I’ll do this fast – just a few thoughts on my first ever participation in Ludum Dare. I entered the 48 hour combo and ended up creating Sun Bringers.

The Good:

• I came up with something pretty original, which kept me motivated through all 48 hours. I was excited to see and play the result. I would not have been as motivated if I didn’t feel my idea was new.
• CreateJS is a very accessible framework to work with, when you are used to ActionScript 3. Using it was a success. I might have been able to create more using ActionScript 3, but I like to learn new things.
• I’m very happy with the tileset I made. It’s not that the quality is that great, but I really wasn’t sure I could even create one – so I was quite happy when I did. Pickle is a nice tool for this kind of work.

The Bad:

• The design required me to build levels. Doing so takes time. Especially without a level editor – because then it’s just an array of ones and zeros. I ended up creating just five levels. I did have the time to create maybe twice as many, but in the end I chose to have only levels that introduced new game play elements.
• No tutorial. The game is simple, but a few hints would have been nice – like telling the player that he should use two different Sun Bringers to clear level 3. I’m sure many people gives up at that point, even though the solution is simple.
• I didn’t work effectively through all 48 hours. I did sleep for 6 hours – fair enough. But watching my time lapse also show a surprising amount of idling at times when I should have been awake. Knowing this, I should be able to put a few more hours into my production next time.

Conclusion:

Participating in Ludum Dare was a great experience. Finishing a game in a weekend is an awesome feeling, even when the game isn’t the best you have created. Sun Bringers has a pretty good basic idea I think. Creating a creature and letting him loose in a tiny platform puzzle world hoping he can solve it by himself. The execution could be much better in all areas of course, but in the end I’m satisfied with what I achieved in 48 hours.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 11:31 am and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.