Good Ship Exploration: postmortem and timelapse
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My game turned out to be a vaguely steampunk-ish exploration/management game in space.
I can’t believe I finished this! Aside from the lack of sound, the game is more polished than most of my Pyweek entries, and those get 7 days. I was very surprised that I managed to implement everything on my list without cutting features. I’m actually kind of impressed with myself.
Having said that, it’s not a great game. It’s not very fun and it’s not very innovative. If you like exploration in games as much as me, there are some cool moments, but you have to work to get them.
The gameplay complexity is added gradually throughout the game. I think I should have front-loaded it, because I expect that people will quit after 10 minutes without seeing the whole game. People who play for less than an hour probably won’t get the full experience, and I know that’s way too long to expect someone to invest in a LD game, especially when there are hundreds to play! Oh well….
This is now the third game I’ve made that’s basically a rip-off of one-quarter of Starcon 2. One more to go. 
What did I learn? I need to learn how to generate sound and music for the next LD. In Pyweek you can use sounds that are freely available. I forgot this wasn’t allowed until the last minute, so I had to disable the music I put in. I may upload a Jam version that includes it. Also, python + pygame is great, but it’s time to learn another language for making games.
Thanks to everyone involved in putting this competition together, and good luck to all the contestants!
You said: In Pyweek you can use sounds that are freely available. I forgot this wasn’t allowed until the last minute, so I had to disable the music I put in.
Are you sure about this? The rules say: “Fonts, drum loops, drum samples, and sampled instruments are allowed IF you have the legal right to use them.”
So, why could you not use them if you have a legal right to? I cut some small samples out of free techno loops for my game, because of that rule.
I’m talking about free (creative commons) sound effects (like from freesound.org) and music (like from ccmixter.org). I think that in general those are against the rules. However, you can make your own music using other people’s drum loops, drum samples, and sampled instruments. I think the loops you used are fine, but I’m talking about full compositions.