First of all, if you haven't played the game. Here is a link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers

Infinite Checkers is a Ludum Dare 41 Submission for the “2 Incompatible Genre” theme. The game combines the fast-paced gameplay of an Infinite runner with a mind-bending twist of checkers. The music track for the game combines French Impressionism with a chill EDM beat.

Instructions: Click LMB/RMB or Alt/Ctrl to move diagonally. Hit the flat red pieces to increase score multiplier and move faster. Avoid getting caught by the hazard chasing you. And drop off the ledge to change starting tile. And collect all the “LUDUM DARE 41” alphabets to win (It is hard).

--TEAM COMPOSITION--

Infinite Checkers was made by myself(Programmer/Designer) and Blake(Sound Designer). It was our first time working on a project together, and we completed infinite checkers in about 48 working hours.

--GAME IDEA--

One of my biggest priority was to make sure the idea was scoped well. It was my first full game in Unity, and as I was the only programmer on the team, I had to make sure that I had ample time to finish the content, work on bugs and polish whatever possible. As neither of us had Art experience, I planned to think of concepts that would require minimal to no art. Another priority was low mechanic complexity, I wanted to make a game that was easy to learn by anyone regardless of gaming experience or skill.

To achieve this kind of scope I looked at some fun mobile arcade games. As mobile game genres are relatively low-scoped, I decided to look further and picked "Infinite Runner" as my game's first half genre. For the second half, I needed something simple that could easily gel with the first half. After thinking for a while and scrapping about a dozen ideas, I thought why not board games, and hence came up with infinite checkers.

--DEVELOPMENT--

Overall the development of Infinite Checkers went pretty smoothly. Here are some screenshots starting from the earlier stages of the game leading up to the final product.

--WHAT WENT WELL--

The idea of scoping low from the start worked out in our favor. By the last few hours of the Jam, I hadn't slept for 23 hours and was still fixing some game crashing bugs.

As I am a programmer by trait, I like to make my code as neat and organized as possible. Doing that in a game jam might sound like a bad idea, but it made my life a lot easier the last day of programming.

Getting the game's music to be the same pace as the gameplay was a bit of a challenge. The last thing we wanted was to have was a fast-paced game with super slow zen tunes. This was something that took the majority of Blake's time. Read more about the audio of Infinite checkers here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers/the-music-of-infinite-checkers

Making the game in Unity was a breeze, everything that I needed was super easy to do and most answers were readily available on the internet.

The game started being fun early, and hence we decided to add polish as we developed instead of leaving it for the end. This ended up being a smart idea as by the end we were super out of motivation and energy.

--WHAT WENT WRONG--

AI for enemies: This was something I had planned initially that ended up being cut as it got really hard to balance the AI for a fun experience. The enemy pieces either seemed impossible to beat or stupid random. I wish I hadn't spent those 5-6 hours trying to make it work and cut the AI earlier.

Almost No Playtesting: Apart from me, Blake, and another friend who worked around us on his own Ludum Dare game, we had no one else to playtest the game and because of that some things like difficulty settings were not tuned properly.

Bad control schemes: Another one of the things that we should've paid more attention to. Using RMB/LMB tired people out pretty fast. Adding an alternate arrow keys mode on top of mouse buttons would be great.

Not good documentation of rules and controls: Aside from the bad control scheme itself, there was not much documentation that was added in game describing some essential rules and controls.

Static Backgrounds: The initial idea was to make the path go through a 3d valley of sorts but making something like that perfectly tileable was a pain so we decided to go with a static 3d background.

Not tuned well: The game is hard, almost stupid hard.

Need more juice: This kinda ties into the next point but when I thought of the concept in my head. It had a lot more cool shaders, effects and Juice!

HUD and Feedback: Players still do not know what causes them to win the game, it gets clear after a few tries but it is not apparent during the first run. Things like player's speed boost after hitting the flat pieces, or the score multiplier added for repeatedly hitting the flat pieces are some that really need some sort of obvious feedback.

--FINAL THOUGHTS--

Thanks for reading our post-mortem and what we learned from Ludum Dare 41. Quite frankly, we learned a lot and did something we liked. I am sure after a bit of time, and few game projects later we will come back and finish Infinite Checkers by doing all the things mentioned above and more. The idea is to publish the game primarily on mobile where you tap the left and right half of the screen to move. We think it could be a good fit for the platform.

Play Infinite Checkers Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-checkers