my idea "Harvest Moon with flowers" and "keep the memory alive".

I fired up Unity, made some graphics and started making the tilemap and player movement.

I played some ditties on my guitar for placeholder music (they were fitting enough to keep).

I came up with ambitious subsystems: day and night cycle, day of the week, plant growing, and buying and selling. It would also have simple ARPG combat and a puzzle subsystem (almost none of these ideas would come to fruition :rolling_eyes:).

I posted progress screenshots and gifs on Twitter, the Ludum Dare feed, and the Ludum Dare Discord. I downloaded ScreenToGif, which is a neat simple program.

Sunday

I decided SFXR sounds weren't good for my game, and instead recorded some tapping and scratching sounds with my phone, to use as stepping sounds in brick and grass. I didn't have enough time to implement them.

6 hours from the deadline, I was now worried. There was talk of incoming server load, so I hurried to make the title screen for my game and pre-published the itch.io and Ludum Dare pages.

On Sunday night, 3 hours from the deadline, I had no gameplay. I scrapped what I was working on and finalized the "talk to npc" system and the code for collecting flowers. I made the ending within the last half hour of the deadline. This was exciting, but dangerous (and nerve-wracking :confounded:) I play tested one last time and submitted.

Conclusion

What I did right: * This time, I came up with the idea pretty quickly. * Kept up with the community on Discord, which is good for inspiration and morale. :thumbsup: * I made music right from the start, which helped keep a vision and motivation. * I posted progress screenshots and gifs, which is always great for motivation and exposure. * I had some starting graphics in the very beginning, which kept it grounded and shareable. * I made a Trello board with tiered items to keep track of the work left.

What I did wrong: * Overly ambitious gameplay ideas for my current Unity experience and existing codebase (within the timeframe). * Focused on day/night cycle, weekday system and plant growth, before the more basic gameplay code. * Didn't share progress on Sunday, because of lack of time and visible progress (too much under-the-hood work). * Actual gameplay was created in the last 3 hours of the jam.

Overall, I'm very happy with the process and the result :slight_smile: This experience will definitely help me make games and promote them some more.

You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/flower-picker