Probably should have done this post a long time ago but yeah, I participated in Ludum Dare. My entry is called MOTHER, you can play it here.

So, what happened?

I'm always hesitant to participate in LD because I never know if I'll be good enough. You see, I'm not a programmer, or an artist, or a sound designer, or anything really. I thaught myself how to use Unity and learned programming by looking at tutorials and reading up posts on Unity answers. I've always been good at drawing, but I'm not a professionnal pixel artist and I only settle for the pixel art style because it is simple and easy to make. As for sound, I don't know music theory, I can't even read sheet music! But, for some reason no matter how much I'm not suited for this and no matter how inexperienced I am I still end up participating when I can... And it's fun as heck.

Friday evening, just before LD started, I whipped up a bunch of concepts that would work with the possible themes and I figured I was gonna go for it because I liked my concepts a lot and wanted to make something. Here's and example of what I had:

It's a mess, I know

After having made these I felt fired up thanks to the amazing keynote we got, which made me realize the mistakes I made on my previous LD entries, and also, thanks to an awesome video made by Quill18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYUfXay_Pio I got lots of tips on how to make a better game that I'd never heard of before. With all that in mind I just knew this game was going to be my best one yet because there was no way I couldn't follow the advice given to me.

So I started

Right away I got a basic sprite which I made in a very short amount of time to serve as a placeholder: I then got the basic controls and movement done relatively quickly and then went on to waste and hour on code that would end up being trash. When I realized I was wasting time I stopped working on that because I knew it would lead nowhere. That's on of the LD tips I had recieved earlier: Don't waste your time on things that don't work, move on and try something else. (Something like that) I proceeded to go to bed, knowing sleep would solve my problems.

And solve them it did, I finally settled on using particles instead of animating flames and I perfectionned the movement and controls to get what was going to be the final version of the character Hoku:

Atmoshpere

Now you may be wondering: "Hoku? wtf?". I know it's weird but I was going for a very moody, atmospheric/mysterious type of game where the focus is more on effects and audio to really put the player in a entirely different world. I like to think I succeeded but I know I've still got a long way to go in all aspects of game making. So this world I created I thought up a whole backstory for it with all sorts of events and characters but I really didn't write any of this down because it wasn't going to be in the final game. I wanted just the right amount of detail for the players to understand what's going on but still question the whole story, which is also why all the game elements are so... abstract. The environement is simple, with structures that have basically no detail, specks of dust floating in the foreground and background, (Thank you parallaxing) The enemies have shapes on their face to make them look less alive and more "mob-like". I really liked my designs at this point and I was happy that it was all good looking yet simple to make.

Audio

A huge part of mood and atmosphere is often the audio. Now, as I've said, I'm not a sound designer. Audio was actually my weak point up until this LD, but now, I started using FLStudio and I feel like my audio skills have really improved. I made a bunch of weird sounds that would end up being our character's "voice" and made some background sound for when the music isn't playing. For the main theme, (which plays during the beginning cutscene and the ending) I settled for something that sounded sad with some piano and violin and a melody I'd had in my head for a long time. I wanted to make more sound effects for the channeling and release of power, but in the end, I ran out of time.

The core mechanic

So the concept I had at first wasn't going to differ much from one theme to the other, but since we ended up with running out of power, I thought I'd make a power gauge a base the switching mechanic on whether or not you have any power left. The idea seemed a bit weird at first but in the end, I think it worked out well and was very intuitive. I added a creepy bell sound and some darkness background sounds when the world turned dark, and some background wind sound when the world was light. I added enemies that could only move when in their world/mode/element and also some obstacles that worked in a similar way.

What went right

• Time management. Although I ran out of time, this LD was the one where I managed to get most of what I had planned done.
• Atmoshpere. As I explained earlier I really feel like I got what makes a game moody.
• Audio. Better than usual so yea, it went right.

What went not so good

• More of a design fail than anything, but 10 seconds to charge power is a long time and probably annoyed a bunch of players.
• Level design. A weak point of mine, I just don't know how to design levels and I end up placing things randomly everywhere. This can be seen in my game when you can't all see what was intended to be seen or things just feel out of place.
• Difficulty. I'm always having a hard time making things not easy but not too hard either and I can never really find a good balance between the two. In my game, the last level, while being poorly designed, is also too hard because the ennemies just come out at you from nowhere.
• Camera. This is a problem every LD for me, I'm always either too zoomed in or too zoomed out, or the screen is just not the size I want it to be on certain resolutions but is on other resolutions. I think next time I make a game, I'm going to make it fixed resolution.
• Graphihcs. It's clear that I don't suck but I think I could have done better.
• Polish. Take the smallest possible working prototype of your game and make it better and better until it's at it's best. Don't add more content unless you have time. That advice I learned right before this LD and although I understand it I just can't see to aim small. I always aim too big and that's a problem.

What now?

Probably never going to touch this game again as I always do with all my entries. The concept is nice though, so I might make a remake in 9999 years or something. Until then, my goal is to improve my game making skills and participate again next Ludum Dare, hoping I'll do better.

So, if you've read everything up until now, which you probably didn't, cause that thing's a freaking novel, then thank you I appreciate you taking the time to hear me out and I would also appreciate if you could play and rate my game, Thank you!